An Old Salon Article on the Black Elite...

• B l a c k • b u t n o t l i k e m e
A JOURNALIST SLOUCHES INTO A PARTY CELEBRATING
---THE BLACK ELITE -- WHATEVER THAT IS.-
BY JILL NELSON

The nation might be slouching toward the millennium, but it was the best I could do to slouch into the Harvard Club. I was invited to a fete for "Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class," a new book by attorney and writer Lawrence Otis Graham. It was hard not to suspect that as much as the evening was about the book, it was even more another instance of modern-day communal branding, in which instead of Massa burning his mark upon our flesh, we put it on our backs. Or the covers of our books. Declare ourselves important and in doing so, as they say in Narcotics Anonymous, "compare ourselves out." Make sure everyone knows we're not them, they're not our kind of people, whoever they are. It was the upscale, bourgeois, literate equivalent of what Tommy Hilfiger garb is to the working class.

I kept my head down going in, hoping not to be recognized by any of my radical cronies. (In the interests of full disclosure, several family members and I are mentioned in "Our Kind of People," although none of them ever met Graham. I am pissed that I'm identified twice as "former Washington Post reporter," a job I quit in 1990, but it's apparently my only accomplishment that matters to Graham's kind of people.) I was ambivalent about both the event and the book. I grew up in a family in which class bonding was frowned upon, in an era of -- so we thought -- class-busting social transformation. Yet here I was, 30 years after, attending a party to celebrate the black elite. Me, I just wanted to know who they are. Or who the writer thinks they are. Or, at my most cynical, what the hell type of black folks identify themselves as "the black elite."

Inside, I'm sucked into a large, wood-paneled room reeking, perhaps of old money, but definitely of fried foods. Waiters whip by offering snifters of cognac (the event was underwritten by Hennessy cognac -- no low-class purveyors of malt liquor "40s" here) and martini glasses of Brandy Alexanders -- made, of course, with Hennessy. On the way to the corner bar to get a Diet Coke, I manage to decline the crab balls, cold canapés, cheese, crackers and fruit. My near downfall, being from a people in which the three characteristics of our favorite foods are greasy, salty and fried, is a platter of what I suspect are miniature egg rolls nestled around a bowl of that thick, orangish dipping stuff. "Egg rolls?" I eagerly ask the waiter, fingers poised over the platter. "No. Spring rolls," he corrects. I snatch my fingers back, appetite gone but wiser. They sure as hell looked like egg rolls to me, but when you're noshing with the elite, they're spring.

Sipping my soda, I introduce myself to the man on my left, a rather intriguing cross between Yaphet Kotto and Truman Capote, wearing thick black-framed glasses with bright blue lenses. "What brought you here?" I ask cheerily, hoping for a discourse on our kind of people. "Someone told me I should be here, but I'm on my way to the Maya Angelou presentation at the Waldorf," he says in a voice somewhere between a yawn and a drawl, looking over my shoulder. I wonder if always being on your way to someplace more important than where you are is a hallmark of the elite, but attempts at further conversation are both boring and futile. The mofo -- er, I mean, cad -- won't even make eye contact. I move on when it occurs to me to slap him upside his bald head, seize his lapels and scream, "I may not be your type of people, but I am somebody!"

Luckily, I meet Audrey Thorne, member of the greater New York chapter of the Links, a black women's organization profiled in the book. Sharp as a mortal can get in a black suit, ropy rhinestone necklace -- could anything that thick be diamonds? -- matching earrings and a crown of silver hair, Ms. Thorne is not on her way someplace else. She's exactly where she's at. "I think the book is wonderful because it has so much history, it's enlightened me to so many things I didn't know about. Race, slavery, it's enlightening to me." She's friendly and looks me in the eye so happily I don't have the heart to ask how it comes to pass that a woman in her 70s needs to be enlightened about race or slavery. "We're talking about one of those children who is clearly the essence of good things happening to a human being," chimes in a woman sharing her table, but before I can ask her exactly what those good things are, I see an opening in the circle around the author and take it.

Lawrence Otis Graham is slight, impeccably dressed, his sharp nose the product of plastic surgery. He greets me effusively, professes to be a fan and we bond briefly, not around class, but the rigors of book tours. I feel the crowd moving toward the right, luckily not in the direction of either Clarence Thomas or better munchies at the Waldorf, but the auditorium, where Graham and three panelists -- Dr. Marcella Maxwell, former chair of the NYC Commission on Human Rights and on the Status of Women and Links member; Dr. R. Chester Redhead, dentist, professor and longtime member of the Boule; and Anne Griffith, an attorney at Battle Fowler LLP -- will participate in what Hennessy bills as a "fireside chat" about the black upper class, moderated by Fox 5 anchorwoman Carol Jenkins.

On the way, I run into a writer whose father was an extremely successful jurist. "I have heard no buzz, but based upon history, I don't want my picture taken," she confides. As we snicker, I try to figure out how I can get the film from the photographer who snapped me at the door. "I'm here because I'm interested. Whatever these people are supposed to be, they should be people like my family. People who went to Vail, other places, and belonged to clubs, but there was an awareness of who we are and how we got where we are. Not just people trying to be like white folks." Before I can comment that many white folks don't want to be like white folks, I realize the auditorium's filling up rapidly in an elite version of bum-rushing the door. It's imperative I grab one of the rapidly vanishing seats. I may not know much, but I do know that no kind of people want to be left standing.

