as a book
about race, Honky, a recent memoir by New York social scientist
Dalton Conley, is just as much about personal mythology and narrative.
Honky is also a vivid and elucidative account of the chains of anecdotes,
subjectively remembered and interpreted, that we use to create our own
definition of who we are.
In Honky, Conley refines the conceptual thread that had been gnawing at him throughout his youth. This thread is the analysis of race and the way that the construction of race—in all of its permutations—shapes attitudes, experiences and even destiny in a world where no one is truly color-blind.
Conley had more exposure to the idea of race than most children, growing up one of the only white kids in New York public housing projects populated by Black and Puerto Rican families. His parents were artists, whose low income and desire to break societal molds led them to apply for housing in the then fairly new projects. As most children are, Conley was at first fairly oblivious to race, a fact exhibited when, as he relates in one of several telling anecdotes, he kidnapped a black baby to be his sister, never realizing the difference in their skin color.
But there was no way he could stay oblivious for long. Almost right from the start, race complicated the always-painful childhood process of trying to fit in. Though he played and joked with Black and Puerto Rican friends from the projects, that didn't save him from being called a "honky," or from being held at knifepoint by an attention-seeking Puerto Rican boy. While race made him a minority in the projects, being transferred to a mostly-white school in Greenwich Village subjected Conley to more class isolation, once again setting him apart from other students.
For some years he lived a double life, struggling to fit in both with the neighborhood kids—who dressed neatly and in many ways strove for upward mobility—and with his upwardly mobile classmates, who played at tossing off their class privilege with studiedly sloppy dress, sarcasm and off-handed liberal political leanings.
One of the stronger aspects of Honky is how Conley describes the ways
in which he gained his gradual awareness of class and ethnic privilege
in American society.
One time, after a child molester was caught castrating boys in the bathroom of his first school near the projects, Conley's mother was able to draw on the connections of an artist friend and enroll him in a Greenwich Village school using a fake address. At that school, he was able to fit in, however awkwardly, with kids whose parents lived in the largely white worlds of academia and anti-nuclear rallies. When his best friend Jerome was paralyzed by a stray bullet, his family was able to move to a federally subsidized apartment in a better part of town, because they could prove they were "artists" rather than just normal low-income people. When his sister Alexandra got involved with drugs, she was able to escape unscathed and go on to college, while a non-white friend ended up serving 25 years in prison after a drug raid.
Conley compares the sometimes invisible but inescapable hold of race and class to driving on the freeway.
"When I speed up the Merritt Parkway and feel a surge of acceleration in my gut, I get an unparalleled rush of freedom," he writes. "But if one were to pull back and take an aerial view of the ebbs and flows of traffic, the image would change dramatically...From above, we don't appear to have much choice in where we are going, or how fast we can get there, but that does not deny each driver's experience of freedom and agency."
"When I look back on my life and that of my neighbors, I cannot say that it was racism that got Jerome shot or that landed me in Stuyvesant," writes Conley. "Nor can I conclude definitively that it was class that propelled me to the school district across town or got me off the hook when I burned down [a friend's] apartment ... But when I add up all these particular experiences, the invisible contours of inequality start to take form, like the clogged traffic arteries of I-95."
In addition
to being a sensitive and clear-eyed analysis of racial issues, Honky is
a beautiful coming-of-age story. The seriousness of Conley's topic is
balanced with a gently humorous and empathetic touch. From his mocking
but obviously loving descriptions of his mother to accounts of his own
darkest moments, Conley's words are comedic, memorable and moving, and
serve as a fitting tribute to the complex intersections of ethnicity and
class that informed his youth. 
Reproduction of material from any LiP pages without written permission is strictly prohibited | Copyright 2002 LiPmagazine.org | info@lipmagazine.org
Reviewed
by Kari Lydersen
02.21.02
|
Support LiP by ordering from our partner, a leading independent bookseller |
 |
 |
||||
|
||||
|
|
||||
