Volume 24, Number 13 · August 4, 1977
The Black Upper Class
By Darryl Pinckney
Certain People: America's Black Elite
by Stephen Birmingham
Little, Brown, 301 pp., $8.95
The history of blacks is complicated, fragmented, disturbing to contemplate, not a neat trail of challenges met or of felled trees blocking the path to the mountain top. When writing on black life, whites have often been unwelcome, usually called upon to give witness or hauled in as the accused. Feverish protection of cultural territory has bred a timidity among whites, whose hesitation is not quite owing to liberal guilt, but rather to the exhaustion white Americans have been feeling for some time. They suffer the ache of feeling overwhelmed, faced as they are with the difficulties of having a tradition, in regard to blacks, that discourages close scrutiny. Blacks clamored to be heard and then they spewed accusations. Some whites and blacks probably had the same thoughts: They will never understand. Do we?
Review, 3163 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |