Boldfaced Lies, Charlene Porter: A novel based on true stories of the real American West. Rose City Press, $24.95
In her debut novel, Charlene Porter takes you on the journey of paternal twins, Euphrates O’Shea, (who was born Black) and Angus O’Shea, Jr. (who was born white). Boldfaced Lies opens in James River Valley, Virginia 1862, in the hot bed of the Civil War and transports you to Denver, Colorado in 1925 where the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan was at its height with an estimated 4,000,000 card carrying members in the United States. In Denver, card carrying members numbered more than 50 including at the time, Governor Clarence J. Morely and Mayor Benjamin Stapleton. Margaret Browne, a pretty 34-year old red head is married to Kevin, an ambitions Klan leader and the only son of a bankrupt society family. He recklessly gambles away the stipend Margaret’s father gives them but devises a scheme to pocket half of the dues he collects as a Kleagle, a KKK membership salesman. This page-turner reveals an era where entrepreneurship was thriving for Negroes in the Five Points and crossing the color line was an option for opportunity. Readers need to know where the lies lead.
Editor’s note:  Author Charlene Porter will host a book signing at the Tattered Cover on July 17 at 7 p.m. at the Tattered Cover Bookstore at 1590 Wynkoop in LoDo. For information, call 303-299-9035.

The Wings That Fly Us Home: A Novel, Dayna Dunbar, Ballantine Books, ISBN # 0-345-46043-X, $13.95.
Aletta Honor’s psychic gift for reading people’s futures seems to have vanished overnight. It seems curious that the disappearance coincided with the mysterious visit from a Native American who came bearing an eagle feather and a cryptic message. Then there’s the cousin she never knew she had who suddenly appears at her doorstep and shares a shocking secret about their family. One thing’s for sure: Aletta is poised for a change. Her no-good, alcoholic ex-husband is stirring up trouble, a new lover turns out to be bad news, and she can’t bear another day of fake-foretelling to unsuspecting customers. So with some kooky friends, she sets off for the southwest where she finally comes to understand her special talent and the real meaning of life…specifically her own.

Fever, Geneva Holliday, Broadway Books, ISBN # 0-7679-2115-1, $16.95.
In her steamy debut novel Groove, Geneva Holliday introduced us to a quartet of unforgettable friends with saucy attitudes and fired-up libidos. We met Geneva, a single mother doing her best to raise her teenage son in the projects while trying to find a decent man of her own; Crystal, a savvy business woman with a great apartment, a toned body, and terrible luck with men; Noah, a flamboyant gay man with a biting wit; and Chevy, an unapologetic gold-digger with style and charm to spare.
Now Geneva’s turning up the heat with Fever, the sexy follow-up to Groove. With even hotter bedroom scenes and a whole new set of secrets, Fever will keep pages turning and temperatures rising.

The Great Black Way, L.A.’s Central Avenue in the 1940s and the Lost Negro Renaissance, R. J. Smith, Public Affairs, ISBN # 1-58648-295-5, $26.95.
In the 1940s, when FDR opened up the defense industry to Black workers, it inspired a massive wave of Black migration to a small area of Los Angeles along Central Avenue – and cultural ferment in the arts, culture, and politics. In a neighborhood densely packed with Black musicians, independent labels and after-hours spots, rhythm and blues was spawned. Chester Himes fathered the Black detective novel and a noir sensibility. Black comics took off minstrel blackface for the first time and addressed audiences directly with socially-tinged humor. And, Smith argues, the Civil Rights movement got its start, as the strategy of building mass movements and giving power to ghetto dwellers gained favor in opposition to the top-down strategies of the NAACP and the Urban League. In The Great Black Way, R. J. Smith finds that unlike the Harlem’s Renaissance, which had been driven by the intellectual elite, in L. A., a new sense of Black identity arose from street level. Unfortunately, when the movement was over, many hopes and lives were swept away with it.

