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28 Days of Literary Blackness with VSB-Day 3: Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class [View all]
https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/28-days-of-literary-blackness-with-vsb-day-3-our-kin-1832303619From a piece I wrote in 2014 titled, “When Being Educated, Rich, and Privileged Doesn’t Stop You From Being Black”:
It was also in college (Morehouse College), sitting in front of Hugh M. Gloster Hall, our administrative building, on a bench right in front of the famous statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, that I remember reading Our Kind of People by Lawrence Otis Graham.
If seeing 19 year old college students driving Hummers informed me I wasn’t rich, this book informed me I didn’t even know what rich and well-to-do were. This book taught me about Jack & Jill, The Boule, Links, Martha’s Vineyard, etc. In essence, I discovered that there was an entire world of Black opulence out there I wasn’t even remotely aware of. Not that I didn’t think that Black folks could have money, I just didnt get the society aspect of it. My parents both went to HBCUs (my father was retired military so he graduated from Alabama A&M University around the time I graduated from college) and my mother went to Albany State University in Georgia. Neither were part of Greek letter organizations or any other organizations of note. They were and are hard-working middle class Southerners.
But that book and going to Morehouse changed a lot for me. It showed me what Black folks with money looked like.
I’m including Our Kind of People not because I think it was a great book or some masterpiece of black literature, but because of all of the books that I’ve read in my life, it was easily the most eye-opening. While I saw black opulence in college, and in Atlanta, in general, I just didn’t get that there was an entire other world black folks with money lived in. There were entire organizations for black people I’d never heard of until reading this book. There were people I knew personally, who I’d hung out with in college, whose families were mentioned in the book. It made me look at blackness in an oddly different way because it made me realize that an entire segment of black society (some, not all - in this case, I think it’s an important distinction) was very interested in maintaining that exclusivity.
I’m including Our Kind of People not because I think it was a great book or some masterpiece of black literature, but because of all of the books that I’ve read in my life, it was easily the most eye-opening. While I saw black opulence in college, and in Atlanta, in general, I just didn’t get that there was an entire other world black folks with money lived in. There were entire organizations for black people I’d never heard of until reading this book. There were people I knew personally, who I’d hung out with in college, whose families were mentioned in the book. It made me look at blackness in an oddly different way because it made me realize that an entire segment of black society (some, not all - in this case, I think it’s an important distinction) was very interested in maintaining that exclusivity.
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