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America Behind The Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans

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America Behind The Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans

Paperback(Reprint)

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Paperback(Reprint)
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Overview

The readable companion, in the oral-history tradition of Studs Terkel, to the PBS documentary series, peeking behind the veil "that still, far too often, separates black America from white."

Renowned scholar and New York Times bestselling author Gates delivers a stirring and authoritative companion to the major new PBS documentary America Behind the Color Line. The book includes thought-provoking essays from Colin Powell, Morgan Freeman, Russell Simmons, Vernon Jordan, Alicia Keys, Bernie Mac, and Quincy Jones.

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ISBN-13:	9780446693905
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	01/01/2005
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is the author of numerous books, including Colored People, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man, In Search of Our Roots, and the American Book Award-winning The Signifying Monkey. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Editorial Reviews

In this companion to a four-part PBS documentary that aired this fall, best-selling author Gates (chair, Afro-American studies, Harvard) presents essays drawn from interviews with African Americans from all social and economic levels. Some (Colin Powell, Bernie Mac) are famous, some not, but their contributions to this collage of cultural experience hold equal weight. Divided into four sections, the essays illuminate the burgeoning black middle and upper classes, the black subculture in Hollywood, the trend among African Americans to "return" to the South, and the self-perpetuation of urban poverty. In one of the book's strongest essays, first black International Chess Grand Master Maurice Ashley views the game of chess as a metaphor for transcending racism, or rising through one's own center, as pawns do, to achieve the larger goal. Interestingly, the collection reveals that the institutions of racism and cultural elitism seem destined to exist beyond the color line. The better of the book's 44 essays describe holistic journeys that have led to the achievement of success in America, demonstrating that believing in the American dream is no longer a revolutionary concept for African Americans. Proof lies in the collection itself, which is equally inspiring for all races. Recommended for academic and public libraries alike.-Janet Sassi, New York Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The readable companion, in the oral-history tradition of Studs Terkel, to the PBS documentary series, peeking behind the veil "that still, far too often, separates black America from white." African-Americans, observes Harvard literary scholar Gates (The African-American Century, 2000, etc.), "often speak differently-more colorfully and openly-when talking with each other behind closed doors, as it were, than they do in interracial settings." These one-on-one discussions are certainly open, in the main, and immediate; they speak of the considerable successes that many African-Americans have won in places such as Hollywood and Washington since the 1970s, but they also reveal how far the country has yet to go. Colin Powell, for instance, acknowledges that he "wears his blackness every day" and that when he travels abroad, "people see a black man." Yet, he adds, as secretary of state, "I represent . . . the power of this country . . . and once we sit down and they get past whatever color I am, they want to do business with me." Powell encourages young black people to find a white mentor, for "more and more people in the white community are anxious to help those who are less fortunate." Colorblindness, at least of a kind, also extends to film stars, for, as the saw goes, the only color that counts in Hollywood is green. Even so, the actor Samuel L. Jackson tells Gates, "Hollywood can be perceived as racist and sexist, because that's what audiences have said to them they will pay their money to come see." Jackson suggests that more African-American directors, producers, and studio executives may help-but what's really needed are African-American-owned theater chains. Not all of Gates'sinterviewees are as familiar as Powell and Jackson; some are millionaires, others gang-members and prisoners. But many share similar ideas about what is needed if the lot of ordinary African-American citizens is to improve. Provocative and worthwhile.

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