I used to observe that I never met a white man who identified with Bigger Thomas and I never met a black man who identified with Holden Caulfield. But I'm not particularly interested in how American men retrench themselves into racial identies, so I find that identification scheme only as a convenient mnemonic. What's more interesting nowadays, especially given the retarded men of contemporary films, is where our generations (mine and my son's) might find inspiration.
This starts with a personal observation about what kind of man I thought I might be and the points of literature that guided me anywhere.
When I was trying to make a point, I felt rather strongly about the essay I wrote called Hating Huck. But what I think about that now is that it was important for me to rationalize the entire matter into the context of Tomi Morrison's culture war. I wasn't ever scarred by the books I was forced to read, nor was I particularly hurt by the lack of black male images in film. It seemed to me that Denzel singly sufficed for my generation as Poitier did for his. It wasn't that we didn't know how to *be*, we just wondered what it is we would get an opportunity to *do*.
I recall a sort of triumph I felt one evening watching an episode of Roots in the common room at the EVK dorm of USC, the hoity white girls' privy. I didn't need to bash a head. But I had read the book a couple years earlier and I knew how it all turned out. Roots was, I suppose, the big deal it had to be for me. I recall being impressed that I read such a large book. It was, at the time, endlessly fascinating. By the time the miniseries was aired, it was all about LeVar and Fiddler, 'My name is Toby' and 'Grits, dummy'.
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