Long Way To Go: Black And White In America

The Story

Drawing on countless interviews (marked by astonishing frankness), on diaries, journals, and letters, on events he himself witnessed, and weaving it all into the context of history, Coleman introduces us to a fascinating cast of characters: an alderman who revives a chapter of the Black Panthers and threatens guerilla warfare if certain demands are not met ... a sixties revolutionary who becomes school superintendent ... a white woman who insists she has 'earned' her racism ... another who becomes painfully aware of the 'privileges' she has just because she is white ... a black family determined that gangs not force them out of their neighborhood ... a Rotarian who wonders why, given everybody's 'good intentions', things are still the way they are. By looking at America through the window of Milwaukee, Coleman's journey through the minefield of race becomes our journey. His book is a marvelously constructed tapestry whose power is cumulative, yet one that allows us to look unflinchingly at each individual strand of race in the 1990s - from the ongoing changes in welfare and affirmative action to the successes and failures of integration; from the appointment of Clarence Thomas and the Los Angeles riots to O. J. Simpson and the Million Man March; from life in the ghetto to the lives of those who have escaped it and now exist uneasily in the mainstream; from the bitterness of white conservatives - and the rise of black onesto the disillusionment of white liberals; and many others....