COAL TO CREAM
A BLACK MAN’S JOURNEY BEYOND COLOR TO AN AFFIRMATION OF RACE
By Eugene Robinson
Free Press
271 pp
$24

Up until this last generation, the black community was a comfort and a sanctuary for the African-American people. The dogs of anti-black racism could roam free and fierce in the world beyond, but here we were safe to sing our songs and dance our dances, to raise our children, to keep our old folks close by. Here was the one place in the world where we belonged.

I traveled the country extensively in the late 60’s--mostly by Greyhound and Trailways bus--and be it Cleveland or LA or Baton Rouge or Durham, the ritual was always the same. I would leave the downtown bus station and wander around until I found an African-American, any African-American, and ask, "Where can I get myself something to eat?" They’d point me across the track, to where the smell of bacon ends and collards wafted out of every back door and LaVerne Baker and Otis Redding sang from every juke box and folks put up their hand to you and said, "Evening," as you walked by. Here I could lay my head in peace, blend and recover, prepare myself to return to my battles in the society beyond our veil.

A combination of social forces all but ended that phenomenon in the 70’s and 80’s. In many cities, North and South, the foundations of the black community virtually collapsed so that today, a black stranger in a new city stays in the downtown hotels and avoids the black neighborhoods at all cost. For most African-Americans, the bitter lesson has come almost too late. In the larger world we are not yet fully accepted but the world our parents left us in crumbling before our eyes, barely able to sustain us when, perhaps, we need it the most.

In "Coal to Cream, A Black Man’s Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race," Washington Post editor/reporter Eugene Robinson describes his own personal experiences traveling through this racial labyrinth. He grew up in the segregated Deep South, left behind his mostly-black world to graduate from a mostly-white college, initially thought he found Utopia in a race-blind Brazil, but ultimately returned to his black-community roots, realizing that the old folks at home had more to offer himself and his family than he had understood. Robinson has many good things to say and a rich life to draw from. Unfortunately, he relies upon his own observations and experiences too much, too often skimming the surface when some digging is needed. The result is an average, soon-forgotten book that one thinks it was within Robinson’s powers and skills to have easily been much, much better.

Robinson has a reporter’s keen eye for observation and a novelist’s touch for reproducing them on paper, such as when he writes of his experience, at the age of 13, in establishing his own black identity:

"The purest expression of the black-is-beautiful movement was a towering Afro... The Afro was an emblem of revolution, like a bandolier slung across a guerrilla’s chest. To my abject humiliation, I couldn’t grow a proper one. No amount of care and grooming...would coax it into [growing to the proper length]. But I could buy a[n Afro] pick, and I did. Carrying a pick with a red, green, and black handle sticking out of your back pocket was significant. It meant you didn’t belong to the Negro generation that continued to fuss over its hair with fine-toothed combs and greasy pomades and stiff brushes. ... You were black, no matter what color your skin really was... Using it, I raked my poor scalp like a vegetable plot at planting time. But it was worth the righteous pain. Every citizen soldier had to suffer for the revolution."

Especially good, too, are depictions of the backside of Brazilian life that wealthy travelers and carnaval-goers rarely see.

But in cases where mere observation won’t do since the author wasn’t there to observe--such as a section where Robinson talks about the origins of the "house slave/field slave, lightskinned/darkskinned" split in the black community--he breezily airs out "facts" without indicating where they came from. And too often, Robinson neglects his editor’s red pen and fails to mark out the superfluous. In one unmemorable section about his Brazilian years reminiscent of the worst home travel videos, for example, we learn that Robinson’s wife has a beautiful body, we hear about him taking a "wonderful picture of [his son] chasing a flock of pigeons across a plaza," we are told details of a plane repair during an unexpected stopover, and we read about "ice creams with bright, alien, tropical flavors" and the hotel’s "private zoo whose menagerie included a jaguar and a boa constrictor--not, thankfully, a petting zoo." This "thank-you-for-sharing" clutter fills up too much of the book, detracting from the main message.

"Coal to Cream" is at its best when the author sticks to his sensitive impressions of the many odd nuances of race and color both in America and in Brazil, and how a residue of anti-black prejudice continues to permeate both societies. At a time when it still appears to be a crime for men to ride around the streets of our country sporting dark skins, this is a subject that needs continuing study and discussion.