Lawrence Otis Graham
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 254
Average rating: 3.0 of 5
Stimulates Discussion 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.
"Our Kind of People" by Lawrence Otis Graham is a significant book.
In it he describes the African-American elite, their world, their organizations and their views. In it we learn about Sigma Pi Phi or the Boule', an extremely elite but extremely low profile group of African American leaders. There's Jack and Jill, a national organization where children of black professionals introduce their children of other black professionals. There's the Comus Club, The Girlfiends, the Rainbow Yacht Club, etc. The list goes on. We learn about these organizations, the criteria for membership, their history and their rituals.
This group has it's origins from slavery where the house servants or the illegitimate children of the slave owner were better taken care of and educated than their field hand counterparts.
Mr. Graham discusses his own experiences moving in these circles. Further he gives a breakdown of the leading families and how the culture varies from city to city. Oddly enough being A-list in one locality means nothing in another. Mr. Graham has been accused of name-dropping but in order for this book to work, the reader needs to know who these people are.
Given my beginnings, I grew up black and unaware of these institutions. However in the segregated Chicago of my childhood, I went to school with children of this group concentrated west of King Drive in my neighborhood. It also explained vague references my friends made to Jack and Jill. In my professional career, I was oblivious of this group. Only after moving back to my native Chicago did I find I was `connected' through some of these same children I grew up with.
I have read other reviews by readers critical of this book. They are well written but some of them are sociological phenomena in of themselves.
There is considerable resentment in the African American community of the possibility of their being a black upper class. There is an egalitarian drive for unity since all it takes is `one drop' for any of us to feel discrimination. A lot of people feel that any pretentiousness of elitism in black society only holds us back as a people, etc.
I can understand this viewpoint being both dark-skinned and coming from a lower middle-class blue collar family. However the reality is while we all share in discrimination that does not mean we as a people have the same viewpoints and values. To be perfectly blunt, white America has its elite. That social group does not engender the same resentment as some critics of Mr. Graham espouse.
I grew up loving books more than athletics. That alone was enough to make me an outcast. I still do not play basketball. Guess what? That makes me unusual among black men. It does not make me better per se, just different. That also means that so many of our people do not know what I am talking about. Nor do they care. I grew up hearing the words like `nerd' and `poindexter' thrown at me. Consequently I sympathize with the founders of the Boule' when they formed their group so that they could talk about the things that interested them.
A lot of the resentment also comes from the whole idea of hereditary `privilege' being `light-skinned'and `snobbishness'. I agree this is not acceptable behavior. However there are snobs everywhere and in every social group. Also as the more recent picture of the book illustrate, pigmentation is less of an issue with the rising black elite.
Like minded people need the companionship of others like them. Having no peer group is lonely. African-Americans are not a homogeneous group anymore than Canada is a homogeneous group. FYI, there are more black Americans than there are Canadians.
Also with greater integration into mainstream society, black professionals find themselves isolated from their peer group. They work with white people and they live around white people. I have heard more than one distressed parent lament the fact their children were more comfortable with white children than black children. One solution is to move back to the `hood. A friend did that then watched as a gun battle was fought in front of his children and wife. Another solution is the black corporate enclaves you see around Chicago and Atlanta. A third is participation in these organizations like Jack and Jill in order to continue to foster an African-American identity.
Regardless of whether or not you resent a Black upper class, Mr. Graham or the views expressed in this book, this book has stimulated both discussion and feeling. I learned about an entire subculture that had existed underneath my nose for years. I have never seen it documented so thoroughly anywhere else. This is a significant book.
Editorial Review:
Debutante cotillions. Million-dollar homes. Summers in Martha's Vineyard. Membership in the Links, Jack & Jill, Deltas, Boule, and AKAs. An obsession with the right schools, families, 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.
Author and TV commentator Lawrence Otis Graham, one of the nation's most prominent spokesmen on race and class, spent six years interviewing the wealthiest black families in America. He includes historical photos of a people that made their first millions in the 1870s. Graham tells who's in and who's not in the group today with separate chapters on the elite in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Nashville, and New Orleans. A new Introduction explains the controversy that the book elicited from both the black and white communities.
