High Price

started in genuine higher education. On base, courses were offered by Central Texas College. One of the first classes I took was algebra. I figured that I could build on my math skills and aim for a degree in accountancy or something similar.
    This was, I later learned, another example of motivation relying on behaviors that get reinforced and rewarded. I’d been praised and had had early success at math, so I knew I could do it. I’d experienced the pleasure that could come from this myself. My very presence in the air force was one of the rewards for my math aptitude, though, of course, it didn’t always seem like one. I also probably chose to take algebra first because I did not want to get discouraged if I tried something new, worked hard, and did not manage to do well. And, as it turned out, I easily got a B.
    That gave me confidence when I began to take other classes that I was less sure I’d be able to ace, like Human Resources. For that class, I had to write papers. Though I suspect now that they were pretty bad, I had a friend type them for me and was readily able to get another B. Even in my first year of college, I had no idea that I’d eventually end up as a scientist, studying the complex and challenging human brain itself, no less.
    Outside of the classroom, however, I continued to dislike Okinawa. About once a month, Keith, Bobby, Billy, and I would drive up to the top of a hill near the base’s high school, with a breathtaking view out over the island of Okinawa. We’d sit in my Honda Accord or in Bobby or Billy’s Toyota, smoke, and talk about our plans for when we got back to “the world.” We felt as isolated from events back home as we would have been on another planet. Alternatively, we’d go to Gate 2 Street, which was as bustling and chaotic as New York’s Canal Street, and around once a week, we’d steal the latest VHS movies to watch on Billy’s VCR. As a result, I’m deeply familiar with most Hollywood films of 1984–1985.
    The rest of my free time was spent working out or hanging with Mark. He introduced me to a book called Bloods , by Wallace Terry, which detailed the maltreatment of black soldiers in Vietnam, in frequently horrifying first-person accounts. That made me think back to the stories I’d heard from Paul, whose memories had seemed so vivid and inescapable. Fortunately, during my time in the service, we were not at war.
    Indeed, war was so far from my mind during my time in the air force that the only time I was required to patrol with an M16 to defend my base, I was outraged. That was later, when I was stationed in England. We had bombed Libya in 1986 in response to a terror attack on a German disco frequented by American soldiers. The planes that refueled the bombers came from the base where I was serving; I threatened to call my congressman about this onerous antiterrorism duty when I was made to do it. Of course, my fellow airmen just laughed. I was lucky not to have faced anything like the combat duty those brothers did.
    Mark turned me on to jazz as well. When he played Ella Fitzgerald, I was surprised at his choice of records. I’d always thought that her voice had belonged to a white woman. Mark explained that Fitzgerald’s singing might have been dubbed into films starring white actresses, creating that impression and hiding the true source of her glorious sound.
    And when Bob Marley sang about freeing our minds from mental slavery in “Redemption Song,” I recognized a kinship and a truth. I thought about my own unspoken struggles with a sense of inferiority because of how dark my skin was. I’d always known that those thoughts were racist and morally abhorrent, of course: that was obvious on a conscious level. Still, I had truly thought that that stuff had rolled off my back, and I was outwardly more than confident. I felt unscathed.
    Of course, it really is impossible to grow up in a world that despises people who look like you and not succumb to secret self-doubt at times. It quietly eats away at you, with a corrosive shame that is extremely difficult to extinguish because it goes unexpressed. This was especially true for someone like me, who was so devoted to being seen as cool and above it all. So “Redemption Song” moved me. And when Marley described how we were stolen from Africa to be placed into slavery in America in the song “Buffalo Soldier,” it got me thinking about the heinous crime at the root of America’s relationship with