Makes Me Wanna Holler

McCall writes:

I was curious to see, close-up, just how much we benefited from having blacks involved in politics. I saw in Atlanta that we benefited in the sense that black political leaders could use the city government as a vehicle to hire other minorities and to ensure that black businesses got a fair share of the city contract dollars. But beyond that, there was only so much they could do to help the masses of black folks. There were only so many jobs the city government could provide. To employ more people, the city needed help from private industry, which was composed primarily of white businesspeople. That’s where the major breakdowns occurred. Covering City Hall, I saw how white-run businesses, such as banks, actually undermined development in black communities (322).

McCall also observed that politics is a game and it’s about winning, for both black and white politicians. “It’s all the better if the public benefits, but most of the time it’s about winning” (323). In the 1980’s, “[o]pen hostility toward blacks came back in vogue” (325). While white-run corporations plundered the country, President Reagan and the government cast black people as shiftless and unpatriotic, claiming they were bankrupting the government by accepting welfare. McCall felt some hope when Jesse Jackson ran for president. He thought Jackson stood a chance because he’d mastered the game. Jim, McCall’s mentor from prison, argued to him that it wouldn’t matter “because white folks control the rules of the game” (328). Jim was right; they changed the rules of the game on Jesse Jackson and he didn’t stand a chance.

Most white reporters discounted the notion that they were competing with black men. To them, newsroom competition was between white men and white women. The paper’s management promoted the idea that the black reporters were affirmative-action hires, and not truly worthy of their jobs: “Success in journalism is tied directly to a writer’s psychological state. You need to be relaxed to write well. But blacks at the Journal-Constitution never had that comfort” (328). Any mistakes, regardless how slight, could end a career. McCall much preferred, and grew envious of, the black folks living in the West End, living outside the system:

[W]hile most other black people were busting their butts to get into the system, these folks were scrambling to get out. A lot of them had figured out ways to survive outside the system and keep from working for the white man (332).

McCall writes:

I stayed mad so much about one thing or another that I felt at times like I’d explode. I began to wonder how long I’d last in the white mainstream. The racism at work never ended. I could feel it in exchanges with whites all the time. It was always there, just below the surface and it took a toll on me (334).

McCall felt he needed a different job and a change of scenery. He interviewed for a black-owned periodical in New York, Black Enterprise magazine, and other black-owned papers in Atlanta, but black papers paid much less than mainstream papers and he now had a family to think of. What he really wanted to do, but knew he couldn’t, was return to Africa:

When I first went into the system, I assumed, like many blacks, that whites could be won over if I proved myself. Once they worked with me and realized I was just as smart and skilled as them, they would drop the racist assumptions they used to justify holding me and other blacks back. But I saw now that racism ran deeper than a few misconceptions. I realized I could spend a lifetime trying to prove myself and nothing would change (337).

McCall had come too far to return to his old life, but he couldn’t stay in his new life much longer, either. 

Danny Baum was a young Jewish white man who transferred to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution from The Wall Street Journal because The Journal was “too stuffy and pretentious” (343). He moved into a black neighborhood in Atlanta and was the most straightforward, honest, and nice white person McCall had met:

Danny had done his own examination of the white mainstream and reached some of the same conclusions as [McCall]: that it was totally fucked up, that they needed to scratch all the rules governing the macho corporate game and go back to drawing stickmen on cave walls because that’s about how far they’d come in human development (343).

Danny held management in contempt and marched with black civil rights leaders, and when he asked McCall to hang out, it was the first such invitation from a white colleague McCall accepted. They became friends and learned a lot about each other, and each other’s cultures. McCall even confided in Danny that he’d been to prison, something he didn’t tell anyone, especially white colleagues.

Danny helped McCall see the world through white eyes and illustrated that even the most highly-educated whites knew little about black life:

That showed me that the education system in this country has failed white people more than it’s failed anybody else. It has crippled them and limited their humanity. They’re the ones who need to know the most about everybody because they’re the ones running the country. They’ve been taught so little about anybody other than white people that they can’t understand, even when they try (347).

Danny moved to Africa in 1987, but the experience of befriending a white man made McCall more receptive to engaging with the other white journalists in his office. 

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution brought in Bill Kovach from The New York Times to make the paper a national, respected paper. He reworked the paper and his presence divided the newsroom into two groups: the white good-ol’-boys who resisted the Yankee invasion and those who were glad to see the good-ol’-boy system go. It made clear that not only were the white good-ol’-boys unable to deal with modern racism and equality, but that they hadn’t yet gotten over the Civil War. Kovach offered equal opportunities to black and white journalists. McCall was promoted to City Hall Bureau Chief and got to travel. He went to New Orleans, Miami, and even on a tour of Europe with the mayor, a group of other politicians, and Atlanta businessmen for a trade delegation. 

