Red, White, Black, & Blue: A Dual Memoir of Race and Class in Appalachia (Ohio University Press Series in Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia)

Rating:
Summary: a stark and thought provoking comparison
Review: As I began reading William Drennen's and Kojo Jones' book, I anticipated an enjoyable experience. I was intrigued and impressed that a black man and a white man could come together for such an undertaking. I too grew up in West Virginia and felt great pride that they were products of my State and would perhaps give readers an example of how they were able to lessen the racial gap. However, what I experienced was a stressful and somewhat sad journey.

William Drennen's recollection of "growing up white" seemed to be a happy-go-lucky account of a privileged life. He had no reason to take things seriously. There were no barriers to his success as long as he followed the rules of his race and class and didn't make waves. However, in one account of his life's experiences, his conscience was pricked and perhaps he did long to make a few waves. Drennen tells the story of his black friend Albert coming to a party at his home after Thomas Jefferson Junior High School's first football game of the season. When it was discovered that a black youth was present, his parents asked him to leave and offered to drive him home. Drennen's father ended up dropping him off at the downtown post office, at Albert's request.

As I continued to read Drennen's words, I felt that something may have begun to smolder within him, much like the nagging feeling one gets when he wants to speak out or rebel against something he feels is wrong. Perhaps it increased a spark that was actually lit two years prior when he invited Kojo Jones to his home and was asked not to do so again. That time he did question. He obviously hadn't learned all the rules yet. In Albert's case however, nowhere did I read that Drennen went to his father and asked for an explanation. If he did talk to his parents, nowhere did I read that he told them he didn't feel the same way. And nowhere did I read that he went to Albert to say, " I don't feel the same way my parents do". Looking back now, Drennen acknowledges he had an opportunity to make a difference and didn't.

Reading about that incident brought back a memory of similar circumstances with just the opposite outcome. I was at Horace Mann Junior High School and my friend Kathy invited me to a slumber party at her house. My first thought was, "Didn't she tell her parents I'm black?" It turns out she did and after much communication between my parents and hers, I was allowed to go. It was a little awkward for me and I'm sure for them, but we all had a good time. In this case, the rules were different.

Reading further, I found myself questioning the explicit account Drennen gives of his sexual encounter with a black woman while he was in the military. Did it mean that since he was an adult and no longer under the direction of his parents, he was now making waves? Did he have a desire to make this a permanent relationship or was it a fling? If it was a fling, then, was he merely satisfying a curiosity about what it would be like to be with a black woman? How did their relationship help to bridge the gap between the races? What did it confirm or refute in terms of his beliefs about African Americans in general or African American women in particular? Finally, why was it important to retell this encounter? Personally, I found it disgusting and insulting not only because of the content, but also because of his seeming delight in telling it. He left me with many questions and no answers about the significance of relating the affair at all and in such detail.

By way of contrast, Kojo Jones' recollection of "growing up black" reveals one who took life far more seriously, no doubt as a result of early and unfortunate racial encounters. I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness reading his account, because I was reminded that he and many other gifted young black men found it difficult to focus on their potential because of constantly having to overcome racial barriers. Reading Jones' account of not being allowed to drink a cherry smash at the counter in Shumate's Pharmacy was sadly, typical. What wasn't typical and what I thought deserved more attention was the fact that the five white boys who were with him refused to pay and left as well. While no information is given about those five, I wondered if they might have been from a less privileged class and were therefore, more willing to make waves and question authority. Jones' experience of being tied and whipped at ten years old by four children as a reminder to "stay in his place" was very disturbing and an incident I'm sure made an indelible impact on his life. I would venture to surmise that it had much to do with his decision to get involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

Reading Jones' memoirs brought back many of my own and one in particular. My sister and I were the only black students at Clifftop Elementary School in 1954. During recess I remember trying to play with the other kids and being told that they couldn't play with me because somebody's grandfather said, "Black men have tails." Perhaps even more absurd is the fact that I couldn't wait to get home to ask my mother if it was true.

