Originally appeared in the Boston Book Review
Applying the Corrective
We need something we don't yet have: a way of speaking about
black poverty that doesn't falsify the reality of black advancement; a way of
speaking about black advancement that doesn't distort the enduring realties of
black poverty. I'd venture that a lot depends on whether we get it.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cornel West, "The Future of
the Race"
HB: There's a strong sense in your memoir, "Colored
People," about growing up in Piedmont West Virginia, of how much black
people lost in the process of integration.
HLG: Whenever I'd go home on holiday, I'd go up to my cousin
Jim's house. Jim's a mechanic at the paper mill, very articulate but also very
nationalistic. He simultaneously despises white people and fears them. Through
him, I understand Farrakhan getting standing ovations. Jim could never voice
any kind of rage or reaction to an offense directly to a white person. He'd
voice it at home. So you have a catharsis when someone like Farrakhan speaks.
Sometime between 1975 and 1980, I'm talking to Jim and he
said, "You know, I think that TJ" -- his son -- "would have done
much better at Howard High School," which was the black school in our
county. Then he said, "We lost a lot because of integration." We were
drinking beer, eating grilled squirrel -- yeah that's rural, we all were raised
hunting -- and I pressed him. He said, "the first thing is they fired all
the black teachers except the principal of the elementary school and the
principal of the high school."
