The Rawness

This is a new regular feature I’m doing because I constantly get emails asking what I’m currently reading or the last few books I’ve heard. So whenever I start a new book from now on, I’ll just post it here so that people won’t have to email me to ask anymore.

What I just finished reading:

The Iliad (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

This is the translation of the Iliad done by Robert Fagles. Fagles’ translations are great because rather than just going for literal translation, he kept in mind that books like the Iliad and the Odyssey were originally oral traditions, meant to be performed aloud to audiences. So in his translations, he tried to capture the spirit of the original and create a modern English translation that was rhythmic, captured the swagger, pomp and aggression of the original spoken ancient Greek text, and was suited to being read aloud on a stage.

It flowed so well that I sometimes caught myself reading some of the dramatic passages aloud.

What I’m Reading Now:

Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class by Lawrence Otis Graham. This book was highly controversial when it was first released for violating the omerta of the black upper-class. Black people can be very classist, but because of their history of being discriminated against they are very averse to being outed as classist, hence the whole “keep it real” mentality.

Graham’s book aired the dirty laundry of the black community by showing the level of classism that exists among the little known social registries and elite groups of the black upper class. It’s a level of snobbishness many have no idea exists in the black community. It also discusses things like the “paper bag test” where admission to black social events would be determined by whether your skin color was lighter than the color of a brown paper bag. If it was darker, you couldn’t gain entry.

A description of the book from Graham’s own website:

Debutante cotillions. Million-dollar homes. Summers in Martha?s Vineyard and Sag Harbor. Membership in the Links, Jack and Jill, Deltas, Boule, and AKAs. An obsession with the right schools, families, churches, social clubs, and skin complexion. This is the world of the black upper class and the focus of the first book written about the black elite by a member of this hard-to-penetrate group.

Lawrence Otis Graham?s controversial bestseller, Our Kind of People: Inside America?s Black Upper Class, was selected by the Book of the Month Club and landed on the bestseller lists of The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Essence Magazine. The book traces the history of black America?s well-to-do, going back to the first black millionaires of the 1890s. The detailed book explains why one needs to have more than money and celebrity to be accepted by this exclusive old-guard black elite crowd. One needs to have the right parents, school credentials, fraternity, club memberships, summer house, profession?and in some cases, the right physical features.

Written by a Harvard-educated lawyer who grew up in many of the oldest black elite organizations, Graham is best known for his undercover work as a busboy at an all-white Connecticut country club, where he exposed its social practices of exclusion.
Graham?s controversial book not only profiles some of the most prominent black names and institutions in twelve different U.S. cities, but it also gives the inside scoop on such by-invitation-only black society groups like Jack & Jill, the Links, the Boul?, the Girl Friends and the Guardsmen. After his six years of research, Graham shares information on the right fraternities and sororities, the right black boarding schools, the right black churches in each city, as well as which prominent black families continue to give back to the black community and which now exploit their light complexions to ?pass? as white.
A second-generation alumnus of the Jack & Jill children?s group, a member of the 90 year old Boul? and the son of a Link, Graham offers a perspective that only an insider would have.

I’m only one chapter in so far, but it’s pretty fascinating, and it seems pretty accurate so far. I can also see why so many black people hated this book, as it’s pretty brutally honest about how pervasive ans rampant classism is among educated, well-to-do blacks. Another reason is that while well-to-do blacks take much pride in being superior to the “bad” blacks in the ghetto, there is also a tendency among them to simultaneously feel guilty for their success at times, as if they’re selling out or renouncing their blackness by embracing such lifestyles. A sort of “survivor’s guilt” is the best way to describe it, I’d say.

The table of contents is as follows:

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1 The Origins of the Black Upper Class
Chapter 2 Jack and Jill: Where Elite Black Kids Are Separated from the Rest
Chapter 3 The Black Child Experience: The Right Cotillions, Camps, and Private Schools
Chapter 4 Howard, Spelman, and Morehouse: Three Colleges That Count
Chapter 5 The Right Fraternities and Sororities
Chapter 6 The Links and the Girl Friends: For Black Women Who Govern Society
Chapter 7 The Boule, the Guardsmen, and Other Groups for Elite Black Men
Chapter 8 Vacation Spots for the Black Elite
Chapter 9 Black Elite Life in Chicago
Chapter 10 Black Elite Life in Washington, DC
Chapter 11 Black Elite Life in New York City
Chapter 12 Black Elite Life in Memphis
Chapter 13 Black Elite Life in Detroit
Chapter 14 Black Elite Life in Atlanta
Chapter 15 Other cities for the Black Elite: Nashville, New Orleans, Tuskegee,
Los Angeles, Philadelphia
Chapter 16 Passing for White: When the ?Brown Paper Bag Test? Isn?t Enough

Recommended Reading:

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