To summarize, Jones focuses his account more on the issue of race. It shaped his entire existence. Drennen, on the other hand, led a life shaped by class and in fact seems to refer to race as a byproduct of his existence. In other words, blacks worked for his family, but had no bearing on the decisions or choices he made in life.

Drennen and Jones give readers a lot to think about. They give what their title implies, "A Dual Memoir of Race and Class in Appalachia." They give readers a glimpse into how individuals of different races and socio-economic backgrounds view the world and how such views shape their interactions in it. Finally, they reveal how two men, one black and one white, can come together to write a book revealing such opposite life experiences.

Rating:
Summary: a stark and thought provoking comparison
Review: As I began reading William Drennen's and Kojo Jones' book, I anticipated an enjoyable experience. I was intrigued and impressed that a black man and a white man could come together for such an undertaking. I too grew up in West Virginia and felt great pride that they were products of my State and would perhaps give readers an example of how they were able to lessen the racial gap. However, what I experienced was a stressful and somewhat sad journey.

William Drennen's recollection of "growing up white" seemed to be a happy-go-lucky account of a privileged life. He had no reason to take things seriously. There were no barriers to his success as long as he followed the rules of his race and class and didn't make waves. However, in one account of his life's experiences, his conscience was pricked and perhaps he did long to make a few waves. Drennen tells the story of his black friend Albert coming to a party at his home after Thomas Jefferson Junior High School's first football game of the season. When it was discovered that a black youth was present, his parents asked him to leave and offered to drive him home. Drennen's father ended up dropping him off at the downtown post office, at Albert's request.

As I continued to read Drennen's words, I felt that something may have begun to smolder within him, much like the nagging feeling one gets when he wants to speak out or rebel against something he feels is wrong. Perhaps it increased a spark that was actually lit two years prior when he invited Kojo Jones to his home and was asked not to do so again. That time he did question. He obviously hadn't learned all the rules yet. In Albert's case however, nowhere did I read that Drennen went to his father and asked for an explanation. If he did talk to his parents, nowhere did I read that he told them he didn't feel the same way. And nowhere did I read that he went to Albert to say, " I don't feel the same way my parents do". Looking back now, Drennen acknowledges he had an opportunity to make a difference and didn't.

Reading about that incident brought back a memory of similar circumstances with just the opposite outcome. I was at Horace Mann Junior High School and my friend Kathy invited me to a slumber party at her house. My first thought was, "Didn't she tell her parents I'm black?" It turns out she did and after much communication between my parents and hers, I was allowed to go. It was a little awkward for me and I'm sure for them, but we all had a good time. In this case, the rules were different.

Reading further, I found myself questioning the explicit account Drennen gives of his sexual encounter with a black woman while he was in the military. Did it mean that since he was an adult and no longer under the direction of his parents, he was now making waves? Did he have a desire to make this a permanent relationship or was it a fling? If it was a fling, then, was he merely satisfying a curiosity about what it would be like to be with a black woman? How did their relationship help to bridge the gap between the races? What did it confirm or refute in terms of his beliefs about African Americans in general or African American women in particular? Finally, why was it important to retell this encounter? Personally, I found it disgusting and insulting not only because of the content, but also because of his seeming delight in telling it. He left me with many questions and no answers about the significance of relating the affair at all and in such detail.

