Preface Acknowledgments 1. Crown Heights in the 1950s 2. Race Conscious 3. Looking Down on Harlem 4. Meeting Ruthie 5. Contested Territory 6. Ball of Confusion 7. Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide 8. Bringing the War Home 9. A White Man in Black Studies 10. Riders on the Storm 11. Close to the Edge
A life on the front lines of academic and social change
Mark D. Naison is Professor of African American Studies and History as well as Director of Urban Studies at Fordham University. He is the author of Communists in Harlem During the Depression.
"White Boy effectively blends social history and autobiography together in an engaging tale..." The Radical Teacher "When W.E.B. Du Bois wisely cautioned in The Souls of Black Folk that 'he would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa,' might he have had some future Mark Naison in mind? In any case, if a shade of doubt had ever existed about this white boy's qualifications to teach and write African American history, Naison's engrossing, tumultuous memoir ought assure the author a place of honor not only among his professional peers of color but in the front ranks of all those for whom differences based on ideas and ideals--not on color or gender or class--are the only ones that matter." --David Levering Lewis, Martin Luther King, Jr., University Professor at Rutgers University and twice recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1994 and 2001 "White Boy is a happy exception to the absence of autobiographical writings of historians of social movements. It is also an inspired intervention into the history of Black Studies. Its ability to sustain optimism regarding interracialism while acknowledging the costs of long histories and deep structures of division makes the book a great asset." --David Roediger, Babcock Professor of History at the University of Illinois, and author of Colored White: Transcending The Racial Past "White Boy is one of the most fascinating memoirs I've read in a while. It does much more than provide us with an interesting coming-of-age tale of a smart Jewish kid who discovered and fell in love with black life and culture--a love, like all loves, full of discord and mad misunderstandings. Instead, Naison tries to be self-reflexive along the way, providing social historical contexts while attempting to reconstruct his own sense of naivete he experienced at the moment of certain cultural encounters. Chock full of stories, White Boy will be an important and much debated book." --Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Yo' Mama's DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America "...forthright and thoughtful memoir... An adroit writer with a winning voice, Naison avoids romanticizing his activist days; he is at times also critical of New Left tactics (particularly those that reinforced racial polarization among activists), and he interrogates his own interest in and identification with black culture." --Choice "Naison [writes] with unsparing honesty and personal revelation... Naison's memoir grows in importance. It has raised some crucial issues, many of which go to the heart of the continuing search for racial justice and interracial unity. It should be read widely and debated vigorously." --Science and Society "In this forthright and thoughtful memoir, Naison, who became, in the early 1970s, one of the first professors (and the only white man) at Fordham's new Institute of Afro-American Studies, recalls a lifetime of fascination with black history and culture and of antidiscrimination activism. ...An adroit writer with a winning voice, Naison avoids romanticizing his activist days; ...he interrogates his own interest in and identification with black culture." --Publishers Weekly
"White Boy effectively blends social history and autobiography together in an engaging tale..." The Radical Teacher "When W.E.B. Du Bois wisely cautioned in The Souls of Black Folk that 'he would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa,' might he have had some future Mark Naison in mind? In any case, if a shade of doubt had ever existed about this white boy's qualifications to teach and write African American history, Naison's engrossing, tumultuous memoir ought assure the author a place of honor not only among his professional peers of color but in the front ranks of all those for whom differences based on ideas and ideals--not on color or gender or class--are the only ones that matter." --David Levering Lewis, Martin Luther King, Jr., University Professor at Rutgers University and twice recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1994 and 2001 "White Boy is a happy exception to the absence of autobiographical writings of historians of social movements. It is also an inspired intervention into the history of Black Studies. Its ability to sustain optimism regarding interracialism while acknowledging the costs of long histories and deep structures of division makes the book a great asset." --David Roediger, Babcock Professor of History at the University of Illinois, and author of Colored White: Transcending The Racial Past "White Boy is one of the most fascinating memoirs I've read in a while. It does much more than provide us with an interesting coming-of-age tale of a smart Jewish kid who discovered and fell in love with black life and culture--a love, like all loves, full of discord and mad misunderstandings. Instead, Naison tries to be self-reflexive along the way, providing social historical contexts while attempting to reconstruct his own sense of naivete he experienced at the moment of certain cultural encounters. Chock full of stories, White Boy will be an important and much debated book." --Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Yo' Mama's DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America "...forthright and thoughtful memoir... An adroit writer with a winning voice, Naison avoids romanticizing his activist days; he is at times also critical of New Left tactics (particularly those that reinforced racial polarization among activists), and he interrogates his own interest in and identification with black culture." --Choice "Naison [writes] with unsparing honesty and personal revelation... Naison's memoir grows in importance. It has raised some crucial issues, many of which go to the heart of the continuing search for racial justice and interracial unity. It should be read widely and debated vigorously." --Science and Society "In this forthright and thoughtful memoir, Naison, who became, in the early 1970s, one of the first professors (and the only white man) at Fordham's new Institute of Afro-American Studies, recalls a lifetime of fascination with black history and culture and of antidiscrimination activism. ...An adroit writer with a winning voice, Naison avoids romanticizing his activist days; ...he interrogates his own interest in and identification with black culture." --Publishers Weekly
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