African Americans - Politics and Government - History, United States - Ethnic & Race Relations, Social Policy by Region, Senators & Representatives - Biography, Legislators - U.S. Political Biography, African Americans - Law, Politics, & Government, The U
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Overview
In 1990, Gary Franks became America's first black Republican to serve in Congress in sixty years. Now, in Searching for the Promised Land: An African American's Optimistic Odyssey, Congressman Franks gives us his singular outlook on such controversial topics as welfare reform, the Nation of Islam, and race relations in the United States. As an outspoken black conservative, he has endured the wrath of traditional liberals, including Jesse Jackson, who staged a march and sit-in outside Franks's offices in 1995. From his childhood in working-class Waterbury, Connecticut, to his well-publicized clashes with the ultraliberal Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, D.C., Congressman Franks chronicles the experiences that have defined his principles and shaped his politics. The son of a former North Carolina sharecropper with a sixth-grade education, Franks graduated from Yale and - defying all predictions - won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. There, he has worked tirelessly to restore America's inner cities and encourage its struggling businesses by harnessing the power of private industry. A dedicated leader who is concerned for all Americans, he outlines rational alternatives to the current welfare system that has left entire families dependent on the government - a system he feels is as crippling and controlling as slavery itself. In 1993, Franks was blacklisted by his fellow members of the Congressional Black Caucus when they changed the caucus's rules specifically to exclude him from weekly meetings. Franks courageously stood up to the small-minded intolerance the caucus showed him and fought to reinstate himself. This intolerance of differing opinions, Franks argues, has stifled black leadership and is hindering the progress of African Americans. He alone opposed the caucus's alliance with the Nation of Islam and defended Clarence Thomas's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. Throughout this memoir, Congressman Franks speaks eloquently and passiEditorials
Publishers Weekly -
This relatively short book combines a memoir with policy arguments by Franks, the Connecticut Republican who in 1990 became Congress's first black conservative. Franks's unpretentious reflections describe a poor, religious family that prized education, vague discomfort with black disdain for bourgeois values at Yale, a quick rise through corporate America and a plunge into local politics. The idealistic author disapproves of racial gerrymandering, which is supported by both fellow Republicans and black Democrats, and argues that the Congressional Black Caucus, which once tried to expel him, is better served-as is the African American community-by a variety of voices. He cogently states his opposition to the Million Man March and his support for limited affirmative action-outreach, plus goals and timetables. He also floats some of his own ideas: he supports tax deductions for charities that foster family development and would like to see welfare converted to a loan program and safeguarded by the use of debit cards. But his plan for job creation-cut taxes, ease regulation-is mostly Republican boilerplate, and his credo-if everyone lived by the Ten Commandments, misery and despair would vanish-suggests that Franks should think more about the depth of American inequality. Photos not seen by PW. (June)Book Details
Published
April 1, 1996
Publisher
New York : ReganBooks, c1996.
Pages
240
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780060391560