By way of contrast, Kojo Jones' recollection of "growing up black" reveals one who took life far more seriously, no doubt as a result of early and unfortunate racial encounters. I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness reading his account, because I was reminded that he and many other gifted young black men found it difficult to focus on their potential because of constantly having to overcome racial barriers. Reading Jones' account of not being allowed to drink a cherry smash at the counter in Shumate's Pharmacy was sadly, typical. What wasn't typical and what I thought deserved more attention was the fact that the five white boys who were with him refused to pay and left as well. While no information is given about those five, I wondered if they might have been from a less privileged class and were therefore, more willing to make waves and question authority. Jones' experience of being tied and whipped at ten years old by four children as a reminder to "stay in his place" was very disturbing and an incident I'm sure made an indelible impact on his life. I would venture to surmise that it had much to do with his decision to get involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

Reading Jones' memoirs brought back many of my own and one in particular. My sister and I were the only black students at Clifftop Elementary School in 1954. During recess I remember trying to play with the other kids and being told that they couldn't play with me because somebody's grandfather said, "Black men have tails." Perhaps even more absurd is the fact that I couldn't wait to get home to ask my mother if it was true.

To summarize, Jones focuses his account more on the issue of race. It shaped his entire existence. Drennen, on the other hand, led a life shaped by class and in fact seems to refer to race as a byproduct of his existence. In other words, blacks worked for his family, but had no bearing on the decisions or choices he made in life.

Drennen and Jones give readers a lot to think about. They give what their title implies, "A Dual Memoir of Race and Class in Appalachia." They give readers a glimpse into how individuals of different races and socio-economic backgrounds view the world and how such views shape their interactions in it. Finally, they reveal how two men, one black and one white, can come together to write a book revealing such opposite life experiences.

Rating:
Summary: Entering a relationship
Review: Some years ago in the course of a study of school desegregation in Little Rock, I interviewed an African-American man who'd been of high-school age at the time. He recounted story after story of losses and wounds to himself, his children, and his community as a result of desegregating the schools. At last he commented sadly, "My frustration centers around how much effort and how many people we've put through that process, only to sit in a room rather than really to enter into a relationship."

Kojo Jones, a black man, and Bill Drennan, a white man, were ninth-grade classmates in the first year of desegregation, in their case in Charleston, W. Virginia. Red, White, Black & Blue is their attempt to "enter into a relationship" many years later through the medium of a shared memoir. What I found most striking about their book, beyond the courage and respectful engagement of the authors, is an eloquence of form that emerges from the pages. The story of class and race is told far more vividly through contrasts in the way the two men write than through what they write. The stark honesty of their differing versions offers to American readers a rare and valuable window into enduring and largely ignored dynamics of privilege and protest, of ease and struggle, of unawareness and urgent perception.

Mr. Drennan, for instance, writes that his earliest contacts with black people were with servants in his home, people who cared for him with warmth and humanity. He writes nostalgically, noting little awareness of the privilege expressed by so cushioned an experience of race. Mr. Jones, however, tells of a series of encounters, ranging from unpleasant to violent, winding through his life from childhood on. His earliest contact with white people happened in public spaces, in stores and playgrounds, away from the safety of home. This contrast between places where people discover race - at home through warm dealings with employees or in public through hostile confrontations with (usually older) strangers - is one I've found typical in my own work on racial dynamics. Also typically, Mr. Drennan tells his tale and moves on to other life experiences, while Mr. Jones organizes his entire narrative around defining racial encounters. To the white man, race is as incidental in his memoir as he experiences it in his life; to the black man, it is central in both.

The memoirs are accompanied by an analysis written by Dolores Johnson, a scholar of communication styles. She gives us an erudite essay that illuminates many of the dynamics I've mentioned. Unfortunately, Ms. Johnson's tool is discourse analysis, an academic approach rich in yield and interest but limited in scope. When the eye is drawn to communication between individuals, there is a tendency to miss the surrounding context. And in the case of racial inequities in America, context is key. Mr. Jones' and Mr. Drennan's accounts beg for linkages with those systems of domination that underlie relations of class and race in our society. It is certainly interesting to note contrasts in the lengths of each man's contribution and to connect wordiness with privilege. But I regretted the missed opportunity to go deeper, to echo the memoir authors' honesty and earnestness by speaking that unjustly discredited word, racism, in the analysis.

Despite its shortcomings (neither primary author is a writer by trade, so their stories lack elegance and polish), Red, White, Black & Blue is an enormously useful contribution to an understanding of racial inequities fifty years ago, and still today.

