Food might be more immediately important than history but if you don't understand what's been done to you - by your own people and the so-called 'they' - you can never get around it.
I have been wearing black, which was a reaction to the Ginger thing. But now I have hopes and I can be anything. Tomorrow I might be naked with a feather boa, who knows?
One of the terrific aspects of MIT in those days was the enormous variety of experimental work that either took place there or was talked about in seminars by outside speakers aggressively recruited by the faculty.