I don't think of it as tough for me, just part of trying to do as good a job as I can preparing them for the world they are entering more deeply by the year.  They need to know how to protect themselves as all of us do, of course, but I want them to be limited as little as possible by unfounded fears and prejudices towards people who are different from them.  To the degree they are so limited, this will limit the richness and quality of their lives as I see it. 

At any rate, that is the thinking.  To paraphrase my late grandmother, we are all works in progress (at best), present company very much included. 

Many other among my better half's influences on them will probably leave our kids much better off.  

And then, of course, there are the ways in which parental wonderfulness somehow, inexplicably, does not get passed along to our kids.    But I won't go there.  Writing this makes me think of one of the Progressive or GEICO insurance commercials on TV these days where the tag line is something like "Progressive can't keep you from becoming your parents.  But we can save you money on car insurance."  

I've noted a bit of an uptick in attention to understanding and trying to deal with consequences of tribalism in recent years.  Amy Chua's Political Tribes and Joshua Greene's Moral Tribes are two works that have come out on this topic.  It comes up in stuff I read on identity politics as well, for example, We Who are Dark by Tommie Shelby (he co-edited the book on MLK To Shape a New World, that you mentioned, rmrd0000).  

Well Dreamer, I wonder what kind of evangelical your friend was, because they're not all the same

Yes, that was the point I was trying to make.  

My friend may well have held some irrational beliefs, as probably most of us do about one matter or another.  In our conversations he did not say things which struck me as irrational at all.  We talked very little about religion.  This was a long time ago--either I had already decided I wasn't interested in going there, or else based on a few things I may have heard him say I decided early on that I wasn't interested in further discussions on that topic, and he got the message. 

He was preparing to be a patent lawyer.  He had good knowledge about, and much respect for, science and for people who did stuff with it. 

His parents were missionaries in the Middle East.  He may have felt pressured into evangelical efforts by his parents although he did not suggest or hint at that in our conversations, nor did I ask him.  He was somewhat tentative in his evangelizing efforts with fellow students.  Perhaps he sensed he was likely to be met with reactions along lines of...the reactions he was met with.  He had a relatively shy, introverted personality.    

My impression was that on engaging other students he was not citing the Bible.  If his own beliefs and arguments were biblically centered or grounded, he probably knew better than to believe that source would be persuasive with that crowd.  But I don't know this.  I did not participate in those lounge debates as I was not interested.  He never cited the Bible in conversations about ethical or public policy issues with me, understanding that to a non-fundamentalist like me, this was not going to be effective and might be counter-productive.  

I did not ask him if he considered himself a fundamentalist as well as an evangelical.  Probably yes, was my sense.  He was learning how to interpret secular texts in alternative ways in his studies and certainly had the ability to do the same with the Bible so as to embrace conclusions that felt right to him and reject ones that didn't. 

Unlike many of our fellow students, some of whom probably already had it in their heads at that point that they were likely to run for office down the road, he was not at all a political person.  I never had any sense he was going to run for and perhaps win office and use his position to urge or try to coerce others to live by his interpretation of the Bible using his interpretation of the Bible as his justification.  If I had any such sense, I can't imagine that I would have wanted to befriend him.  My own views on the role of religion in public life were unconsidered and I had done little or no reading to speak of on that topic at that time.  I don't recall any conversations we had on that subject.     

Thx