Face the future

George Vukelich devotes his Listening In column to Richard Ralston, a UW-Madison professor of Afro-American Studies who is about to take sabbatical leave to teach at Harvard. "The reality is that in the future, persons of color are going to be the majority in America, and I think it behooves the universities and all the rest of us who have some power to educate to do things now to prepare our society for that reality," Ralston says. "I see a lot of universities running for cover on these issues, the same as the rest of society. I know that universities and colleagues say - particularly about minority students, students of color - 'Well, we tried, but those students weren't prepared for college by the high schools.... I think that's a copout.... I firmly believe that it's the duty of every organization in America to face the reality of our future and say to its members: This is what our society is going to be. It's going to be multicultural. It's going to be multiracial..., and we must become activists now if that diverse society is going to have any chance of working." Ralston is now an emeritus professor in Afro-American Studies at UW-Madison.