Workin' on the Chain Gang: Shaking off the Dead Hand of History.

Workin' on the Chain Gang: Shaking off the Dead Hand of History

by Walter Mosley Ballantine, January 2000, $16.95, ISBN 0-345-43069-7

All along, we knew that Walter Mosley was deep. Now, with the publication of Workin' on the Chain Gang, we know that he is courageous, too. Published as part of the Library of Contemporary Thought's series on "provocative issues," Mosley's nonfiction effort brings his singular voice and innovative views on race and class to the fore. By primarily exploring the class differences that pose the greatest challenge to our democracy, Mosley goes beyond old racial constructs to reveal the literal and metaphoric "chains" that bind us.

By contrast, a new book by journalist David J. Dent, In Search of Black America, takes up the unenviable task of trying to describe what life is like for blacks, specifically the black middle-class in the late 20th century. And where the finely honed vision and elegant tone of Mosley's book is a model of clarity, Dent's book is nearly done in from the beginning by its strained concept. "The black middle-class ... ," Dent writes in his introduction, "is one of the more frequently `discovered' groups in the nation's history, yet one of most misunderstood, too." While Dent points out that generation after generation of white Americans have been continually "surprised" to learn that middle-class blacks exist, it is not unfair to wonder what, if anything, the larger community of blacks might gain from yet another book that attempts to enlighten whites about the diversity of African America. All the same, as with Mosley's essay, Dent's discussion is valuable for its potential to encourage blacks to think more creatively about how to ensure our continued progress in America.

In his fiction, Mosley takes us into worlds thick with emotion. Through his characters, he is extremely adept at highlighting the terrible results of white society's dedicated fear of the Negro. In Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, for example, Mosley's character Socrates Fortlow is a hard but charitable black man with a troubled past who scrambles to keep his dignity amid a daily onslaught of soul-killing hits from whites and self-hating blacks.

But by effectively using fictionalized characters to state his case, Mosley's own thoughts and opinions on life, and particularly on race and class, can only be surmised by readers willing to peer between the lines. In Workin' on the Chain Gang, however, Mosley's own ideas take center stage. And while they are refreshingly simple, one should not confuse the simplicity of Mosley's ideas with an absence of substance. The gist of his argument is that, should we pull together, the majority of Americans--those of us who do not run the major banks, businesses, and political enterprises that employ or otherwise profit from our labors--have the power to change "the system" for our own benefit. All it takes, Mosley believes, is a willingness to give up as many of the system's "chains"--like material obsessions, for instance, and apathy--as we can. His proposal is not quite Marxist, but Mosley is likely to cause a good number of former Cold Warriors to lick their red-baiting chops over this essay.

In sum, Mosley fingers the primary force that oppresses the majority of Americans: the tiny but powerful number of individuals and business entities who control the vast majority of wealth in the United States and around the world. The rest of us, Mosley says, are simply slogging along trying to keep our heads within the swirl of all that stuff--the technology, creature-comforts and the other distractions thrust at us by multinational companies who make much bank off our desperate consuming. Consequently, Mosley writes, the race construct as we know it in America--wherein whites continue to hold the economic and political power yet seem blind to their historic role in keeping blacks and other nonwhite people down--is merely a small part of a larger problem, namely, the human propensity for cruelty, greed, and power-mongering.

And before you can wonder if brother Mosley was going to step all neo-conservative on us, he says that he appreciates the unique place within the annals of oppression that is held by African Americans. Blacks, therefore, have all the more incentive to rail against the "juggernaut of capitalism," Mosley says. In the end, Mosley raises intriguing questions about our own depth of commitment to making the world a more compassionate place.

With In Search of Black America, veteran journalist David J. Dent is one step behind Mosley in terms of examining blacks' economic gains during the past half-decade. In interviews conducted over several years, and in cities large and small across the nation, Dent plumbs the hopes and dreams of many blacks who have "made it" economically, but whose spirits are still dampened by white racism and discrimination on some level or another. To his credit, Dent does a fabulous job of telling their stories, and of providing historic background--from the annual Emancipation Day celebrations in Ohio, to black rodeo culture out West--that demonstrates how firmly entrenched blacks are in the United States.

Yet one wonders exactly for whom Dent is writing--white Americans who have willfully ignored the burgeoning black middle-class for more than a hundred years? Whites who have lately discovered the black middle-class and prefer to focus on its growth at the expense of the millions of blacks still mired at the poverty level? Or black Americans who (presumably) require a literary mirror to remind--or convince--ourselves that we are more than the sum of our well-documented dysfunctions and pathologies? Overall, Dent's treatment deserves praise, and it is heartening to read that increasing numbers of black Americans are moving toward economic self-sufficiency. But, as Mosley points out, is succeeding in the same system that has oppressed blacks for so long really a victory?

Amy Alexander, a frequent contributor to BIBR, is the co-author, with Dr. Alvin F. Poussaint, of Lay My Burden Down: Suicide and the Mental Health Crisis Among African Americans.