McCall writes, “Often, during those years after prison, it seemed that I was spending the second half of my life trying to straighten out all the mistakes made in the first” (358). In 1987, McCall interviewed for a position at The Washington Post. Working at The Washington Post would be like a promotion to the major leagues. As excited as McCall was, he was anxious over having to again address his past as a convicted felon. The Post did more thorough background checks than other papers because of an embarrassing incident in 1981 with a black reporter, Janet Cooke, who lied about the college she attended and about a series of stories she wrote that won a Pulitzer Prize. McCall went on a promising round of interviews in Washington DC and omitted his felony conviction from the panel. He didn’t fill out an application and wasn’t asked if he’d been in prison, so he didn’t lie, but he also wasn’t forthcoming about it. Some weeks later, the Post discovered that he’d been in prison and confronted him about it. Too drained to fight for the job, McCall requested that he be removed from consideration. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, and even though he was a completely different person now, his past still managed to sabotage his present.

That year, Debbie filed for divorce from McCall, alleging mental cruelty and commencing “a long and painful process” (362). Things were improving at the paper, however, and McCall was accepted to a month long “popular fellowship program called the Multicultural Management Program,” run by a black journalist at the University of Missouri (362). At the program, McCall bonded with journalists from many cultures and realized other minorities were facing the same challenges he faced: “We had learned that the racial differences that we had considered so profound were not so broad after all, and we felt better equipped to go out and preach the gospel of multiculturalism” (365). 

McCall’s family friend, Greg, stayed with him briefly in Atlanta. While he was there, he fell hard into a drug addiction to crack cocaine. Crack was a new drug at the time and people weren’t ready for how strong and addictive it was. McCall couldn’t believe it at first. He’d known Greg since they were little and knew he could handle drugs, and he didn’t believe crack was different. Greg sold almost everything he had to buy more crack, and what he didn’t sell was repossessed. He went back to Portsmouth and checked into rehab. When McCall visited Greg in rehab, he found a lot of his friends were hooked on crack, and that “the drug game had progressed to another level” (369).

Portsmouth changed over the years. Drugs took over and there was a revolving door of thugs running things just long enough to inspire the next kingpin before getting “busted, robbed, or shot” (370). McCall noticed “life was taking a toll on brothers everywhere. There weren’t many in [his] bunch you could point to and say, ‘He’s doing fine’” (371). Bimbo was doing fine. Bimbo slipped and fell on the tracks while working for a railroad company. Before he could pull his leg away, a train car moved, severing his foot. The company settled with him and he became a millionaire overnight. Everyone found out, though, and he was hounded for money by friends and family. He moved outside the city, erected a big fence, and changed his phone number.

Billy’s brother, Dwight, was going through hard times. His mother kept propping him up:

I didn’t want to give up on my brother, either, but I didn’t want to see him hurting my mother so. She worried about him all the time. I understand now that that’s just the nature of a mother’s love. A boy’s blood daddy will get fed up and throw him into the streets on his head, but a mother is connected to her children in ways men don’t understand (377). 

McCall writes that “[c]ompared to [his] divorce, doing time in prison was like a day at the beach. Divorce is hell” (379). Nothing in the divorce court system worked and it was unfair to everyone except lawyers. Further, “children get caught in the middle of that mess” (379). McCall viewed his case simply: “Debbie wanted the house and a thousand dollars a month in child support. [He] couldn’t afford to pay that much, live, and send money for Monroe, too” (381). It didn’t matter to the court that he couldn’t meet his obligations. The court ordered him to pay Debbie $500 per month in child support. She also got to stay in the house and McCall had to pay her mortgage. The total was half McCall’s take-home pay, and he also owed his attorney several thousand dollars. When he explained to his attorney that paying that amount was impossible, the attorney “shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘That’s just the way it is’” (381).

The judge ordered joint custody, but joint custody really meant that the children lived with Debbie and McCall visited them every other weekend. After falling behind on payments, he pleaded with the judge to reduce his obligations. The judge responded suggested filing bankruptcy: “The message from the judge was clear […] The courts view the father mainly as the money source” (383).

Every time he fell behind on payments, Debbie took McCall to court and added more lawyers’ fees (both his and her lawyer)—money that could have been spent catching up on support payments. McCall burned through his savings and went into debt, but still couldn’t keep up. He thought about it in two ways:

Maybe this is God’s way of paying me back for all the hurt and pain I’ve dished out to other folks. Maybe I need to accept it as divine justice and quietly take my lumps. At other times, I looked at it another way: that the anguish was the price I had to pay to be able to live with myself and face the world; that two of my children could say that their parents had been married, no matter how brief or ugly that union had been (384).

