Uncensored Read online

  Praise for Uncensored

  “In this remarkably honest memoir, Zachary R. Wood has written a veritable bildungsroman, tracing his journey from high school scholarship student from a poor black neighborhood in Washington, DC, to leader of the free speech movement at Williams College. This work provides a timely view of both political life on elite college campuses and the struggles of the working poor against the backdrop of institutional racism. It also explores, with bracing candor, Wood’s growth as a young writer and intellectual, whose mistakes are as formative as his successes. Wood’s memoir is a must-read for anyone concerned about the American promise of social mobility.”

  —Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University and author of Life Upon These Shores

  “I met Zachary Wood when he was nineteen. After an hour of talking with him, I was volunteering for his (future) U.S. presidential campaign. (I have my fingers crossed that he’ll decide to run someday, because we need him.) Zachary Wood represents everyone, and he does so with dignity, clarity, kindness, and great courage, which comes across loud and clear in this phenomenal book, Uncensored. Zachary’s story of resilience, compassion, and conviction will be read by millions, and I’ll be pushing for it to be a book that’s assigned in high school classrooms everywhere. He teaches—and shows—us how to resolve and heal some of our deepest conflict—with true curiosity, empathy, and openness.”

  —Amy Cuddy, New York Times bestselling author of Presence

  “Uncensored is inspired. Zachary Wood is an American hero for standing up on the front line of the fight for free speech on college campuses. This young black man, who has overcome so much in his life, tells an incredible story of crossing political lines in search of honest debate.”

  —Juan Williams, political analyst for Fox News and author of Eyes on the Prize

  “Zachary Wood’s story is wrenchingly honest and compelling, a triumph of discipline and resilience, with useful lessons for us all. His willingness to confront opposing views and engage ideological adversaries is brave and important at a time when political polarization is challenging our national strength.”

  —Ambassador Susan E. Rice, coeditor of Confronting Poverty

  “It is difficult to know what is more amazing, the fact that a twenty-one-year-old is publishing a memoir of his life, the fact that he indeed has a life and a complicated one to narrate, or the fact that out of hardscrabble beginnings he has fashioned a present full of accomplishment and promises a future that the reader soon comes to believe in. He thinks he will be president of the United States. I wouldn’t bet against him.”

  — Stanley Fish, New York Times bestselling author of How to Write a Sentence

  “Candid, passionate, disturbing, and judicious, Zachary Wood’s Uncensored traces a young man’s odyssey through the challenges and affirmations of family life, academic institutions, and campus controversies. Ambitious and altruistic, admired and maligned, driven yet self-reflective, Wood examines and celebrates the sense of calling that informs his prodigious energy and talent. Uncensored is an honest, compelling, and unforgettable book.”

  —David Smith, John W. Chandler Professor of English at Williams College

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Zachary R. Wood

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  DUTTON and the D colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  has been applied for.

  Ebook ISBN 9781524742461

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Penguin is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.

  Version_1

  To my sister, whose presence reminds me of the power of love, and to the memory of my grandfather, who taught me to believe in the potential of everyone to be better than they are

  Contents

  Praise for Uncensored

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Crossroads

  Chapter 2

  Dads’ Day

  Chapter 3

  One Call

  Chapter 4

  Starting Over Again

  Chapter 5

  Comeback Route

  Chapter 6

  The Void

  Chapter 7

  Gravity

  Chapter 8

  Circling

  Chapter 9

  Friday Nights

  Chapter 10

  Shoulder to the Wheel

  Chapter 11

  Evolution

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  The opportunity to write this book arose while I was attending Columbia University as a visiting student during my junior year of college. Shortly after Thanksgiving, I wrote an article for The Washington Post describing the challenges I faced when going home for the holidays as a low-income student. The article gained traction, and I was extremely fortunate to receive an e-mail from Brandi Bowles, who would become my literary agent, who suggested I write a memoir. Before replying, I considered what writing about my life would entail. How would doing so affect my family and my future? After weighing the significant costs and benefits of sharing my story, I gladly accepted the offer to give it a shot.

  What I have tried to do is write a memoir that speaks to the truth of how I became who I am. At every turn, that has meant revealing personal information that causes me a great deal of anxiety. I have not taken this approach because I thought people should know painful details of my private life. I’ve tried within these pages to put myself out there because I’ve come to believe that one of the best ways to build empathy and compassion is through honesty and vulnerability.

