Some of My Best Friends are Black, by Tanner Colby

Like many white liberals, Tanner Colby joined in with African Americans around the country, celebrating the election of "pretty much the awesomest guy to run for president in my lifetime, Barack Obama."  However, as he looked around the room and around his life, he realized that he didn't have any black friends.  This was the case with almost all of the white people he talked to.  So he set out to write this book, exploring race in his own background and in American life.  As he looked at the changing legal landscape, he realized that while under Jim Crow, the color line was kept in place with "terrorism, fear, and deliberate, purposeful discrimination," today life is "engineered in such a way that the problems of race rarely intrude on you personally. . . . You can be white and enjoy the same isolation and exclusivity without having to do anything."

For Colby, like many late 20th-century Americans, the story of race starts with forced integration of schools and the busing that made integration possible.  He grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, which Martin Luther King, Jr., called the most segregated city in America.  All over the South, school districts resisted integration.  Breakaway school districts in white parts of town arose, as did, later, a huge number of private schools.  White flight from school districts and from city cores let to even more segregation, making busing and forced integration more expensive and less practical, and, most tragically, led to the closing of many majority black high schools that had enjoyed success with black administrators, black teachers, and black students.

And the dream of integration?  Colby's experience was repeated all over: the black kids sat in their own section of the cafeteria, were often relegated to remedial classes, felt unwelcome in clubs and sports, and, with very few exceptions, did not mix socially with white students.  One of his former classmates, reflecting on their otherwise academically strong high school, commented, "if your parents were concerned about giving you an education, they would educate about the fact that there are black people who can read and write."

While the government could impose racial integration on public schools, they are more limited in the imposition of integration in housing.  As a case study, Colby examines neighborhood patterns in Kansas City, Missouri.  Building on the fears and suspicions of whites, real estate developers began to create planned communities with a new innovation.  In addition to large lots, winding streets, parks, and other amenities, developers introduced racial covenants, which prevented blacks from buying property in whole neighborhoods.

On the other side of town, seedier developers practiced block busting, in which the developer would move a black family onto the block, then, after a while, go to the neighbors to instill fear that the blacks are taking over.  He could scare them into selling at a low price, then resell the property to more blacks.  Most disturbing is that federal housing policy made block busting much more profitable and contributed to the decline of neighborhoods.  (I know, it's shocking--government policy intruding in the market and resulting in destructive unintended consequences!)

Turning to the workplace, Colby examines race in the world of advertising, where Colby got his professional start.  Reviewing the history of affirmative action (which was imposed by the Republican everyone loves to hate, Nixon), Colby concludes that "it wasn't designed to fail, but it wasn't exactly designed to succeed, either. . . . It was riot insurance.  It was to provide a financial incentive for blacks to stay in their own communities and out of the suburbs."

Finally, Colby returns to his childhood home of LaFayette, Louisiana, where he lived before moving to Birmingham.  We've all heard MLK's famous line about 11 o'clock Sunday morning being the most segregated hour of the week.  Colby writes, "As much as we talk about the importance of 'diversity' in our schools and workplaces, the notion of integrating the church is the last thing anyone, black or white, seems to be willing to put on the table."  The Catholic Church in southern Louisiana (where most everyone is Catholic) had been integrated for generations, yet the rise of Jim Crow let to segregation, leading to the unusual situation of having overlapping Catholic parishes where church affiliation was determined by skin color.  Even in the smallest towns, two Catholic churches would exist, sometimes even sharing a parking lot.

Colby writes that he "saw black people at white churches, and I saw white people at black churches, but what I never saw . . . was a black and white church" except at St Charles Borromeo in Grand Coteau.  As he tells the story, it was a long, painful 40 year struggle, but eventually the white and black churches became one.  This is a great story and a reminder that it can happen.  Our family has longed to find a truly integrated church, but we haven't.  As we have visited black churches, we had the experience Colby describes, a warm welcome as visitors, "but that's exactly what you are when you're here: a visitor.  As friendly as people are, the longer you sin in that pew--and at a black church you will sit there for a long time--the more you come to realize that this isn't meant for you.  Because it isn't.  It's the social, economic, political, and cultural hub of a separate black America.  It's churchness cannot be divorced from it's blackness."  (I would have been interested in Colby's experiences in Pentecostal churches. Ever since Azusa Street in the early 20th century, Pentecostal congregations have been, in many cases, very well integrated.)

This last statement points to a theme that Colby follows throughout the book.  The struggle for integration does not mean that black people want to be culturally integrated into white America.  They want to right to choose where to go to school, but should not have to give up historically black schools. They should have the right to buy a house wherever they like, but might still choose to live in majority black neighborhoods.  They should not be prohibited from obtaining jobs in any field.  And they should be welcome in white or integrated congregations, but may choose to attend black churches.  As Colby puts it, the fight for integration "was about the right to sit at the lunch counter and be served, not about the right to sit at the lunch counter and have a root beer with Susie and Biff."

I got over Colby's confession of Obama worship pretty quickly and thoroughly enjoyed his book.  His personal take on issues of race, coupled with solid background material and plenty of other first-hand accounts make this a terrifically readable and challenging book.  Are we better off as a nation than we were when we were kids?  Undoubtedly.  Are there still racial divides running through our schools, neighborhoods, and churches?  Yes, but maybe that's not necessarily a bad thing.  Historically black colleges, black neighborhoods, black service and social clubs and black churches can foster growth and positive identity in ways that token integration can't.  But the fact remains, in spite of the progress we've made, that for many Americans "it's easier to vote for a black man than to sit and have a beer with one."

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary review copy!