Books in Brief: Certain People

Certain People: America’s Black Elite, by Stephen Birmingham (Little, Brown, 301 pp., $8.95). Although it is overly anecdotal and sometimes banal (“Many blacks, meanwhile, correct protruding teeth with orthodonture”; whites, presumably, do it with witchcraft), this latest book by the chronicler of the nation’s upper-crust Jews, WASPs, and Irish exactly hits the mark, differentiating the “Negroes”—as the group he is writing about much prefers to be called—from the “blacks,” and shrewdly depicting the vanities, accomplishments, and attitudes of that segment of Afro-Americans, the one currently least attended to by the general mass media. Mr. Birmingham has visited them all: the two great Johnsons of Chicago’s Negro community (George of the cosmetics empire, and John of Ebony and kindred publications); the mulattos who claim illustrious white ancestors (like Senator Edward Brooke, descendant of Thomas Jefferson—he says); the largely unsung heroes and heroines of accommodation, who probably have done more to improve race relations than most of the more famous firebrands. Although Certain People lacks any but the most superficial theoretical framework, and has suffered at the hands of many reviewers because of this, it is a remarkably accurate depiction of the styles and values of those Negroes who stand at the apex of the American black populace. This is a book that will hurt, like Negro sociologist E. Franklin Frazier’s pioneering study, The Black Bourgeoisie, but the pain is the shock of recognition. By and large these are deracinated men and women, vulgar by upper-class white standards, tormented by their ambivalence toward their mixed ancestry and their lack of acceptance by the white and black communities alike, but remarkably courageous in many ways. America’s Negroes are fundamentally divided by income, color, attitudes, and education; and Birmingham has performed a great service by giving contemporary attention to many of those who, were they Caucasian, would easily be recognized as national leaders. Reading between the lines, one discerns another facet of racism in this country and meets a largely unknown, but fascinating, group of American doers.

DB

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David Brudnoy

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Certain People: America’s Black Elite, by Stephen Birmingham (Little, Brown, 301 pp., $8.95). Although it is overly anecdotal and sometimes banal (“Many blacks, meanwhile, correct protruding teeth with orthodonture”; whites, presumably, do it with witchcraft), this latest book by the chronicler of the nation’s upper-crust Jews, WASPs, and Irish exactly hits the mark, differentiating the “Negroes”—as the group he is writing about much prefers to be called—from the “blacks,” and shrewdly depicting the vanities, accomplishments, and attitudes of that segment of Afro-Americans, the one currently least attended to by the general mass media. Mr. Birmingham has visited them all: the two great Johnsons of Chicago’s Negro community (George of the cosmetics empire, and John of Ebony and kindred publications); the mulattos who claim illustrious white ancestors (like Senator Edward Brooke, descendant of Thomas Jefferson—he says); the largely unsung heroes and heroines of accommodation, who probably have done more to improve race relations than most of the more famous firebrands. Although Certain People lacks any but the most superficial theoretical framework, and has suffered at the hands of many reviewers because of this, it is a remarkably accurate depiction of the styles and values of those Negroes who stand at the apex of the American black populace. This is a book that will hurt, like Negro sociologist E. Franklin Frazier’s pioneering study, The Black Bourgeoisie, but the pain is the shock of recognition. By and large these are deracinated men and women, vulgar by upper-class white standards, tormented by their ambivalence toward their mixed ancestry and their lack of acceptance by the white and black communities alike, but remarkably courageous in many ways. America’s Negroes are fundamentally divided by income, color, attitudes, and education; and Birmingham has performed a great service by giving contemporary attention to many of those who, were they Caucasian, would easily be recognized as national leaders. Reading between the lines, one discerns another facet of racism in this country and meets a largely unknown, but fascinating, group of American doers.