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The Next Generation
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20180 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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1 / 1992 |
2,361 Words |
| Author
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Ed Foster -Simeon
Ed Foster-Simeon is Metropolitan editor for the Washington
Times. |
REFLECTIONS OF AN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION BABY
Stephen L. Carter
New York: Basic Books, 1991
356 pp., $22.95
BOURGEOIS BLUES
An American Memoir
Jake Lamar
New York: Summit Books, 1991
208 pp., $20.00
Picture the black experience in America as broad chapters in a book, a work still in progress. The story opens with slavery, continues with emancipation, followed by the civil rights movement. Now, as we approach the end of the century, a new chapter is being written. One might title it "Transition."
It is the story of that generation of black Americans situated on the societal cusp between the struggles of their forebears and the still illusory promise of full acceptance in mainstream American society.
The essence of this generation--which finds itself neither here nor there in terms of experiencing the harsh racial obstacles faced by their parents or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of a color-blind society--is captured in two new books: Bourgeois Blues, An American Memoir by Jake Lamar and Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, by Stephen L. Carter.
While distinctly different from one another in style and substance, each book reveals the inner turmoil that bedevils an entire generation of black professionals. Carter, a Stanford graduate, focuses on affirmative action programs, which, he argues in this intellectual work, have run their course.
Lamar on the other hand, a former associate editor with Time magazine, weaves a compelling personal narrative that focuses on his relationship with his father, an ambitious and abusive man determined that his son make it in a white man's world.
In the end, however, both books leave the reader with a common and lasting impression: The generation of black professionals now in their thirties are grappling with their unique place in society.
Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby is
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