I was asked on Monday by a friend if I was going to write about the goings-on at Yale. I will at some point, but now's not the time.

A little more than two and a half years ago, our school spent a day on lockdown after a twenty-one-year-old shot a police officer at MIT and drove through our campus on his way to Watertown, where he would eventually be captured by police.

We stayed in our dorms, not knowing whether he was just outside the door. He probably wasn't anywhere near campus, the rumors went, but better to keep the doors locked, just to be sure. I lived just next door to my friends, but I didn't dare to step outside for the ten seconds it would have taken me to get from my door to theirs.

I've written before about the moment that we raised our voices together, after the campus had begun to open up again, but I haven't said much about the terror of that day we spent inside.

It seems illogical now, with the benefit of hindsight, but we were worried that we'd hear gunshots at any moment. Everyone tensed up when we heard another police siren go screaming passed. People offered couches to sleep on to strangers because no one wanted to go outside.

But I don't claim to know what it feels like to be black on Mizzou's campus right now. When we locked our doors in fear, we were afraid together. I don't know what it's like for a piece of my identity to be under attack, because when my school was locked down, we came together as Harvard students. I don't

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False-flag tactics in social advocacy are selfish, since they (1) erode a public expectation of frankness in favor of monotonous cynicism, and (2) prime people's minds with the most-polarizing views of conversational participants, instead of framing them in ways that induce exchange of ideas. The right reason to critique the satirists here is for their anti-conversational tactics -- not their demonstrated anti-anti-racism -- since we shouldn't be okay with the same tactics

On the St. Louis Rams "Hands Up"

...joining in a common signal of solidarity, like that Hunger Games Katniss three-finger salute. Of course, obviously, the District Eleven residents who held up their hands like that were immediately attacked by the police, which is where our metaphor...uh...um...alright.

(related: Salon | Mockingjay's eerie echoes of Ferguson: Our real dystopian nightmare)

Larry Wilmore: "We're race-aholics. We'll always be in recovery, and the best we can hope for is to manage it."

Stewart: Larry, if I may, there's been some talk that none of the events of these past few weeks have actually been about race. (clips roll) What do you say to those people?

Wilmore: Oh, I don't know, Jon...I would say that they should probably go fuck themselves?

and:

Stewart: You don't think a conversation about black-on-black crime should be happening now?

Wilmore: It is, Jon, but it's a black-on-black conversation. Just becaue you're

Ore Babarinsa, one of my classmates, had the following to say on recent events in Ferguson, MO via Facebook. With permission, I've copied his words without modification below.

So, I've purposefully stayed off facebook for the last 12+ hours because I wanted to spend some time thinking about this whole mess because I specifically since I find so often that immediate outrage requires reflection before it can be distilled into meaningful wisdom.

Firstly, to address the immediate situation. There's a critical failure of justice, and the rule of law that has occurred. Once again, the forces of moral cowardice and systemic racism have won out over wisdom, fairness, and any sort of allegiance to due process. There's no working around that simple fact. The necessity of an open, public, and fair trial for Officer Wilson was paramount, and that the grand jury failed to acknowledge this is galling.

Secondly, the riots on the ground are understandable, and I'm not going to sit in my Harvard Ivory Tower and finger-wag at those involved. I'd likely an active participant if I were anywhere near Ferguson. This said, the long view of history, and wisdom show that riots won't get us anywhere our goals of racial equity, economic redistribution of wealth, or any sort of meaningful political or social gains. Neither will insipid, simple slogans, hashtags, or boisterous threats of violence towards the state or law enforcement. Change is hard, and fraught with disappointments and setbacks.

Thirdly, as many of us forget, there is no easy way to fix this. There is no fixed set of enemies of progress. There is no plan for revolution, or system dismantlement that will lead you to