
DATE: Thursday, October 16, 1997            TAG: 9710160091

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARVIN LAKE, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  105 lines

AUTHOR FROM PORTSMOUTH FACES RACIAL ISSUES HEAD-ON

WHEN NATHAN McCALL did a test reading of his new book at a friend's house in Washington last week, one woman hit him with a question.

``Aren't you, by bringing up some of these issues, just going to make white people think their stereotypes about us are true?'' the woman asked, her tone suggesting that the answer, in her mind, was an unqualified ``yes.''

``I told her that the truth of the matter is white people are going to think whatever they want to think about us, whether it's true or not,'' McCall said. ``If all black folks were alike by tomorrow, if all black folks were upstanding, you know, church-going folks, white folks would still believe what they want to believe about black people.''

McCall, a one-time armed robber from Portsmouth, is back in print with ``What's Going On,'' a collection of personal essays that often take blacks and whites to task for their shortcomings on race issues.

The book is a follow-up to ``Makes Me Wanna Holler,'' his achingly frank autobiography. That book deals with his transformation from young thug to Norfolk State University student to newspaper reporter. McCall worked for The Virginian-Pilot, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and finally the Washington Post.

McCall says he thought about calling his new book ``Airing Dirty Laundry.'' That's the title of an essay about blacks who brand as treasonous African-American writers who ``reveal unpleasant truths about black life.''

The 42-year-old McCall, on leave from the Post since 1991, doesn't bite his tongue - in conversation or in print. Whether he's dealing with what he sees as the refusal of African Americans to confront black pathology, his assessment of some gangsta rappers as ``jive ass hypocrites'' or the two-facedness of white Christians, McCall's observations are always in your face.

That's because McCall believes a kind of brutal honesty is sorely needed if America is to come to grips with its race-related problems.

``We're dealing with problems today,'' he said, ``that we didn't deal with 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago.

``If we continue to to put off dealing with them, the problems will become compounded and just much more complex. . . . I think we have the capacity to deal with whatever we want. It's just a question of whether America really wants to deal with it.''

McCall is disheartened by what he sees as ``a lack of courage on the part of white leadership. I haven't seen white leadership do very much in the last 20 years but play to the fears of white people, which exacerbates the problem.''

``People, especially African Americans, are leadership-starved,'' he said. ``We're looking for people we can prop up to leadership positions. I encounter that expectation a lot.''

``A lot of people,'' he added, ``expect me to have answers to all of society's problems, and I'm not a social scientist. I'm just a guy who went through some things that millions of other black men happened to go through. And unlike them, I was blessed to get in a position to write about it and to convey it in a way that helps a lot of people understand it.''

McCall maintains that ``it's unrealistic to think we'll ever get beyond race.

``And that may not necessarily have to be the objective. The objective should be that we get to the point where we are beyond the point where race matters so much that it has an adverse impact on people's lives. If we can do that, i think we're there. . . .

``It would be a wonderful thing if being black didn't mean something negative and being white didn't mean something negative. Because there are good things about white folks' culture just as there are good things about black folks' culture.''

In some ways, McCall says, ``What's Going On'' was easier to write than his autobiography because he was not ``painfully close'' to the material. His challenge was figuring out how to write it.

``Books of essays usually bore me to death,'' he said. ``I wanted to . . . write this book so I could say what I wanted to say but not in a very stilted, academic way.''

His solution, he says, was to write it ``in a way someone in the joint or on the street-corner could relate to, and other folks will get it.''

McCall says that he frequently gets asked when ``Makes Me Wanna Holler'' will be made into a movie. Columbia Pictures owns the rights and had hoped to have John Singleton of ``Boyz N the Hood'' fame direct it, but Singleton left Columbia and the project is at a standstill.

``In a sense, I'm glad that Singleton didn't do it,'' McCall said, ``because after I looked at films that he did after `Boyz N the Hood,' and after I went out there and had some conversations with him about his vision for the project, I became real concerned that he wasn't ready for that project. He was very young then, and he didn't have a lot under his belt.

``He knew the story of `Boyz N the Hood,' because that was about his generation. But after talking with him, I came away convinced he didn't really understand our generation as well.

``I think what we might have ended up with was a kind of rap version of a '70s story with buffoons in platform shoes and big Afros.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

McCall believes...

Graphic

WANT TO GO?

What: Reception and book-signing by Nathan McCall

Where: L. Douglas Wilder Performing Arts Center, Norfolk State

University

When: 6:30 p.m. Friday

Information: 683-8373

What: Book-signing

Where: Waldenbooks, Chesapeake Square Mall

When: 2 p.m. Sunday

Information: 488-7629 KEYWORDS: PROFILE BOOKS AUTHOR