Not only is that his first book--I had read hundreds by the time I was 20--but it was THAT book. The fact that Walker's first book was yet another tome in the endless litany of black victimology is simply too pat and perfect to be true. Verily, The Onion couldn't have done any better.

@ Joseph Yeager
Yes, I noticed that too..his first book is on racism in sports..I hate to break it to you, but the truth is that a significant portion of college kids are exactly like this young man and are not basketball players. You would be shocked, shocked (okay, you wouldn't be!) to know that students have simply never read an entire book in their lives. How could this be, you ask? Easy. With schools the way they are, a kid can easily get through h.s. without reading a book, and maybe even do fairly reasonably grade wise. Same in college. You could easily find a junior, I would think, who has never actually, really read a book cover to cover in his life. Many kids today would want to know if sports magazines and comic books would "count" as reading a book. It gets worse. I did a survey of sites on myspace a few years back. They used to have a profile to fill out where the kids were asked their favorite movie, book etc. When it came to reading, I was actually a bit shocked, not to find out that they didn't read much. I knew that by then. What shocked me were the totally gratuitous expressions of violence against reading itself. Kids expressed a profound revulsion for reading books. Many admitted to being illiterate. I remember one saying, "I don't read because I can't. In fact, my girlfriend is filling this out for me." I truly fear that we have already created a dual class system in this country because of the malfeasance of education. If Americans really knew the truth, they would be shocked. I think many CEOs already know and the dirty secret is that the reason so many jobs are off shore now is that the workers there, in Ireland, India, really wherever, are simply more competent. They can, ya know man, like READ!

Joseph,
not to worry, 43 is the new 33, and you have lots of time to be a part of the solution. I do think parents are at least a part of the solution to the curiosity problem. I saw research that said the biggest predictor of a kid's success in school or,say, graduation rate, was NO OTHER factor than how many books his parents had at home. Not money spent in the district, the teacher, the facilities, the neighborhood, none. Only how many books the parents had. Made sense to me because as a kid, without anybody noticing, I perused my way through every book in everybody's house and never thought anything of it. The other issue certainly is that there is a huge factor in whether or not a teacher communicates curiosity, excitement, interest in practical and also theoretical ways...Too many h.s. teachers do not really have a huge grasp of their subjects, IMHO, and college is all dull textbooks, now dumbed down a bit. I hate to say it, but I really think much of American education is just a sad waste of time and the kids reflect that in many ways with boredom, passive aggressiveness, resistance, credentialism, time wasting and killing, drinking and partying. I think top echelons are really hard driving, but that is a small percentage of students. The whole system needs a huge overhaul. What interests me is how crazy it is that the money spent on books and resources is completely minimal in relation to the total cost of an education, i.e. the cost of the bureaucracy. But ya gotta stay positive.

It's not really matter of being proud of it. It's simply a reality. Whatever lack of education or poor decisions led him to that point, the past isn't going to change just because he's not honest about it.