  Making this effort hasn’t been easy, and throughout the process, I’ve considered the various risks involved with autobiographical writing—from misremembering events or details of dialogue to the desire to tailor the narrative in ways that endear the writer. I’ve tried my best to avoid these hazards.

  This book is based on my best recollections of various events in my life. To protect their privacy, I have changed the names and identifying characteristics of some people mentioned in the book. To further disguise the identities of some individuals, certain characters appear as composites of people I’ve known. In service of the narrative, in a few instances, I have also rearranged and/or compressed events and time periods and re-created dialogue to match my best recollection of past exchanges.

  It is my hope tha
t after reading this book, you will come away with the desire to learn more about the experiences and opinions of others—and the determination to use that knowledge to make a positive difference.

  If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

  Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

  If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

  If all men count with you, but none too much;

  If you can fill the unforgiving minute

  With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

  Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

  And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

  —Rudyard Kipling, “If—”

  Introduction

  “Do black people come from apes?” a high school friend of mine asked, looking me in the eye. His dad had told him about Charles Murray’s book The Bell Curve, which links intelligence to race and class in America. “You know, black people are always good at four things,” my friend continued, “running, jumping, stealing, and shooting.”

  At the elite private school I attended, which took two hours to get to by public transportation, I sometimes heard these types of comments. These same students would call the neighborhood I grew up in poor, and though it was dangerous and considered by some to be one of the city’s rougher areas, it was where my father worked harder than anyone I’d ever met. So when race came up, either subtly or overtly, his image was the one I carried of my neighborhood and my blackness.

  “Zach, why are black people so athletic?” they asked me. Other times, they insisted that I impersonate Obama and complained that my nose wasn’t big enough for me to really be black. Did I like this? Of course not. But did it faze me? Please. I had been learning how to adapt to difficult circumstances since before I could remember. Sometimes I debated race with these students; other times it seemed futile. No matter the case, I always tried my best to show through my own actions that the things they believed about black people weren’t true. But I knew that I could make a bigger impact by going to the source and learning every facet of their arguments so that I could ultimately take them on. I filed away Charles Murray’s name, but not in order to avoid it. Rather, so that I could seek out his books and educate myself about exactly what he was saying, and why.

  Only three years later, I had an opportunity to do just that. As the president of Uncomfortable Learning at Williams College, I had the job of bringing speakers who would offer different viewpoints from those we were typically exposed to on our liberal campus. First, I invited Suzanne Venker, a self-described anti-feminist who claims that feminist women are waging a war on men. Within minutes of announcing the event, my in-box, phone, and Facebook page were flooded with negative comments, insults, and even implicit threats. “Zach Wood, you’re a filthy misogynist,” my peers said. “You’re a sellout, a traitor to your race. You’re worse than Ben Carson.”

  I was shocked. Many of these comments were coming from students who knew me. They’d engaged with me on campus, and some were even my friends. Yet, based on this one event, they were characterizing me in a way that went against everything I stood for. But I was determined not to back down. When we eventually had to cancel Venker’s appearance due to concerns about her personal safety, I followed up with an invitation to John Derbyshire, a divisive pop-math author and opinion journalist who’d publicly defended white supremacy, advised readers to stay away from groups of black people, and, like Murray, claimed that blacks had lower IQs than whites.

  This time, the backlash was even worse. Now the topic was race. A note was slipped under my door that read, “Your blood will be in the leaves,” next to a picture of a tree. A comment on Facebook read, “We need the oil and switch to deal with him in this midnight hour.” A few student activists came up to me in the cafeteria and insulted me to my face. Others whispered about me behind my back.

  I tried explaining to my fellow students that I wasn’t doing this because I was secretly a conservative, a self-hating black man, or an anti-feminist, men’s rights activist. Rather, I was sick of living in an echo chamber. At Williams, most of my professors taught their perspective on any given issue as if it were fact instead of delving into opposing views to create well-rounded lessons. Around campus, progressive ideas were lauded while conservative ones were shut down for being insensitive. The few conservatives at Williams were largely scared into silence, knowing that if they went against the status quo they would be labeled as biased and wrong.

