New England White

I am white. My middle child is black. So I have a sort of fascination with black culture, wondering where my child will end up fitting in. I have been drawn to Stephen Carter since I read his The Culture of Disbelief in the 1990s. He is an African-American Yale law professor who bucks the mold of the liberal black intellectual.

So can a conservative black law professor write a good novel? Unequivocally, yes. His first, The Emperor of Ocean Park, was probably better than New England White, but both are good reads. The plot of NEW is almost too complicated for my little brain to summarize in a limited space, but he weaves it together pretty well. You will ask yourself, What does a decades-old murder in a small New England town have to do with the nearby Ivy League college, much less with national politics? But it all comes together in the end. Maybe a little too neatly; the six degrees of separation in this world are limited to 1 or 2 or 3 at most.

Which is part of why the book is particularly interesting to me. The main characters are upper class African Americans who move in elite circles that go back generations. The world of wealthy, elite, New England/New York blacks is quite foreign to me, a white, middle-class, Texan. The social circles and clubs, the Mason-type secret societies, the power wielders of "African America" are new to me. It's refreshing to see this in contrast to the typical hip-hop gangster presentation of black culture in the media (although, inexplicable, the main character's husband, president of a Yale-type Ivy League college, listens to gangsta rap . . . ). It makes sense that there are plenty of well-connected, powerful African Americans, but we don't see them as much in the media as the musicians, entertainers, and athletes.

If you like political fiction or a good mystery, pick this up. If you haven't read Carter's Emperor of Ocean Park, read that first, though.