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Tanner Colby

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Some of My Best Friends Are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America Hardcover – July 5 2012

by Tanner Colby (Author)

4.6 163 ratings

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An incisive and candid look at how America got lost on the way to Dr. King’s Promised Land

Almost fifty years after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech, equality is the law of the land, but actual integration is still hard to find. Mammoth battles over forced busing, unfair housing practices, and affirmative action have hardly helped. The bleak fact is that black people and white people in the United States don’t spend much time together—at work, school, church, or anywhere. Tanner Colby, himself a child of a white-flight Southern suburb, set out to discover why.

Some of My Best Friends Are Black chronicles America’s troubling relationship with race through four interrelated stories: the transformation of a once-racist Birmingham school system; a Kansas City neighborhood’s fight against housing discrimination; the curious racial divide of the Madison Avenue ad world; and a Louisiana Catholic parish’s forty-year effort to build an integrated church. Writing with a reporter’s nose and a stylist’s flair, Colby uncovers the deep emotional fault lines set trembling by race and takes an unflinching look at an America still struggling to reach the mountaintop.

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Viking
Publication date

July 5 2012
Dimensions

16.51 x 2.54 x 24.13 cm
ISBN-10

067002371X
ISBN-13

978-0670023714
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Product description

About the Author

Tanner Colby is the author of Belushi: A Biography and the New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Viking (July 5 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 067002371X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0670023714
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 522 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 16.51 x 2.54 x 24.13 cm

Customer Reviews:
4.6 163 ratings

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Tanner Colby

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Tanner Colby is the author of Belushi: A Biography and the New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Top reviews from other countries

T. Barham

Painful, but necessary read.

Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2016

Verified Purchase

I grew up in a relatively poor and very diverse community and our school was eventually bussed to a more affluent (and much whiter) neighborhood. I always assumed that we all did well because this change provided some uplift for me and many of my friends to move into a safer, more stable school community. As some of the families in Vestavia Hills experienced, the initial trepidation to our coming dissolved once we arrived.

Nonetheless I wonder how much of my ease in fitting into this new environment came from being white. I never question how my friends of color who also fit in might have had to give up a sense of authentic identity. Whether they made tradeoffs of not the fact that I never thought to ask says a lot about my privilege as a white person and social mobility in America. Now the mother of a bi-racial child in a city that struggles mightily with its undercover history of racism, this is a book I feel all of us should read and consider as an attempt to better come to grips with the meaning of white privilege.

4 people found this helpful

SIMMONS Catherine

Well written, intelligent, insightful and humourous

Reviewed in France on September 19, 2014

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An excellent look at the issue of segregation in the US. Summed it up in the title. An enjoyable, informative read. I learned a lot.

Big Ed San Diego, CA

EXCELLENT BOOK

Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2020

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The author of this book provides an excellent and first hand account of segregation happening under his nose in as a kid in Alabama, on through today's world. He covers its ramifications and impact on the America we're experiencing today.

A great read, given the times we're facing and an excellent opportunity to educate one' s self on a the details of not so widely known history.

Fast shipping. Only negative I encountered is book's condition. With dog's ears and highlighted passages, it did not show in "like new" condition, as advertised.

Dienne

The on-going debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois

Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2012

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Author Tanner Colby, previously known only for writing about fat dead comedians, decided he needed to get an image makeover to be taken seriously as a writer. Unfortunately, with the image he had already established, he didn't have the credentials or experience to be paid to write anything for which he might be taken seriously.

His epiphany - and his opportunity - came when Barack Obama, whom he ardently supported, was elected, and we entered into the supposed "post-racial era". Colby looked around and realized that he didn't really know any black people. He lived, worked and socialized almost exclusively with white people. Furthermore, upon surveying his friends and acquaintances, he realized that he was the norm. Despite the promise of the Civil Rights Movement to the "Children of the Dream", the "Children of White Flight" grew up in predominantly segregated neighborhoods and have gone on to lead predominantly segregated lives. Colby set out to explore how and why these patters of segregation have persisted. As a white guy studying race in America, he figured that ignorance was the only qualification he needed.

Colby groups his explorations into four separate categories, using somewhat cherry-picked examples, often beginning with his own experiences. In Part 1, "Letter from a Birmingham Suburb" (nice play on Dr. King), he explores school segregation and the history of busing starting with his elite hometown suburb of Birmingham, Vestavia Hills, Alabama. He discusses the handful of black students who attended the school and how most segregated themselves at the "black" table in the cafeteria. He also describes the exception to this rule, a black girl who joined - and was accepted - into the "white" activities, but who faced some backlash from the other black students.

