She condemns black leaders who neglect to instill pride in their
flock in favor of the emotional score of excoriating whites. But
black leftists inclined to dismiss Dickerson as one more "sell-
out" would be pleasantly surprised by much in this book,
inasmuch as Dickerson devotes its first half to a bitter
portrait of whites ripe with passages sure to get heads nodding
among the victimology crowd. Yet the heart of Dickerson's
argument is a penetrating analysis of what looks peculiar to
outside observers about modern black America. Why do legions of
blacks, succeeding in an America whose openness to our
achievement would have seemed a fantasy to our ancestors, insist
that their lives are still dominated by an ever-present
"racism"? Dickerson understands that the heart of this is
insecurity. Truly oppressed people cannot afford to wallow in
and exaggerate their plight. But for people who are doing pretty
well but left by history without an organic sense of pride and
place, fashioning one's self as eternally abus