More on the eternal, never-ending travails of the blacks

NPR looks at the end of "white flight." William Frey is on there. Really smart guy. I'm less impressed with the WSJ reporter. There's something condescending about this whole conversation. Obviously there's the conflation of the "black poor" with all black people. But moreover there's just this expectation that black people won't be affected by the exact same market forces as white people, that black people won't want to move to a suburb with good schools and big lawns just like white people.

Comments

gussie July 22, 2008 10:50 AM

Completely off-topic and self-involved, but ... my wife writes YA novels. We're white, we live in Maine, whitest of all the states. In her new series, one the main character's love interests (the one she rejects in the end for her True Love) is the archetypal High School quarterback in a fancy prep school. She's been thinking of him as utterly WASPy, but she's been playing around with the characters. Just said, 'what if he's black?'

But the truth is, she'd probably write him exactly the same as the WASPy character, he'd be pretty much precisely the same guy ... the only thing that'd change is his skin color.

So: bad idea, writing a black character who's exactly like a white character except for his description?

Dan Goldman July 22, 2008 2:27 PM

I don't think it's a bad idea. Saved by the Bell did it with the Lisa Turtle character. It was originally written to be a JAPy princess, but when Lark Vorhees auditioned for the role, they made the character into a Black princess instead. Same character, different skin color, and it worked out well.

I'd think that a Black kid growing up in a all WASPy environment, would turn out to be pretty WASPy himself, especially if he was a star QB. But I suppose it all depends on how deeply your wife wants to delve into the whole possibly rejected because of his different skin color issues, when the main character rejects him for her True Love.

gussie July 22, 2008 9:45 PM

Yeah, there's gonna be no delving at all! That's the issue, I guess: if it's okay for her to portray race as about as important as eye color.

But given the lack of responses, I'll presume that nobody here, at least, is -horrified- by the idea! Thanks.