Waking from the Dream: My Life in the Black Middle Class - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385478232 ISBN 13: 9780385478236

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1997

Synopsis

Sam Fulwood was an integration baby. He came of age during the post-civil rights era, a time when middle-class blacks--many carrying the scars of segregation and the struggles of the movement--wholeheartedly embraced a belief in the unlimited possibilities available to the new generation. The son of educated, prosperous parents, Fulwood shared their dreams: he excelled at integrated schools and believed in the promise of a color-blind America.

Waking from the Dream is the powerful chronicle of his disillusionment with that dream. Like other high-achieving black men and women who defied the assumptions of society to become respected members of their communities and professions, Fulwood learned that assimilation into mainstream America was at best superficial, at worst a betrayal of his own individuality and values. He realized that race would always be the most vital component of his identity, one that would continue to define him in a suspicious, often hostile, white world. As he describes his move into the self-protected, isolated cocoon of the black middle class, a world separate from poor blacks and all whites, Fulwood issues a strong warning, "I can't escape the thought that white America, which stopped short of embracing middle-class blacks at the moment we wanted inclusion, may have already lost its opportunity."

About this title

About the Author:

Sam Fulwood III is a Washington, D.C., correspondent for the Los Angeles Times.

From Kirkus Reviews:

An African-American journalist's memoir chronicling his increasing disillusionment with mainstream America. Fulwood, an award-winning journalist and Washington, D.C., correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, explores his past and present relationship with the American promise of integration and concludes that Rev. Martin Luther King's dream is pass‚. Born into a middle-class family, Fulwood was urged early on to ``hold your own with the best [white students].'' In his ardent pursuit of success, Fulwood entered journalism convinced that his generation would be the first in American history to be judged solely on merit, not skin color. As Fulwood's career progresses, he becomes increasingly aware that he was wrong. In his early years of writing for the Charlotte Observer, he too often finds himself the lone black at cocktail parties and comes to feel that his greatest professional asset is in being the ``token'' black on staff. He perceives that he is desirable because he is a stereotype-breaking black man--educated and unthreatening, and thus acceptable to white America. His experiences at the Baltimore Sun further convince him that ``black reporters and editorial writers fit in a newsroom only to service the status quo, not to challenge it.'' Fulwood reaches the height of his disillusionment when the Atlanta Constitution reduces an article about a major address by Louis Farrakhan to a few lines in the business section. Though Fulwood tries to transmit a sense of rage to the reader, it often seems contrived. His success would be the envy of many journalists of any race. Fulwood's hyperbolic rage provides us with the literary equivalent of rap music's middle-class studio gangsta. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0385478232
• ISBN 13: 9780385478236
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Fulwood III Sam