Saving the World, Julia Alvarez, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, ISBN # 1-56512-510-X, $24.95.
Alma Huebner, a Latin American novelist, is writing another of her bestselling family sagas. Her husband works for a humanitarian organization dedicated to health and prosperity in third world countries. He wants her to go with him, but she demurs. She must finish her latest novel. In truth, Alma is sidetracked by the story of a much earlier idealist, Francisco Xavier Balmis, who in 1803 undertook to vaccinate the populations of Spain’s American colonies against smallpox. To do this, he needed living “carriers” of the vaccine. Enter Isabel Gomez y Cendala, the “rectoress” of La Casa de Ninos Expositos. Isabel selects 22 orphan boys to be the carriers and joins them on the voyage. Her bravery inspires a very different novel by Alma.
Rich, passionate, and daring, Saving the World weighs ambition against altruism – and, in the process, tells the radiant stories of two extraordinary women.

Kaffir Boy, The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa, Mark Mathabane, Free Press, ISBN # 0-684-84828-7, $15.
Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa’s most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of passage. Like every other child born in the hopelessness of apartheid, he learned to measure his life in days, not years. Yet Mark Mathabane, armed with only the courage of his family and a hard-won education, raised himself up from the squalor and humiliation to win a scholarship to an American University.
This extraordinary memoir of life under apartheid is a triumph of the human spirit over hatred and unspeakable degradation. For Mark Mathabane did what no physically and psychologically battered “Kaffir” from the rat-infested alleys of Alexandra was supposed to do – he escaped to tell about it.

One Night Stand, A Novel, Roland S. Jefferson, Atria, ISBN # 0-7432-6888-1, $24.
How did a gang punk beat a murder rap? Meet Myra Cross, a 31-year-old divorcee working as a pubic defender while posing for Playboy spreads in her spare time. Smart and with attitude to burn, Myra is the rare public defender who actually wins acquittals. But when Napoleon T. Booker, a.k.a. Little Dog Nine, asks her to defend him again, she takes on more than she bargained for. A sexy, action-packed, hard core thriller, set on the streets and in the courthouse of L.A., this sizzling new novel captures readers on its first page and doesn’t let them go until its last line.

Poetry for Young People, Langston Hughes, Sterling, ISBN# 1-4027-1845-4, $14.94.
Langston Hughes was not only the leading African American poet of his generation but is one of the most significant American writers of the 20th century. A perfect introduction to his rhythmic, socially conscious, and deceptively simple verse, this book pairs 26 of his best-loved works with the dynamic and colorful paintings of the great American artist Benny Andrews. Together, Hughes’ poetry and Andrews’ pictures offer a stunning glimpse into the racial and social history of American culture.

Healed Without Scars, David G. Evans, Whitaker House, ISBN # 0-88368-542-6, $10.95.
Have you been hurt by past disappointment, fear, rejection, abandonment, or failure? If so, you’ve probably learned that time doesn’t necessarily heal all wounds. When pain from the past lingers in your life and causes emotional scars, you need to understand that God is always ready to help you be healed without scars. Filled with contemporary and biblical accounts of those who have emerged victorious from life’s tests and trials, Healed Without Scars will show you how to overcome depression, anger, fear, and hopelessness, discover the path to personal wholeness, find peace in the midst of life’s storms, renew your hopes and dreams, and experience a life of freedom and joy. Comes with Healed Without Scars Study Companion: A Personal Healing Journal.

No One Here Gets Out Alive The Biography of Jim Morrison, Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman, Warner Books, ISBN # 0-446-69733-8, $14.95.
Jim Morrison was a man who would not, could not, and refused to compromise himself or his art. And herein lay his innocence and purity – his summary blessing and curse -- to go all the way or die trying. This riveting biography chronicles Morrison’s entire life, from his uprooted childhood as the son of a Navel officer to the Door’s early days in L.A. and their rise to fame, to Morrison’s ultimate demise. The authors have gone to great lengths to address the unanswered questions about Morrison’s final hours. This definitive biography shows you the Lizard King as you’ve never seen him before – a genius who shot like a rocket across the musical horizon, then fell in burning fragments as his life spiraled out of control.

Real Men Cook, K. Kofi Moyo, Fireside, ISBN # 0-7432-7264-1, $16.
Real Men Cook is a delicious, heartwarming collection of soul-stirring stories and more than 100 mouth-watering, finger-licking-good recipes (some handed down over the generations). Through stories of family traditions, picnics, block parties, and courtship rituals, more than 100 Real Men open their hearts, and share recipes, poetry, photos from family archives, and the memories that inspire them to live as real men. Now in paperback with full-color photographs, this unique book is a priceless legacy that will nourish your family in body and spirit.

