THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 23, 1996 TAG: 9606210718
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY MARGARET BERNICE SMITH BRISTOW
LENGTH: 86 lines
WAKING FROM THE DREAM
My Life in the Black Middle Class
SAM FULWOOD III
Anchor/Doubleday. 247 pp. $23.95.
Add Sam Fulwood's Waking From the Dream to the growing list of autobiographies by black journalists expounding on how disgruntled they are, disenchanted, displaced, disillusioned by American racism: Nathan McCall's Makes Me Wanna Holler, Jill Nelson's Voluntary Slavery, Clarence Page's Showing My Color and Patricia Raybon's My First White Friend.
I highly recommend Waking From the Dream to anyone who would like an insider's view of how journalists succeed and how some blacks desperately and despotically seek to maintain middle-class status. But beyond that, I can't endorse it.
Born in 1957 in Charlotte, N.C., and raised in the middle-class community of McCrorcy Heights, Fulwood, the son of a preacher and a teacher, writes: ``. their generation, they never complained about - or even mentioned - the inherent unfairness and inequality they must have observed growing up black.''
And thus he unknowingly presents his problem: Fulwood is both naive and nescient about dealing with racism, the primary focus of his autobiography. Instead of being true to himself, he ``tried to fit into their world (whites in journalism), cultivated an image, a personality and a set of career trophies that I assumed would be eagerly embraced by the larger white society.''
Fulwood distinguished himself early, completing advanced credit courses at McClintock Junior High, where he was bused, and later graduating with honors from the majority-white Garinger High School. While attending high school, he became the first black to be employed as a salesman at Webster's Men's Store, always accommodating the ``ways of white folks.''
He majored in journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was the first black student to run for editor of The Daily Tar Heel.
After graduating with honors, he went to work as a reporter for The Charlotte Observer, where he ran into several racial incidents that still did not deter him from seeking a colorless swim into mainstream white America.
Leaving The Observer, he became a reporter with The (Baltimore) Sun, where he again ignored racial incidents and determined to become a successful black journalist. A Sun assignment in South Africa - which provides some of the best reading, although some of the details seem fabricated - proved a rude awakening: ``Aspiring to be black and middle class sounded like a curse that suggested the values of white people were more authentic than my own black American mainstream existence.''
After landing a job as ``an omnipotent and omniscient assistant business editor'' at The Atlanta Constitution, and again encountering a racist boss, Fulwood moved on to become a reporter with the Washington bureau of The Los Angeles Times, where he now works. Again he cites racism: An article he wrote about black people's reaction to Colin Powell was rewritten by a white editor to better appeal to a white audience.
Fulwood contributed to The Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Los Angeles riots in 1992. By this time, however, Los Angeles was not the only inferno. Fulwood, too, was fired up by the racism he had encountered. His psychological rage gave rise to thoughts of physical violence against whites - of the Colin Ferguson type! He concludes that American journalism will never be free of racism.
Bragging about his candid criticism of former President George Bush's appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, solely because of race, Fulwood ironically forgets that his rise to journalistic stardom was due in part to race. I would like to ask him why, if he was so disenchanted with ``white'' newspapers, he never sought, even briefly, to work for a black newspaper?
I was left with a disturbing ambivalence toward Fulwood, who epitomizes the double consciousness that W.E.B. DuBois said plagued blacks - that is, two warring selves, one wishing to remain black, the other wishing to be white. It is a shame that after encountering so much racism in his professional life - few blacks chosen to cover the Gulf War or the Los Angeles riots - this arrogant, smug ``buppie'' is unable to give his 6-year-old daughter some positive facts about black Americans' contributions and culture to help her see that black is beautiful. Why is it that she tells him she wants to be white when she grows up?
Yes, Fullwood does expose America to the ``race-conscious unfairness'' of most white newsrooms. But I think he also has allowed himself to be more of the problem, never seriously looking for a solution and never ``waking from the dream.'' MEMO: Margaret Bernice Smith Bristow is an associate professor of
English at Hampton University. She lives in Newport News. by CNB