BTW - I am fully acquainted with the rigours of academia but life experience has taught me that the ivory tower has little to do with cultural literacy and that, in fact, most graduate students fall flat on their face when expressing their ethno centric viewpoint to a multi-cultural audience.

I expected some sort of dismissive response. I wasn't disappointed in that, but I think you're wrong in this also. I'd say that you're grossly over-generalizing. Most people with advanced degrees manage to escape the gravity field of that Ivory Tower and do good work and understand the real world around them. And there are talented professors in many fine institutions who turn out great thinkers.

Perhaps you're confusing those people with a conspicuous group that never seems to break free of the university and who fall under the heading of "those who can, do, those who can't, teach." I have run into some of them over the years. They are very good at navel-gazing in closed circuit environments of school and scholarly conferences. Theory for theory's sake. They publish papers on topics that don't lead anywhere, and always come back to the same research again and again. They tend to fizzle out and drift into other jobs. Don't dismiss education or scholarship because some people don't get it and can't figure out how to apply what they've learned.

People who read the journals, take the good ideas, and move out into the world to work and teach and think make a difference. To suggest that one group, by virtue of their education or skin color, lacks understanding while another group, because of their education or skin color, possess total understanding is a gross simplification of how the world works. We all simply understand different things, and ours is a world in which little has been done to bridge that gap. Until you see evidence in an individual of a stubborn unwillingness to think or consider viewing the world from a position other than the center in which they've placed themselves, no one should be dismissed out of hand.

And before you wade into another aspect of this, I will note that the mudcatters I am most likely to tangle with are the ones who wade into perfectly good discussions and start flashing around faulty sources, ill-considered topics, fuzzy logic, and/or try to blast their opponents out of the argument by name calling, innuendo, and just plain nastiness to distract from their lack of knowledge or material to continue the discussion. Some people just drop out when they reach that point, others keep on slugging.

SRS