Terrie Williams, founder of the PR firm who arranged the event, welcomes us, graciously dedicates the evening to former N.Y. Amsterdam News gossip columnist Cathy Connor, and in listing the many places Connor covered commits the faux pas "our kind of people" -- or aspirants -- would never make: She says "Oaks Bluff" rather than "Oak Bluffs." Half the 200 people crammed into the room holler in unison, "Oak!" "I don't hang out there," shrugs a nonplused Williams, moving right along.

With the exception of Graham, who seems to revel in a celebration of class that is essentially the Negro equivalent of the worst of Caucasian snobbery -- focused on skin color, hair texture, profession and membership in social clubs -- the panelists exhibit varying degrees of discomfort at essentially being asked to break out their crème de la black crop credentials before a group of people composed of the successful, the curious, the indifferent, the hostile, the wannabes and, that staple of New York events, the moochers. Wisely, Maxwell and Redhead focus on the importance of education for upward mobility, skirting the festering issues of exclusion based on color, hair texture, club membership and pedigree, whatever that means. Still, it's hard not to squirm when Redhead tells a story about not wanting to take his dad, a working-class immigrant who supported him in becoming a doctor, to the famous Harlem bar the Red Rooster because "You split verbs and dangle modifiers." When his father asked his son why when he wanted to borrow money the way he talked didn't bother him, Redhead replied, "Because I'd rather say 'I is rich' than 'I am poor.'"

Anne Griffith, at 28 the youngest member of the panel, was also the most uncomfortable. "This book has given me a chance to examine where I've come from, what my values are and where I'd like to go," Griffith says, carefully choosing her words. "And to contemplate how I feel about various titles and images."

It would have been fascinating to discuss the ways in which over the last two decades Americans of all colors define, label and separate ourselves into tribes based on varying notions of class. Having lost faith in the possibility of equality, inclusion and social transformation by any means other than the almighty dollar, we rush to buy ourselves out of a bad situation. Still, leave it to Graham to bring it on down, if not to that dark-skinned, big-lipped, low-class, not-invited-to-join-Jack-and-Jill home, to its most superficial. Color, hair, cotillions and debutante balls are what he wants to talk about, the parameters of his own insular experience of the black elite, devoid of any connection to a larger world. "We were fighting over who's going to commandeer the yacht while black people were getting their butts kicked and Martin Luther King was getting shot," Graham shamelessly announces, as if indifference to King's assassination was proof of pedigree as opposed to an embarrassingly disingenuous admission of ignorance. Ditto his joyful comment, "Isn't it wonderful that we too as black people have dynasties? It's not just the Roosevelts and the Kennedys!" Am I the only one struck by the pathos, irony and inaccuracy of this statement, or simply the only audience member sucking her teeth?

And even if it's a good line when he says, "Until I was 12 years old I thought that when white people went to Martha's Vineyard, they were just passing through," in the end it's just another sign of how smug and self-referential Graham's world and book is. He posits himself and his how-much-money-does-your-Daddy-make, what-clubs-do-you-belong-to, are-you-lighter-than-a-brown-paper-bag worldview at the center and then defines everyone and everything else according to this marginal and misguided perspective.

Then it's time for audience Q&A. Or, more appropriately with black people, T&A -- testimony and attitude. Even though Graham cheerily embraces and celebrates his snobbery, apparently the panel has pricked a collective nerve, as several women rise to testify to the harmful effects of their exclusion -- based upon skin color, geography or economics -- from Graham's light-skinned, apolitical, ahistorical elite. Thank goodness for J. Bruce Llewellyn, president and CEO of Coca-Cola of Pennsylvania, who cuts through the morass of exclusivity with a voice of realism and sanity. "The reason we were in Oak Bluffs or Sag Harbor is because the white community would not let us buy property anywhere else. I'm happy about the fact that we do have these things, but education is the only way out of this mess. The other thing is, you can straighten your hair, you can be light or dark, but when white people see you, you're still black."

But it's Ed Lover, morning DJ on the popular radio station Hot 97, who evokes applause and cheers when he stands, clad in sweats and nylon parka and snarls, "It's sad and disgusting that black people would shut other people out because they're darker than a brown paper bag. If I had to be part of the black upper class and shut my people out, I'd rather be a thug for life!" Although the truth is that the notion that successful black folks' choices are either white-faced minstrelsy or designer thug-dom points out how far we haven't come and the need for serious discussion. Not here, not now.

Moderator Jenkins wraps up the session before the verbal fisticuffs move to another level, attendants open oak doors and we swarm back to the reception area to scarf assorted late-night fats and, of course, more cognac. The buzz in the room is confused and unrequited, as if an important topic had been broached, clumsily handled, then retracted. My best friend L.E. is ready to split, her simple mission unaccomplished. The daughter of professionals with a home on the Vineyard who belong to the right clubs, her issue ain't color, class or cotillions. "There aren't any good-looking single men here, of any color, with money or without it," she declares, yanking on her coat. "I'm going home."

Jill Nelson is the author of "Volunteer Slavery" and "Straight, No Chaser." Her last piece for Salon was a profile of Richard Pryor.

SALON | Feb. 4, 1999

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