Rating:
Summary: A pretty good book, but it strays from its subject
Review: This book contains the accounts of two southern men, one white and one African American, whose lives have coincided with the tumult toward racial equality in America. Mr. Jones and Mr. Drennen deserve much praise for starting a dialogue. It contains honest feelings and raw memories.

The Supreme Court's 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision ruled that segregated schools were inherently unequal and thus violated the 14th Amendment's tenet of equal protection under the laws. The ensuing desegregation of (mostly) southern school systems had a deep impact on millions of students, teachers and administrators, and formalized a broader movement toward racial equality in our society. It was a disturbance to all, though, as have been the succeeding steps toward racial equality. I was hoping the book would provide much more about the early years of desegregation, based on its billing as "a memoir of growing up through the turmoil and anguish of desegregation." But the book actually offers relatively little about that aspect of the 1950s. The authors bare a lot of feelings and anecdotes, but they don't always seem to be part of any particular message to learn from.

Jones stays more on point with racial issues in his narrative, establishing that desegregation - also called "integration" at the time - did not integrate the races to any significant degree. It simply put them in coexistence, but not as America's melting pot. He is less clear in justifying his final point that reparations are the kick start needed to provide African Americans a stimulus to economic success. There is no evidence or precedent anywhere that gives weight to this argument. Jones also leaves the impression that he would just as soon the schools had not been desegregated, which is forthright but also suggests resignation on the prospect of racial harmony.

Drennen points out that West Virginia promptly and unequivocally complied with the Supreme Court ruling. Otherwise his reminiscences, while interesting, aren't very relevant to race and class in Appalachia. It addresses the racial chasm only obliquely, in what he isn't able to say. African Americans are bit players in his narrative, which essentially is about himself. His life has not been that of the typical white man he suggests he is. He experienced the first year of desegregation, and then departed to a life he describes of exclusiveness, license and privilege. It would have been more interesting to hear about his parents' discussions of why he should leave public schools than some of his other material in the book. Far more typical of whites - and blacks - were those who remained in public schools and lived the changes desegregation brought.

The editor, Delores Johnson provides a concluding "socio-linguistic rhetorical analysis" that may be of interest and use to scholars but was of limited use in evaluating the authors' messages. Language obscures racial differences and likenesses rather than illuminating them. You can analyze it for a thousand years and you'll never get to the bottom of it. The chasm and the answer exist at a level below language. That level is experience. Rent American History X for an evening, and you'll learn more about racial chasms, experience, despair and hope than syntax will ever reveal.

I attended the same junior high and high schools as Jones, two years behind him. I remember Mrs. Gregory, my African American 10th grade English teacher, who was tough as nails and left an indelible mark on every student she had; I recall more about her course than any other. I remember sitting in a luncheonette on Hale Street on a school day in 1958 and seeing a black man refused service; and the look on his face and feeling the blank in mine. I, like Jones, remember the First Baptist basketball teams; and the level they played was so far beyond my First Presby team that it wasn't even the same game. I, like Jones, remember Moses Newsome and Coach Jarrett, agents of change with entirely different styles. Wealthier white students who addressed the mothers and grandmothers of their black peers by their first names; these women were maids and cooks in the homes of white students who by day sat beside their black children in school. I remember black girls fighting in junior high school and reinforcing every prejudice the whites had to just stay in a different world. And a hundred others. It may or may not be of solace to Jones to know that whites' attitudes towards blacks in general were even worse then than he portrays them, and today are much more enlightened than he seems willing to grant.

For different reasons, each author of RWB&B has essentially led a life with his own race. Based on their narratives, it appears that neither has experienced the trials and successes of working closely with the other race, and learning through experience that they're not different at the core. What Jones and Drennen say is true and honest, yet there is much more that can lead us out of the woods. Many others have, through fate or determination, hung in there with the other race and gotten beyond the words. And it has taken decades.