Riding Dirty on I-95, Nikki Turner, Ballantine, ISBN # 0-345-47684-0, $13.95.
In this gritty, fast-paced street tale with heart, a feisty young woman searches for survival. Mercy Jiles was a Daddy’s girl until the age of seven, when gangsters murdered her father over a gambling debt. This loss, and her mother’s neglect, defines Mercy’s tough character, which is further shaped by subsequent years in an abusive foster care system. On her 18th birthday, she determines to make a life for herself in the inner city of Richmond, Va., where she meets a ghetto-fabulous drug-dealer-turned-murderer, C-Note. Social vulnerability, financial straits and materialistic ambitions lead her to transport drugs along the titular highway. Broke, but resourceful, Mercy starts over and becomes famous as a screenwriter and director, turning her shady experiences into successful movies. Then, C-Note and Mercy cross paths once again and their relationship heats up. In the end, Mercy must decide if she wants love or revenge.  With Riding Dirty on I-95, Turner tells the sexy and gritty story of life on the streets as only the Queen of Hip-Hop fiction can deliver.

Spirited: Affirming the Soul and Black Gay/Lesbian Community, G. Winston James and Lisa C. Moore, Redbone Press, ISBN # 0-9656659-3-3, $16.95. In Spirited: Affirming the Soul and Black Gay/Lesbian Community, more than 40 writers address the question of how we, as same-gender-loving Black people, affirm ourselves as sexual and spiritual people. These sacred narratives are a canon for our survival – holy texts proclaiming the divinity of our lives, the righteousness of our love, and the sanctity of our being. Spirited is a must-read for those on a journey toward spiritual and self-acceptance.

Nasty Girls, Erick S. Gray, St. Martin’s Griffin, ISBN # 0-312-34996-3, $14.95.
Camille, Jade and Shy have always taken care of one another and had each other’s back in times of trouble. But Jade and Shy can’t help but be attracted to trouble in the form of their boyfriends, Roscoe and James, who are partners in a lucrative drug business.
One night James and Roscoe get caught up in a shoot-out that goes horribly wrong. Shy’s man, Roscoe, ends up in prison while James walks away clean. Friendships and alliances are tested and with one man taking the fall, things begin to fall apart between the girls. It’s not long before jealousy, greed, and revenge test the true bonds of their friendship. Things will never be the same again.

Last Night a D J Saved My Life, Lyah Beth LeFlore, Harlem Moon, ISBN # 0-7679-2118-6, $12.95.
At 35, Destiny Day is at the top of her game. Having escaped her hard-scrabble beginnings in the small Midwestern town she calls “East Boogie, Illinois,” she is the savviest sister walking around in a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes. As New York’s premier party promoter, she has glitz, riches, and steers clear of any man who threatens to cramp her style. Her parties, held at the hippest clubs, are packed with hip-hop royalty; top celebs from the worlds of sports, film, and fashion; and New York’s most successful power brokers. Destiny’s personal life takes a backseat to her career, but she’s got two best friends and a string of men to keep her satisfied. However, when she meets Taye Crawford, an independent financial advisor, at one of her own fantastic parties, Destiny finds herself moving in a direction she never anticipated.

Angel of Harlem, Kuwana Haulsey, Ballantine, ISBN # 0-375-76133-0, $13.95.
A gifted young woman in the 1920s, May Edward Chinn dreams of becoming a concert pianist. When a racist professor ends her hopes of a music career, May takes her life in a dramatically different direction – becoming the first Black female physician in Harlem. Introduced to the glamour of the Harlem Renaissance, May steadfastly pursues her ambitions while striving to overcome personal torment – the death of a fiancé, a lost child, and a distant father ravaged by the legacy of slavery. With the grief she encounters, her resilience grows. Against the odds, May struggles to carve out a place for herself within the medical world, one that is convinced she should not be a part of it. Angel of Harlem is a story of triumph and perseverance that moves through history with fearlessness and grace. This novel lays bare the heart of a woman who changed the face and history of medicine – and became one of the most sought after young women of the time.

