Phillip Atiba Goff '99 has a calling.

As he sees it, contemporary black America is analogous to a rape victim, with all the connotations that that status brings. They struggle with powerlessness, voicelessness and self-loathing. White America is analogous to the rapist, associated with an inverse, if equally resonant, set of images. They struggle with guilt, cultural ignorance and the desire to protect their own privilege.

Goff is himself biracial, and although he identifies himself as black, he believes his mixed lineage gives him no choice but to be responsible to both the rapist and the rape victim--to help the black community restore its damaged voice, while simultaneously convincing the white community of the need for change.

This is a big mandate, even for a guy who was doing trigonometry in first grade. But Goff, who is described by friends and colleagues as a visionary, has a combination of artistic, academic and personal talents that uniquely equip him to take up the struggle for racial equality.

He is probably best-known on campus for his artistic talent. He has been president of Kuumba and the director and musical arranger of Brothers of Kuumba (an all-male subset of the singing group), served as musician's coordinator for the award-winning original musical "Songs We Can't Sing," and founded the Boston Black Art's Festival, now its second year, which brings together a wide range of local and national artists and academics to celebrate the black artistic tradition.

Academically, Goff originally intended to study math and physics, but he decided that mathematical questions were not the ones he wanted to be answering. ("I didn't want to be the black math/science guy," he quips.) Instead, he enrolled in a graduate seminar with Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West '74 as a first-year, and after dabbling in gender studies, found his place as an Afro-American studies concentrator. He will head to Stanford next year to begin a Ph.D. in social psychology.

But more than his individual academic or musical talents, it is the multiplicity of ways he has to achieve his vision of racial equality, bolstered by religious faith and sheer personal presence, that sets him apart.

"Academics can ask the right questions. Policy makers can intervene to make the macro-structural changes needed to facilitate equality," Goff says, adding that he plans a career in both areas. "But you can't change people's mind through force of logic. You have to connect with them, and the only way to do that on a large-scale is through art."

Achieving Respectability

Goff grew up in the suburbs just outside West Philadelphia, a product of Southern-born parents who were the first in their families to transition from poverty to a solid middle-class existence.

Goff credits his achievements to his "incredibly strong" parents, but notes that it is perhaps ironic that they produced a child so fascinated by issues of race, considering that they absolutely refused to discuss the racism they faced in the still-bigoted South because of their intermarriage.

"My parents knew that our history, community and traditions were all tainted by American racism. That meant few stories, fewer house-guests, and no direct discussions about race. I would not have anyone else's preconceptions to muddy my self-image," Goff says.

Goff knew, of course, that race had affected his family--it was the reason that his parent's wedding made the front page of the local newspaper.

He also knew it was the reason that his mother, in particular, was deter- mined to maintain middle-class respectability.Goff still vividly remembers the day when hisfather suggested moving the vegetable garden fromthe back to the front of the house in order toprotect it from attack by deer and groundhogs,only to be firmly admonished by his mother that"plant gardens did not go in front of the house insuburban Philadelphia."

Phil and his older brother learned quickly that"success was the only option." The message stuck,as Phil went onto Harvard and his brother toWilliams College.

But Phil, like his parents, did not succeedwithout having to deal with issues of race, evenat Friends Central School which he attended fromfirst through 12th grade. In a school that wasmore than 80 percent Jewish, and had only asmattering of black faces, Goff founded the BlackStudent Forum, and challenged what he saw as ateacher's racist interpretation of Cry theBeloved Country.