Overview
Sam Fulwood was an integration baby. He came of age during the post-civil rights era, a time when middle-class blacks - many carrying the scars of segregation and the struggles of the movement - wholeheartedly embraced a belief in the unlimited possibilities available to the new generation. The son of educated, prosperous parents, Fulwood shared their dreams: he excelled at integrated schools and believed in the promise of a color-blind America. Waking from the Dream is the powerful chronicle of his disillusionment with that dream. Like other high-achieving black men and women who defied the assumptions of society to become respected members of their communities and professions, Fulwood learned that assimilation into mainstream America was at best superficial, at worst a betrayal of his own individuality and values. He realized that race would always be the most vital component of his identity, one that would continue to define him in a suspicious, often hostile, white world. As he describes his move into the self-protected, isolated cocoon of the black middle class, a world separate from poor blacks and all whites, Fulwood issues a strong warning: "I can't escape the thought that white America, which stopped short of embracing middle-class blacks at the moment we wanted inclusion, may have already lost its opportunity."Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Los Angeles Times correspondent Fulwood, a child of the post-civil rights generation black bourgeoisie, fluidly recounts his reluctant journey to a 'self-protective buppie cocoon.' In Charlotte, N.C., where he grew up, the young student was a 'Negro ambassador,' but at college in Chapel Hill, he retreated into black solidarity when white students 'seemed indifferent to us as individuals.' As a journalist in Baltimore, Fulwood confronted institutional racism-especially in skewed coverage of the black community)-but also gained the opportunity for a psyche-shaking trip to South Africa. Further jobs in Atlanta and Washington convinced Fulwood of white editors' fundamental insensitivity to black concerns, forcing his recognition-as he was warned in South Africa-that middle-class status offers no protection from America's racial tensions. While Fulwood's withdrawal from integration is a necessary warning to white America, his view of newsroom affirmative action-which he sees as placing a racial stigma on often overqualified hires-suggests that the road toward healing will require much debate.Publishers Weekly -
Los Angeles Times correspondent Fulwood, a child of the post-civil rights generation black bourgeoisie, fluidly recounts his reluctant journey to a "self-protective buppie cocoon." In Charlotte, N.C., where he grew up, the young student was a "Negro ambassador," but at college in Chapel Hill, he retreated into black solidarity when white students "seemed indifferent to us as individuals." As a journalist in Baltimore, Fulwood confronted institutional racism-especially in skewed coverage of the black community)-but also gained the opportunity for a psyche-shaking trip to South Africa. Further jobs in Atlanta and Washington convinced Fulwood of white editors' fundamental insensitivity to black concerns, forcing his recognition-as he was warned in South Africa-that middle-class status offers no protection from America's racial tensions. While Fulwood's withdrawal from integration is a necessary warning to white America, his view of newsroom affirmative action-which he sees as placing a racial stigma on often overqualified hires-suggests that the road toward healing will require much debate. Author tour. (Apr.)Kirkus Reviews
An African-American journalist's memoir chronicling his increasing disillusionment with mainstream America.Fulwood, an award-winning journalist and Washington, D.C., correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, explores his past and present relationship with the American promise of integration and concludes that Rev. Martin Luther King's dream is passé. Born into a middle-class family, Fulwood was urged early on to "hold your own with the best [white students]." In his ardent pursuit of success, Fulwood entered journalism convinced that his generation would be the first in American history to be judged solely on merit, not skin color. As Fulwood's career progresses, he becomes increasingly aware that he was wrong. In his early years of writing for the Charlotte Observer, he too often finds himself the lone black at cocktail parties and comes to feel that his greatest professional asset is in being the "token" black on staff. He perceives that he is desirable because he is a stereotype-breaking black man—educated and unthreatening, and thus acceptable to white America. His experiences at the Baltimore Sun further convince him that "black reporters and editorial writers fit in a newsroom only to service the status quo, not to challenge it." Fulwood reaches the height of his disillusionment when the Atlanta Constitution reduces an article about a major address by Louis Farrakhan to a few lines in the business section. Though Fulwood tries to transmit a sense of rage to the reader, it often seems contrived. His success would be the envy of many journalists of any race.
Fulwood's hyperbolic rage provides us with the literary equivalent of rap music's middle-class studio gangsta.