The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, Jonathan Alter, Simon and Schuster, ISBN # 0-7432-4600-4, $29.95.
The Defining Moment is a riveting account of the first hundred days of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency. Working without a plan – indeed, working often with two or more contradictory plans – FDR argued, persuaded, cajoled and enticed the American people to pull out of the miserable slough of the Great Depression and to resume their natural optimism. He was, Jonathan Alter shows, a real American Music Man, capable of creating a brass band without instruments. More properly, the President was a political magician, whose supernal arts Alter shares as he bewitches readers in this fast-moving story, often poignant, sometimes funny, of how Roosevelt changed the direction of American history.

Kam’s Picks

Letters to a Young Brother: Manifest Your Destiny by Hill Harper, Gotham Books, Hardcover, 192 pages, illustrated, ISBN: 1-592-40200-3, $20.
“Young men today have been bombarded with images of wealth and success that tell them that buying the hottest car or the most bling-blingin’ jewelry is what they should be motivated by. There is an overwhelming sales pitch targeted at these young men that subliminally suggests that material goods are what makes them real men. I want young men to have knowledge of the things that bring them true empowerment: education, a strong sense of purpose, compassion, confidence, and humility, to name a few.
It is no accident that I graduated from Brown University magna cum laude and received graduate degrees with honors from Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government. My family taught me that doing my best, educating myself, and being in service to others were not optional and that having values and being truthful were not negotiable.
I am living proof that these principles work. Through the letters in this book, I wish to pass on to other young men my grandfathers’ legacies of education, hard work, determination, and success.”
-- Excerpted from the Introduction

Lately, it seems that everyday another study is announced sharing some sobering statistics about the dire straits of the African-American male. Whether it has to do with employment, parenting, education, incarceration, or any other factors correlated with success in this society, all indications are that the Black male is currently in crisis.
For this reason, Hill Harper, star of CBS-TV’s CSI: NY, was inspired to publish Letters to a Young Brother. Many might wonder what a famous actor living in la-la land might have to offer kids trying to survive the rigors of the real world. Well, many might not know that he’s also a Harvard-trained attorney with three Ivy League degrees.
Hill credits the support of his family when it comes to all his considerable achievements, pointing out that the presence of role models every step of the way of his development was critical. And because so many Black boys have absentee fathers, this book is structured as a series of questions posed by an at-risk adolescent and answered by the author in his capacity as a mentor with plenty of pearls of wisdom to share.
Hill writes in a down-to-earth style appropriate for the targeted demographic, weighing-in with sound advice on picking friends, smoking, drinking, money, consumerism, staying in school, participating in class, what women want, premarital sex, and many other topics of interest to teens. He even supplements his sage insights with those of such luminaries as actresses Gabrielle Union and Sanaa Lathan, AIDS activist Phil Wilson, Senator Barack Obama, R&B singer Ray J, tennis pro Venus Williams, football star Curtis Martin, comedian Anthony Anderson, Harvard Professor Charles Ogletree, movie producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and hip-hop artist Nas.
The prevailing message delivered by Letters to a Young Brother is that education is power, that material possessions do not ensure happiness, and the importance of being the architect of your own life. A priceless, no-nonsense, step-by-step guide out of the ghetto, provided it reaches a pair of receptive ears with a support team prepared to help him achieve his dream.

Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea’s Uninhibited Commentaries on Love and Life, Tyler Perry, Riverhead Books, Hardcover, 272 pages, illustrated,
ISBN: 1-59448- 921-1, $23.95.
“Whoever came up with the saying that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ must have been thinking about my friend Madea. In the Black community, Madea was the head of that village. Her name is the southern term for ‘Mother Dear.’ 
Madea used to be on every corner in every neighborhood when I was growing up and generations before. If somebody’s child was doing something wrong, Madea got to them and straightened them out or she would go directly to the parents, and the parents straightened the kids out.
She used to be everywhere, but today she is missed. Back around the 1970s, the Madeas began to disappear and they have left an unmistakable void. I want to dedicate the spirit and intent of this book to all the Madeas and mothers that I grew up with.”
-- Excerpted from the Foreword