Colby then goes back to trace the development of racial patterns in schools, starting with Birmingham having one of the strongest public school systems in the nation. But when faced with forced integration, people willingly destroyed what they had rather than allowing blacks access to it, thereby starting the "white flight" to racially exclusive suburbs. He follows how, in fits and starts, some of these segregated suburbs have tried, not always willingly or whole-heartedly, to become more welcoming to blacks, but even with the best of intentions, integration failed to take root, at least in part because blacks, long suspicious of whites, didn't always buy in. To this day, Colby notes that the bleachers at high school sporting events (where the team name is the "Rebels" and the mascot is "Colonel Reb", incidentally) remain largely segregated. But Colby takes heart in the fact that the students themselves seem to mingle more freely.

The second part, "Planning for Performance", explores racial segregation in living patterns and how segregation came about initially through plain old Jim Crow, but was exacerbated after Jim Crow was officially dead. Real estate agents and developers, looking more to profit than to the noble intentions of desegregation, used laws (often with the knowledge and tacit consent of local, state and federal agencies) intended to desegregate instead to destroy both black and working class white neighborhoods. Colby explores the mechanics of blockbusting, redlining, restrictive covenants, and restricting or flooding credit to minority home buyers.

Again Colby explores at least one attempt to heal this divide and stop abusive practices. The neighborhood association 49/63 tried to ease white fears and put an end to abusive practices. But again, long-held (and often valid) suspicions on the part of blacks kept too many of them from fully buying in. Disputes which could ordinarily be handled neighbor-to-neighbor took on more sinister overtones when they occurred between people of opposite races, and ordinarily reasonable people seemed to lose the ability to have a simple conversation.

In the third part, "Why Do Black People Drink Hawaiian Punch", Colby explores the lily-white world of corporate advertising, his own field before he became an author. He explores how advertising is a relational business - you get in and ahead (or not) based on who you know, not so much what you know. Because whites socialize predominantly with other whites, and because business owners and advertising executives are predominately white, blacks tend to be left out. Even when advertising firms have intentionally tried to attract minority candidates, such minorities usually lacked the social networks to be successful.

This section really gets at the heart of the debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. How much should blacks try to integrate into the "white" market vs. how much should they focus on and promote the "black" markets? Early on, black advertisers had little choice but to promote "black" products (especially as white advertisers repeatedly proved inept in doing so). But by delineating a "black" market which only black advertisers could market to, a "white" market which only whites could advertise to was implicitly created. To this day there is a push-pull between "multicultural" advertizing vs. integrated "color blind" advertizing.

The final part, "Canaan", explores the most segregated hour of the week: Sunday morning worship service. Colby takes as his example a Catholic parish near his childhood home in rural Louisiana. He explores how segregation came about even in the catholic church, even with the recognition that segregation is inherently anti-Catholic. Having unwisely split the Church, the parish of Grand Coteau tried for decades to heal it.

The stumbling block came mostly with the building itself. The white church was newer, bigger, fancier and altogether more suitable for the combined congregation. But blacks, already angered over decades of losing their schools, communities and identities, weren't going to surrender their building - the focal point of their community - so easily. Colby details the long years of struggle, solutions offered and rejected, impasse and final, anti-climactic resolution.

The overarching theme of these four distinct glimpses into the racial divide is that because whites have always had the power, whites have always had the best facilities and resources. Blacks always had to make do with what was left over. But nonetheless, out of these scraps, blacks built strong and thriving communities. Now that racial attitudes have softened somewhat, whites still hold the superior facilities and are not about to give them up and move to black schools, neighborhoods or churches. Blacks are now (more or less) welcome into the white world, but moving into it often means giving up at least a portion of their black community and identity. The flow of integration only seems to move one way, leaving blacks still suspicious and resentful. is partaking of the wealth of the white world worth losing one's "blackness", or is there a way to have both? The conversation is far from over.

12 people found this helpful

Deborah D Garza

Are we really that better off than we were 40 years ago?

Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2016

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I'm very impressed with Colby's insight as to the history of integration. I live in Kansas City and had heard from a friend of mine whose aunt was a long-time real-estate agent here what JC Nichols had done. Colby nailed it -- we had a long-time history of segregation forced by Nichols and the KC School Board. The rest of his narrative resonated with me.as well. Have we really, truly, integrated? I think not.

One person found this helpful

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