McCall sought counseling and his troubles persisted. In 1989, he received a job offer from The Washington Post. He left Atlanta for Washington DC.

McCall made it to the big time, “[t]he capital of the so-called Free World” (388). It felt good just to be further north. Washington DC had its own brand of racism, one subtler than the deep south. It was evident in store employees and taxi drivers ignoring blacks while jumping through hoops to please whites. He also met more middle-class blacks in DC than in other cities, which he describes as “one of the most confused, alienated groups in the land” (389). He made a point of finding barber shops in working-class black neighborhoods and just hanging out.

McCall spent his first few weeks at the Post awestruck, and had to constantly reassure himself that he deserved to be there. He was assigned to a three-member team covering the upcoming mayoral election. He was told the team “was put together to kill the competition” (392). He immediately conflicted with his editor and the two other reporters. His editor made it clear that he didn’t approve of the Post hiring an ex-con, and together with the other two reporters (both young white men) tried to sabotage McCall. McCall learned that “[n]o matter how old or experienced you get, white boys are always going to assume that they’re better and know more, even if they’re right out of college” (393).

McCall returned to Atlanta to take his children to Washington DC for a visit, and Debbie had him arrested for nonpayment of child support. It was a modern-day debtor’s prison. He spent the weekend in jail while his family pulled together bail money. While there, he fasted and reflected. After four days in jail, he was released:

The spiritual fast had helped me see something that I’d lost sight of: Human beings are far too complex to be labeled completely good or totally bad. Debbie was a good mother to my children. She was angry at me, and definitely vengeful, but not a bad person by any stretch of the imagination (400). 

When McCall was younger, he’d hooked up with a girl named Carolyn. A month later, she told him she was pregnant. He didn’t believe the baby was his, and thought that if he and his friends ran a train on her, he’d be able to “duck the blame” (401). While driving to the lake to run the train, Carolyn caught onto the plan and jumped out of the moving car. She was knocked unconscious and convulsed. Scared, they dropped her at her house and left. Carolyn’s parents called McCall’s house, and spoke to him and his parents about the incident. Carolyn delivered a baby girl and McCall didn’t keep in touch with her. McCall’s mother did, however, and even sent her supplies for the baby. When McCall was leaving Atlanta for DC, McCall’s mother informed him Carolyn and the baby were also in DC.

After he settled into DC, he got in touch with Carolyn. McCall didn’t think that Carolyn’s daughter, Cheryl, who was now 18, resembled him. He resolved to perform a blood test to find out. Cheryl was soon impregnated by an unemployed boy, and McCall became a grandfather at 36: “Another fatherless black child, I thought. These cycles. These cycles keep repeating themselves” (405).

A few months after he’d moved to DC, Liz sent Monroe to live with McCall. Monroe was showing signs of trouble and she thought McCall was the best person to straighten him out. Monroe was also showing interest in McCall and wanted to live with him. McCall taught Monroe about the fallacies of street logic, and used straightforward honesty to steer him toward the right path. When Monroe started getting bad, McCall “broke down the macho façade” and made clear “what manhood was and was not about” (410):

That’s how we got through everything: talking, communicating, doing something my parents’ generation hadn’t been taught to do. I often wondered during those talks with Monroe how I might have turned out if I’d had somebody I could talk to about everything (411).

Monroe graduated high school in 1991 and went right off to college.

McCall writes:

I wish there were more successes like Monroe to point to. I wish that somehow, brothers everywhere would reach down deep and summon the will to defy the inner hatred driving them to self-destruct. But everywhere I see them giving in (412).

Some of the guys McCall grew up with are doing OK, but most are “either in prison, dead, drug zombies, or nickel-and-dime hustlers” (413). There are many theories addressing the culture of violence that pervades black communities, most of them overtly simplistic, but the problems “are more complex than something we can throw jobs, social programs, or more policemen at” (413).

McCall states:

I have come to believe two things that might seem contradictory: Some of our worst childhood fears were true—the establishment is teeming with racism. Yet I also believe whites are as befuddled about race as we are, and they’re as scared of us as we are of them. Many of them are seeking solutions, just like us (414).

At the writing of this book, McCall saw a younger, meaner generation of black men on the streets, with less regard for human life: “[I]f they saw the world as I once did, they believed they had nothing to lose, including life itself. It made me wanna holler and throw up both my hands” (416).