One of the reasons I was open to reading this book when it was offered to me for review is that it was different from most of my reading.  I was also intrigued by the story, and found the glimpses I was getting of the author’s take on racial issues appealing.  Between Black and White: From Evanston to Englewood to Everywhere did not disappoint in any of these areas.

I don’t normally do this, but I want to start by quoting a large section from the first page:

I have wondered for a number of years now why my great-great-great-grandmother would have a Hindi name if she was from West Africa.  To the best of my knowledge, Nidra was her birth name.  This differs so much from my distant cousin Alex Haley’s experience where his ancestor had a traceable African name, as well as certain words this ancestor (Kunta Kinte) used to identify the area of Africa that he was from and everyday things/objects he dealt with.  Knowing that reminds me of the importance of our language/culture, two things that the slaves of the African diaspora were denied of [sic].  This lack of self-knowledge and the resultant resentment makes identification/assimilation into the dominant culture difficult at best.  If someone is not willing to embrace/acknowledge your culture, how can they be angry when you don’t embrace their culture/language?  There are many “mixtures” of African Americans, so how should we identify ourselves?  Why bother looking back anyway?  I would say in order to know your direction, you have to know where you have been.

I have European American friends who were adopted or foster children, and they grew up in well-to-do households with excellent parents.  Yet they still have this yearning to know exactly where they were from — their ancestry and their genetic makeup.  It is our nature as human beings to know about ourselves, which is difficult since there is so little documentation in slave families (unless they were genetically related to the slave holders or had a key position where they were enslaved).

This introduction to the book illustrates and sums up much of what I appreciated about the book.  It tackles, head-on, the difficulties of growing up the descendant of slaves.  There is no sugar-coating.  But neither is there any “victim” attitude.  It’s matter-of-fact: here’s the situation; it is what it is; now what are we going to do about it?  It also acknowledges that some of these difficulties are not unique to being black, while still pointing out that they are very dominant issues in the black community.

I appreciated this balance, which is visible (more or less) throughout the book.  There is a clear acknowledgement throughout of times when his family was wronged, when he or his family were treated poorly, and the many, many times he felt the need to go above and beyond to prove himself.  But he did.  (Editorial/political side note: This is what will do the most to destroy ethnicity-based discrimination — people proving the stereotypes wrong.)  And he doesn’t convey the slightest attitude of bitterness.  He’s also just as quick to point out all the times when discrimination was not an issue, and when ethnic diversity was simply embraced or accepted as a matter of course.

The writing has a few quirks I would find undesirable in most books.  The editing could be slightly more polished.  (Although it’s not grammatically awful by any means!  It’s pretty good, just not perfect.)  It’s slightly rambly/repetetive in places.  And a bit self-congratulatory in a way that would be awkward in a typical written-for-the-public text.  However, all of these quirks make perfect sense when you approach the book from the perspective of a grandfather passing on his life story to his grandchildren while you, the reader, just happen to peek in.

Dr. Bethel’s story is an interesting on in its own right.  He grew up in Chicago, had family in the South, attended college for psychology, served in the Navy for a stint, and ultimately ended up as a massage therapist and naprapathic doctor (a new one even on me, with my alternative medicine studies — it’s a doctor who works with the connective tissues, kind of like a chiropractor for your joints) in Washington and then back in Chicago.  He’s been to all seven continents, and studied a variety of complementary healing modalities.

It’s of broader interest, though, because of the tapestry it weaves of black/white interactions.  He is a descendant of both slaves and slaveholders.  (You do the math.)  So the entirety of his family history here in the U.S. has involved these interactions.  It is instructive to see how attitudes have differed not only over time, but also by geography.

If you’re looking for something a little “different” to shake up your reading routine (or need a memoir for your Challies reading list), this is a good option.