Tyler Perry has become both a screen and stage phenomenon starring in Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea’s Family Reunion as Mabel “Madea” Simmons, the sassy, pistol-packing senior citizen and self-appointed guardian of the Black community. Besides appearing in drag, the multi-talented Perry also writes, directs and produces his own work.
Now we can add best-selling author to his long list of credits, as his advice book, Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea’s Uninhibited Commentaries on Love and Life is already sitting in the #1 spot on the New York Times best selling list. However, this text is not intended to be taken at face value, for its content is more of a humorous than serious nature.
For these frequently politically-incorrect words of wisdom come courtesy not of Perry but through the mouth of his famous fictional character. And Madea is not one to think before she speaks.
We learn that Madea has some skeletons in her closet and that she was a single-mom and worked as a stripper to support her daughter. She also shares that she was opposed to Rosa Parks call for a bus boycott to end segregated seating because, “I was too big to be walking all that around.”
It’s unfortunate that someone being touted as a role model would have so many negative traits, even if it’s all just a joke. As for attracting a man, she tells women to, “put on your shortest dress and your longest hair.”
Madea also observes the difference between the way Blacks and whites dance. “If you really want to bust your gut laughing,” she says, “watch white people dance to Black music.” As for African-Americans, “We have rhythm. I’m talking about real dancing that comes through us, takes us back to Africa, where you have the stripes across your face… your breasts painted and nose pierced.”    
The best explanation I can come up with for such cringe-inducing comments is that Madea credits someone named Joel Brokaw with transposing her audio tapes into the final manuscript. Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that a lot got lost in the translation by her ghostwriter. I’m sure that the very successful Tyler Perry has plenty of priceless insights which might prove valuable to impressionable young minds, and pray that they make it into his next opus. 

The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Douglas Brinkley, William Morrow, 736 pages, ISBN: 0-06-112423-0, $29.95.
“One person not seen on the streets, at the Superdome, or on a rescue boat of any kind was Mayor Nagin. Since the storm had approached the Crescent City, Mayor Nagin had been cloistered at the Hyatt. From the get-go, he was terrified for his personal safety. And for good reason. Although he would put on a good public face, deep down he must have known just how delinquent he had been in preparing New Orleans for a major storm.
With no startable buses, the mayor was in the throes of some kind of meltdown on Tuesday, unleashing profanities at anybody within earshot and constantly sobbing. Frightened, Nagin refused to make City Hall a command center. He refused to give a pep talk to offer the evacuees both information and a morale boost. With a touch of guts he could have walked over to the Superdome and tried to calm the jittery crowd.
His primary post-storm initiative was to get a generator hooked-up, so he wouldn’t have to walk all those stairs. A timid Nagin had squandered a historic opportunity for a bullhorn moment.”
-- Excerpted from The Great Deluge

Who’s at fault for the failure of the government to come to the rescue of the victims of Hurricane Katrina stranded in New Orleans? There’s been a ton of finger-pointing since the disaster unfolded, with Mayor Ray Nagin, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, FEMA Director Michael Brown, President Bush and Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff each shouldering a share of the blame.
Now, Douglas Brinkley has attempted to sort it all out by painstakingly reconstructing all the events as they unfolded from the moment that the National Weather Service warned them all that there was a category four or five storm approaching the region, till Sept. 3, when the cavalry finally arrived days after thousands of suddenly homeless citizens had already endured unnecessary suffering without food or water in blistering 90 degree heat.
Brinkley, a professor of history at Tulane University in New Orleans, recounts the blow-by-blow in The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. This 700+ page tome reveals that there were many villains responsible for the mind-boggling mismanagement and utter neglect, but this shocking text indicts Nagin, Brown and Bush as among the most culpable.
First, Nagin committed the unpardonable sin of implementing an evacuation plan which only addressed the needs of the rich and big business, ignoring folks without the wherewithal to save themselves. Then, as the crisis worsened, the Mayor simply hid, coming apart at the seams, doing absolutely nothing.
Michael Brown was almost as despicable, described by the author as, “doing so many interviews that people began to wonder which business he was in: disaster business or television programming. One press briefing each day would have been understandable, leaving him time to oversee the response. Instead, Brown was available for one-on-one interviews with all of the major networks and cable news channels.”
Regarding the President, the book provides proof that he was fully briefed two days ahead of time of the possible magnitude of the tragedy, yet chose to not marshal any federal resources in anticipation. And while we also learn of cases of looting by both survivors and cops, there are more tales of bravery and altruism, than selfishness here. As regrettable a story as The Great Deluge relates, at least the people of New Orleans now know that regardless of what the federal, state and local authorities might claim, the awful truth has been indelibly documented for posterity.
They never came.

