Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class

Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class

By: Lawrence Otis Graham  

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Average Customer Rating: 3.0 out of 5

Debutante cotillions. Million-dollar homes. Summers in Martha's Vineyard. Membership in the Links, Jack & Jill, Deltas, Boule, and AKAs. An obsession with the right schools, families, social clubs, and skin complexion. This is the world of the black upper class and the focus of the first book written about the black elite by a member of this hard-to-penetrate group.

Author and TV commentator Lawrence Otis Graham, one of the nation's most prominent spokesmen on race and class, spent six years interviewing the wealthiest black families in America. He includes historical photos of a people that made their first millions in the 1870s. Graham tells who's in and who's not in the group today with separate chapters on the elite in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Nashville, and New Orleans. A new Introduction explains the controversy that the book elicited from both the black and white communities.

Publisher: Harper Perennial

Release Date: 1999-12-22

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
"Wow, I didn't know that" - I haven't read the book in a few years, but the contents have stuck with me. I was dismayed at a lot of the eye-opening information - particularly about groups like Jack and Jill of America. I guess after facing segregation, some people decided to pass it on - only to members of their own race.

If you don't understand what I'm talking about, read this book and you'll say, like me, "Wow, I didn't know that."

Customer Review: 2 out of 5
A complicated book - This is a complicated book about the always complicated subject of race in America, by a very complicated author. Arguably, it would have been a much better book and would have helped immensely if the author had gotten out of his own way and allowed the story to tell itself. However, since the book proved to be as much his own therapy project as it was research on the meaning of black elites, Mr. Graham, apparently lacked the ability to resist using the manuscript to fight his own inner demons: Apparently the "scar tissue" from the author's own "inner rejection" (for not having been admitted to the very club he is describing), was his primary motivation for writing the book, and the scars cut so deeply that too much of the book was about his subjective, mostly hurt feelings, and too little about why black elite created their own little insular community within a community. The author, in perhaps his most telling revelation about his own feelings, was careful to point out that his wife IS a member of the club. (Well, hoop-de-do!)

There is plenty of pathos, psychological pathology and much "feigned heroism" between the covers of this book, but powerful little sanity, almost no courage and absolutely no recognizable humanity. The pathos lies in the reality upon which the black elite has built its own little insulated fantasy world of "faux white superiority" spawn directly out of slavery - any references to which the group otherwise greatly abhors. And this very abhorrence of references to slavery is just the most curious of many curious contradictions that black elite classism brings to the fore of this author's account. Their highest (unacknowledged) value of course is being able to "pass for white." That this is so, says about all that needs to be said about the values of this group.

While there is certainly something to be said for being single-minded and serious about the pursuit of individual achievement and about the ability for a subculture to be able to insulate itself from the pathologies of a larger mostly "sinking" black community, one hardly thinks that "Our Kind of People" is what W.E.B. Du Bois had in mind when he referred to "the talented tenth." What we see here is the same kind of pathetic, self-absorbed preoccupation with the empty accumulation of wealth and other kinds of pettiness associated with the trappings of anti-black racial superiority that we normally associate with "racist white people." Yet here "in the flesh", the so-called "black elite" with their "brown paper bag" test for skin tone and the "ruler test" for hair straightness, would make even the worse white racist seem meek and tame in comparison.

While I must admit that I lived on the periphery of this kind of madness myself as a youth, having joined a black fraternity, etc., apparently I was impervious to how deeply it actually ran. The psychological pathologies wrapped up in such insular nonsense are too deep to even contemplate, let alone analyze in a short review. However, suffice it to say that "racist projection," "deep self-hatred" and "slave-like mimicry" would not be too far from the center of such an analysis.

No matter how much Mr. Graham lauds and compliments the achievements of members of this group, their achievements cannot possibly offset the immense sadness and pathology that the existence of such a group itself represents. It is not only second-order racism, but also second-order social pathology. Two Stars

Customer Review: 3 out of 5
A BIT ONE-DIMENSIONAL - First, let me start with the positive. Lawrence Otis Graham writes in an engaging style that pulls you in, and the subject matter is inherently quite interesting. As a Caucasian-American, I'm not familiar with the organizations and groups to which members of the black elite belong, and it's inspiring to hear of so many successful people within the community. That said, after reading a number of chapters, the book became tedious. It felt like an endless repetition of names and attributes rather than digging deeper into the whys and hows of the black elite. Each chapter began to feel the same: So-and-So, who went to the prestigious Such-and-Such Private Academy, then Harvard or Howard University, followed by Harvard Law School who is now a partner at So-and-So- and So Law firm, belonged to Jack and Jill, the Co-Ettes, the Comus, lived in a spacious, gracious home, was the granddaughter of So-and-So who was the first black judge in Such and Such county, etc. I would much rather have learned more about how so many people were able to transcend racism, lack of opportunity, discrimination etc. and do so well. I would have liked more analysis and more history than a list of "Who's Who." i.e. what was it like to grow up in the black elite community in the south during segregation? What was it like to be the first black student at a previously all white college in the late 1800's? It's also interesting to read the book now, ten years after it was published, in light of the fact that Barack Obama is our president. I wonder how or if that changes the dynamic within the black elite and in their relationship with the bigger society.

Customer Review: 1 out of 5
Thank you Mr. Graham, now I know I'm low class - After I read this book I realized how low class I truly am.
My father is Puerto Rican and my mother is black so despite my best attempts my hair will never ever pass the ruler test since it is way too curly.
I attended an all black private school from pre-K to 8th grade, but since it wasn't mentioned in this book-it doesn't count.
My parents were invited to join Jack & Jill, but after one meeting saw how damned pretentious the people were and declined. Rather than expose me to vaporous children & their parents I attended Freedom Theater and Girl Scouts, as well as the Prime program and AFNA in the summers to help me excel academically. But since we weren't vacationing in Oak Bluffs or Sag Harbor I guess we were poor and low class.
I was accepted to St. Paul preparatory school in Minnesota, but since I would have been a scholarship student from Philadelphia I wouldn't have had a positive experience in an all white boarding school (according to his book). So my mother with her infinite foresight sent me to Central High School (also mentioned in this book ) rather then expose me to the same self hating cancer bug that it seems Graham was exposed to in the same environment.
I was accepted to Howard University, but since I received an academic scholarship to UMES -chose to go there, but I guess my education isn't worth anything since UMES is not a "top black school".
I joined one of the sororities that "truly matters" but didn't do it for prestige, rather I joined because the organization embodied the same ideals I possessed.
Now I don't live in a "big important city", and I don't have a prominent job (although it pays quite well) and my husband is not some prestigious big wig. Unfortunately, we own a 3 bedroom house (no summer home) and can only afford to go on an exotic vacation once a year (and I'm not talking Jamaica).
I guess after all my years of education and exposure to different people and organizations, I woefully missed the mark and am not and will never be "Their Kind of People".

Customer Review: 5 out of 5
"Great" - I believe this was a great book. It was very exciting from the very first chapter.He really did in depth research, on the subject of these so called BGLO (Black Greek Letter Organizations). I do support alot of what he said. I do agree with him on the prejudiceness of the Alpha Phi Alpha and AKA's. I do believe he is a good writer and researcher,it is just that some people cannot handle the truth.

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