Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 7, 1994 TAG: 9404070303
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BRIAN DeVIDO STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
You most certainly won't like many of the things he did - gang rapes (``running trains,'' he calls them); armed robberies; not being around to watch the three children he fathered out of wedlock grow up; and his constant hatred of working in ``the white man's system.''
But even though you may not like McCall's actions, it's hard not to feel in his troubles. He is angry, and he has a story to tell - an interesting one that gives middle-class whites and blacks both a different look at life. His ``Makes Me Wanna Holler - A Young Black Man In America'' is a tale of disappointment, of hope, of the struggle for the black male to survive in the United States today.
McCall, now a reporter for the Washington Post, tells his tale in first-person with wry humor, wit, and a bluntness that comes straight from the heart. He may be blunt for many people's liking.
McCall on beating white kids who mistakenly ventured into his old neighborhood in Portsmouth: ``It felt so good that we stumbled over each other sometimes trying to get in extra kicks and punches.''
McCall on gang-raping unsuspecting girls: ``Like almost everything else we did, it was a macho thing. Using a member of one of the most vulnerable groups of human beings on the face of the earth - black females - it was another way for a guy to show the other fellas how cold and hard he was.''
He speaks of the pressure to be slick, to keep a tough reputation on the street, and trying not to care too much about the consequences. It doesn't matter that his mother, stepfather, and even some of his teachers try to talk sense into him and set a good example. So when McCall holds a gun to a McDonald's employee's head at the age of 19 in the midst of a robbery, it stuns him when he is later caught and sent to prison.
But prison life wises McCall up. He begins to understand that if he keeps living the life of the street, he'll end up in the gutter. He begins to read voraciously and keeps a journal every day. He plans for the day of his parole hearing - three years into his 12-year sentence.
McCall tells the board he plans to return to Norfolk State, where he went to college for a year before getting arrested, and will study journalism. He is freed.
But McCall finds that he is never really freed from the race conflicts of everyday life. He is hired at the Norfolk newspaper out of college, but feels uneasy around his white co-workers, unable to relate to them beyond a professional level. The problems compound as he moves on in his career: taxicabs passing by him to pick up white passengers, having his life threatened in a small rural Georgia town while working for the Atlanta Constitution-Journal, and the constant jealousy he feels from his colleagues at the newspaper.
At times, McCall's racist charges seem nitpicky. But sometimes it makes you stop and wonder what's going on with the young black men in our country.
As McCall says, ``Sometimes I wonder how I endured when so many others were crushed. I was not special. And when I hear the numbing stastics about black men, I often think of guys I grew up with who were smarter and more talented than me, but who will never realize their potential.''
After reading McCall's story, it'll be enough to make you want to holler, throw your hands up into the air, and wish there was an easy solution to this difficult problem.
There isn't.
``Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America,'' by Nathan McCall, is published by Random House Inc. $23.
by CNB