White Guilt: How Blacks & Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era, Shelby Steele, Harper Collins, Hardcover, 192 pages, illustrated, ISBN: 0-06-057862-9, $24.95
“Clearly a mission of the current Bush presidency has been to de-stigmatize contemporary conservatism. Bush has accepted that he operates in the age of white guilt, and he has brought dissociation to conservatism. He appoints minorities at every opportunity and to the highest levels of government. His faith-based initiative directly addresses poverty through the institution of the Black church…
Bush is the first conservative president to openly compete with the left in the arena of ideas around poverty, education, and race. He has attempted to establish conservatism as a philosophy of social reform. But in our deepening culture war, Bush has endured a remarkable degree of contempt from many of his opponents, more contempt than even the worst Bush caricatures would justify.
I departed from the left because I simply couldn’t take the schizophrenia required to stay in the cultural and political world that I had belonged to. I escaped schizophrenia, but I walked right into stigmatization as an Uncle Tom. If I’ve learned anything from all of this, it is that if you want to be free, you have to make yourself that way and pay whatever price the world extracts. So I am quite free now.”
-- Excerpted from Chapter 26, “A Culture War”

With the President approval-rating at historic lows, he should consider himself very lucky indeed to have as loyal a man in his corner as Shelby Steele. At a time when so many other neo-cons have finally come around to questioning the wisdom of the administration’s agenda in Iraq and New Orleans, Steele is still championing Bush as Blacks’ best friend in the White House since LBJ.
By contrast, he claims that Clinton has undeservedly been dubbed as “America’s first Black president” because of “his litany of bad habits from infidelity to chronic lateness.” Currently a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, Steele, unfortunately, devotes so much ink here to rehashing Clinton’s moral failings, especially the Monica Lewinsky affair, that the reader frequently forgets the author’s central theme.
The prevailing theory of White Guilt: How Blacks & Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era is that the social fabric of this country started to fall apart in the ‘60s when whites decided to make amends for slavery and the subsequent discrimination against Blacks. The problem arose when Blacks then proceeded to parlay that guilt by adopting a permanent victim status which absolved them from taking responsibility for their plight.
For instance, Shelby argues that “A 70 percent illegitimacy rate among all Blacks pretty much makes the case that there is a responsibility problem. To know this, as all Blacks do and to have to pretend that it is not strictly true or that certain systemic forces are more responsible than Blacks themselves is knowingly to lie to oneself.”
Conveniently ignoring the Administration’s mishandling of Hurricane Katrina, this very spirited, anti-African-American screed repeatedly blames the victims for their lot in life at every turn, and in a sadistic fashion, almost as if he savors the smug cruelty suggested by his insensitivity. He tempers his caustic commentary with constant reminders that he, too, is Black, invariably juxtaposing each criticism with an autobiographical aside in which he makes flip comments concluding that if he could avoid this or that pitfall and pull himself up by his bootstraps, anybody else can.
Euphoric in his having achieved the American Dream which has proven to be so elusive for most Blacks, Steele repeatedly proclaims himself to be cured of the schizophrenia he says has a destructive hold on most other African-American intellectuals. “Tired of living a lie” in order to be Black, he has found bliss in a Negro Nirvana free of the “corrupting falseness” of the pressure to identify with folks who look like him and with prevailing Black points-of-view.
Since Shelby Steele has apparently found not only a psychic, but a physically comfy, suburban refuge from the rigors of what he terms “race fatigue,” perhaps this arrogant Republican apologist ought to consider refraining from delivering condescending lectures to those unfortunates still stuck in the ‘hood who have to deal with the host of woes visited on the ‘hood on a daily basis, especially since he apparently no longer considers himself a hyphenated-minority.