Privilege, After All

A Man’s Life: An Autobiography By Roger WilkinsSimon & Schuster, 384 pp., $17.95 Except that his father died young, Roger Wilkins has had an enviable life. He was born into modest prosperity during the Depression; he was socially well connected (his uncle was Roy Wilkins of the NAACP); his parents and his stepfather (a doctor) could have aspirations for him, and he went to law school (the University of Michigan). He has worked for the NAACP, the Justice Department, the Ford Foundation, the Washington Post, the New York Times.

But there was a catch: he was black. There was another catch: he came from the genteel Negro middle class at a time when the popular image of blackness was raw, poverty-stricken, angry. It made for a bitter life as odd man out. He was afraid whites, to whose society he aspired, would cut him (not exactly a paranoid anxiety); other blacks might envy him, like the playmate who called him a “technicolor paddy” (“paddy” meaning “honky”).

JS

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Joseph Sobran

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A Man’s Life: An Autobiography By Roger WilkinsSimon & Schuster, 384 pp., $17.95 Except that his father died young, Roger Wilkins has had an enviable life. He was born into modest prosperity during the Depression; he was socially well connected (his uncle was Roy Wilkins of the NAACP); his parents and his stepfather (a doctor) could have aspirations for him, and he went to law school (the University of Michigan). He has worked for the NAACP, the Justice Department, the Ford Foundation, the Washington Post, the New York Times.

But there was a catch: he was black. There was another catch: he came from the genteel Negro middle class at a time when the popular image of blackness was raw, poverty-stricken, angry. It made for a bitter life as odd man out. He was afraid whites, to whose society he aspired, would cut him (not exactly a paranoid anxiety); other blacks might envy him, like the playmate who called him a “technicolor paddy” (“paddy” meaning “honky”).