  I wasn’t satisfied hearing only one side of things, even if it was the side I agreed with. I wanted to use the education I received at Williams to create positive change in the world one day. How would I do that if I shut out the voices I disagreed with instead of engaging with them? My curiosity led me to examine issues from all sides, trying to find understanding and hopefully some common ground. It wasn’t about letting a racist convince me that I was wrong or that I was less intelligent than he was. Instead, I sought to stand firmer in my convictions and become better able to defend them by thoroughly understanding the logic of my opponents.

  My explanations made little difference. When the president of Williams College, Adam Falk, canceled Derbyshire’s talk, I was disappointed but not deterred. Charles Murray had reached out to me, saying that he’d love to come speak at Williams, and I decided to invite him. While some students continued to protest, this time the event went on as planned.

  In his book, Murray attributed IQ disparities and achievement gaps to the genetic inferiority of blacks and the behavioral impediments holding back black communities. One of Murray’s contentions was that there are cultural problems in the black community that no amount of welfare or government spending can possibly correct. As he was explaining some of his ideas over dinner, I realized that the IQ discussion was just a distraction. If I focused on the actual issues, maybe we could find some common ground. So I started by acknowledging his side of the argument head-on.

  “I am not discounting cultural problems,” I told him, going on to describe them better than he could: the emulation of rappers, the glorification of hip-hop culture and violence, the broken families, and so on. “But,” I continued, “we need to address the structural issues first. You do acknowledge that they exist, right? So how can we increase social mobility and economic opportunity for Americans living below the poverty line?”

  Murray engaged thoughtfully but continued on undeterred. After the event, a friend approached me to say that my argument had resonated with him and had even made him think differently about racial disparities in America. For me, Murray’s visit to Williams was a successful example of Uncomfortable Learning. Neither of us changed our opinions or switched sides, but that wasn’t the point. Instead, by listening to and challenging Murray, my classmates and I were forced to think more deeply about our own beliefs and even question them.

  In my mind, this type of debate is valuable and would not have been possible if we did not give Murray an opportunity to share his perspective, but my critics felt that by giving him that opportunity, I was bolstering his misguided and often hurtful views.

  Hurtful. That’s the word that campus activists and others who opposed Murray’s invitation to speak at Williams used to describe why they were against it. As I sat down with some of them to hear them out, just as I’d heard out Murray, they explained why it was so painful and triggering for them. They discussed incidents of sexual assault, police brutality, and growing up in poverty, and they explained that, to them, Williams wasn’t just a learning institution—it was their home.

  As the topic of free speech on college campuses has continued to cause controversy, protests, and even bursts of violence across the country, the criticism most often levied against campus activists is that they’re too sensitive. On campus, their feelings are coddled. Class materials that may be upsetting are given a trigger warning. Speech codes restrict many college students from talking about cer
tain subjects. And controversial speakers such as Venker and Derbyshire are kept away. The result is millions of college students who have little tolerance for healthy debate and view someone voicing his or her opposing view as an attack on their very personhood.

  Make no mistake—these subjects are extremely difficult for me to grapple with, too. But I don’t want to give someone like Derbyshire the satisfaction of writing me off as too sensitive when I can rise to the occasion and challenge him instead.

  And, yes, of course there’s more to it than that. This is something I’ve been asked about many times. In several of the interviews I’ve done following the Uncomfortable Learning controversy, I’ve been asked why my peers are so sensitive and what makes me different.

  “Your classmates are hurt by someone like Murray merely being on campus, and you’re willing to face implicit threats in order to bring him there,” one reporter remarked during a phone interview. “How have you grown such a thick skin? Are you just wired differently than the students who criticize you?”

  I repeated the question, trying to think of how best to answer. This was something I’d been asked many times, but not in such a pointed way. The truth is, I know full well where my thick skin comes from. It’s something I’ve processed and moved on from, but once in a while when I’m asked a question like this, I think back to her words: “You worthless punk-ass nigga.” I can remember the piercing look in her eyes, the leather belt in her hand, the anger and pain that made her face quiver as she told me to take off my clothes and turn around.

  “Well,” I said slowly, taking a deep breath. “I wasn’t exactly coddled.”

  CHAPTER 1

  Crossroads

  My mother was the first person I desperately tried to understand. She was five feet seven with mahogany skin and a beautiful smile. She was born in Fort Worth, Texas, but spent most of her childhood in Detroit. She was a people person, with excellent soft skills, and she rarely made anything less than a great first impression when she wanted to.