Walt Harrington is a professor of journalism with a black wife and two mixed-race children. He was in college during the Black Power era and is no ignoramus when it comes to racial issues. And yet, he knew deep inside that he, as a white man, lacked a fundamental understanding of the black experience in America. And so he set out alone on a 20,000-mile car trip to speak with hundreds of black people across the South, North, and West of this country. His confidants span the gamut from homeless to successful executives, from school kids to the elderly, from amiable to angry. "Crossings" is the result of his voyage, its lessons presented just plain honestly. I rate it a solid "+".
It's an amazing project, and I marvel at Harrington's perseverance, perception, and, personability. Throughout his journey, he manages to meet and talk deeply with not just any strangers, but strangers who are justifiably a bit suspicious and aloof. Many of his interviews were scheduled, but not all of them.
Obviously, Harrington's travels were for personal as well as academic reasons, and some of the most fascinating chapters are when he explores his own past. He looks up old college friends, remembering the days when he was branded a racist as a freshman and had to live with that image all four years. What an experience to go back and speak with the dynamic black guys he knew during the late 60's. He also visits the part of his wife's family that still lives in the Deep South, as well as his childhood neighborhood (working-class white) that he never realized had a racist reputation, even though he was well aware that he should never go to the neighboring black part of town for fear of his safety.
I cannot summarize the multitude of truths that Harrington uncovers in his quest to learn more about blacks in America. He does a fine job of it himself in the final chapter, so I'll just point out a few things that touched me before I got to his conclusions.
The overriding theme was one of complexity. It's simply not right to start any sentence with, "Well, for blacks in America....". There is no such uniform group. There is a growing divide between "blacks who have been cut in, and those who have been cut out." That is not to say that racism is gone or even that it isn't important for meritorious blacks. As Harrington says, "Race still matters, but it is no longer all that matters." (p. 444).
I was particularly interested in what one young, middle-class black woman said about the new tensions blacks face. She had noted that many poor blacks ridiculed those who tried to rise out of poverty, calling them Oreos and accusing them of forgetting their own people. And yet she was aware that blacks' situation is not going to improve until more blacks make that leap. She felt a tension because she wanted to distance herself from the lower-class blacks that feed white stereotypes, and yet, she didn't want to be a "sell-out." She didn't want to be white. She had trouble with the conflicting desires to take a stand against racism, but also to tell other blacks, "You've got to take responsibility for your life!"
There are other complexities, too. Like black-on-black racism, in which lighter black skin signals superiority. The continuing black obsession with straight hair. A tendency to mistake problems of class for problems of race. And a half-full/half-empty disagreement about whether things today are really enough better to justify celebration.
A few times, I found Harrington to be naive. Sometimes he was just being a good journalist, asking "dumb" questions to get people to educate him, and thereby explain their worldviews in the indirect way that is most effective. But other times, I thought he missed the beat. For instance, he was continually shocked to discover racist words coming out of white people's mouths in the South-- not so much because he thought "nigger" was no longer used, but because the people who said them seemed so nice and normal otherwise. Did he really expect racists to have a big black mark on their foreheads, or perhaps a scarlet "R" pinned to their shirts?
Also, he seemed to think that he was priviledged to hear black people express their frustration with other blacks. They would say in a hushed voice, "I feel bad thinking this since I've experienced so much racism myself, but sometimes I really wish blacks would stop whining and making excuses and just get a job." He says that he is "not supposed to know this" as a white man because blacks are afraid that saying such things out loud will fuel white racism.
I say hogwash. Any white who would use such a statement by a black person to "justify" his or her racism was racist anyway. Whites don't need an excuse to be racist. The blacks Harrington talked to were willing to tell him that they were frustrated with other blacks precisely because he is not black. If they told other blacks that sentiment, they would be ostracized from the black community, and would thus be "floating," since they can't really be part of the white community. Not wanting to say that in public is fueled by the same fear that prevents some blacks from getting jobs and leaving their poverty-stricken neighborhoods-- they would be rejected by those who are supposed to be allies.
Just one more complexity.
Anyway, it is impressive that Harrington would recognize his own ignorance and set out to correct it, even though he knew that he could never fully understand the black experience. I feel that I know a bit more from having read the book, even though my own knowledge of race as a white person is similarly limited.
It is worth making one comment about the analogy between blacks and women, since I do pay attention to feminist issues. I dislike the lumping together of racism and sexism for two reasons: first, women are not a minority. Blacks constitute just 13% of the US population, and women 51%; that makes for some large differences in social dynamics. But second, and more important, women and men are intertwined in ways that races are not. As my friend Janis put it eloquently, "Race relations would be a lot different if white people had black babies half the time."
But with that caveat, there were definite similarities between the issues blacks talked about in "Crossings" and the ones women talk about in feminist circles. Sometimes you even just substitute "men" for "whites" and "sexism" for "racism." The case I mentioned above about the black woman worrying about the tension between acknowledging racism and not making excuses is perfectly applicable to white women in the male world too. Many of the sentiments expressed by young blacks of all economic classes mirror the ideas being tossed around among young women of all political and economic stripes. This book reminded me that just as blacks may conflate issues of race and class, women may conflate issues of gender with other areas, such as power, age, or class. In the end, we share the property of being outside the innermost circle, but there is much complexity along the path.
Overall, I would say "Crossings" is one of the most widely relevant personal journeys ever written about. There are a lot of whites who would benefit from reading it-- and not a few blacks too.
Copyright © Kim Allen 2000
