This personal memoir begins with the author quickly delineating that Negroland is the term given to that fractional minority of the black minority in America that enjoyed the privilege and a certain level of financial security. She then proceeds to describe how her experiences as both a participant and observer of this status allow her to become what she calls “a chronicler of Negroland.” And then she answers the second question looming over the title, asserting that this metaphorical description of a very real American subculture is called what it is because the word “Negro” was the dominant term describing her race for most of American history.
The author turns a person with an account of her father, Ronald Jefferson. This was a black American who counted himself a member within the brotherhood of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity and would go on to head up the pediatrics department at Provident Hospital. The author’s mother is described as a socialite. She counted herself among the sisterhood belonging to the Delta Sigma Theta sorority.
It is this social aspect of enjoying privilege as a black American that creates the conflict which drives the various themes explored throughout the narrative. Because a higher standard of living is involved, Negroland is just naturally less segregated than the conditions most black Americans lived in at the time. But integration into the populace does not necessarily equate with social integration. As the author recounts her childhood experiences, it becomes an aggressively complex portrait of existing as both an insider and outsider. The experience of existing outside the mainstream of black society also encourages prejudices within the Black community: children in Negroland are almost uniformly taught that those black people living within the mainstream partially have themselves to blame for emulating each other rather than emulating those enjoying success and privilege.
This subtle feeling of superiority within Negroland creates anxiety within children because of the implicit pressure that unless they emulate their parents, they could themselves lose the status they enjoy. History lessons of social activism within African American history are presented to underline the overtones of this message. Negroland is the only place where additional progress for the entire race can originate. The author presents a case study of historical parallels intent on solidifying the idea that advancement from the ultimate bottom rung of slavery to the very existence of Negroland has been overly dependent upon the activism and progressivism of its membership. This concept traces directly back to the influence of the “Talented Tenth” and W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folks before tracing a line forward to E. Franklin Frazier’s 1957 publication, Black Bourgeoisie.
Nevertheless, the personal experiences cast a dark shadow on a century’s worth of progressive movement. Able to gain entry into the ultimate sign of white status—an exclusive private school—the author still is forced to confront racism face-to-face. Because the janitor is also black, it is naturally assumed by the rich white kids that the black student must be personally familiar with him. She finds herself cast as the maid in a school play while her sister Denise must endure the indignity of being a talented dancer and warned against any expectations of ever joining a white ballet company.
Du Bois had given a lecture in 1948 warning that the Talented Tenth had to work diligently to avoid what almost seemed inevitable: becoming slaves to the privilege they enjoyed and forgetting their responsibility to use it for the betterment of the entire race. By the time author has reached college, the Civil Rights Movement is in full swing, and the warning of Du Bois seems applicable to almost all of Negroland. The end of the Civil Rights Movement coincided and mingled with the rise of the feminist movement and as a black woman, the author seamlessly makes the crossover. Unfortunately, many leaders in the feminist movement failed to see this crossover, and the author is stunned to discover that minority women are not accorded the same level of respect as whites within the movement.
The book begins to draw to a close with an extended and utterly fascinating analysis of the four March sisters from Little Women that begins with an unexpected assertion: “I should have wanted to be Amy.” Sister by sister, she goes through the characterizations, pointing out the positive and negative personality traits of these well-known literary icons as she relentlessly moves to the moment of explaining why each is personally not as relatable as Amy, of whom she observes that she never met any girl who read Little Women who would admit to wanting to grow up to be Amy.
