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Books by Stephen Carter
New England White /
The Emperor of Ocean Park /
The Culture of Disbelief /
Integrity /
Civility /
God's Name in Vain
Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby
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Kam Williams Interviews Stephen Carter
Author
of The New England White
Stephen L. Carter is the
William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale
University, where he has taught since 1982. A prolific
writer, he has published seven critically acclaimed
non-fiction books which have helped shape the national
debate on issues ranging from the role of religion in
politics and culture to that of integrity and civility
in our daily lives.
Professor Carter was
born in Washington, D.C. on October 26, 1954, the second
of five children, and attended public school there as
well as in New York City and Ithaca, New York. He
received his bachelor's from Stanford University and his
law degree from Yale before clerking for Supreme Court
Justice Thurgood Marshall, briefly practicing law, and
then finally joining the faculty at Yale.
One of the nation's
leading public intellectuals, he’s among the fifty
leaders for the new millennium as picked by Time
magazine. His writings have won praise from across the
political spectrum. Furthermore, he is a member of the
American Law Institute and a fellow at the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences. And he is also a trustee
of the Aspen Institute, where he moderates seminars for
executives on values-based leadership.
Among his half-dozen
honorary degrees are doctorates from Notre Dame,
Colgate, and the Virginia Theological Seminary. A
frequent guest on TV talk shows, Carter has periodically
appeared on Nightline, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer,
and Face the Nation. Plus, he’s a regular contributor as
a columnist to Christianity Today.
In 2002, he received a
record $4.2 million advance from Knopf for his first
novel,
The Emperor of Ocean Park
k, a murder
mystery set on Martha’s Vineyard. Here, he talks about
his sequel,
New England White,
another sophisticated suspense thriller set amidst the
African-American elite.
Interview
Kam Williams:
Your dad was a professor at Cornell when I was an
undergrad there, and I was friends with your sister,
Leslie. She brought me over to the house, and I remember
meeting her parents, and playing chess against her
genius brother who would beat me with painful
regularity. Was that you?
Stephen Carter:
If you lost, that must have been my brother Eric. He was
a very brilliant chess player.
Kam Williams:
Well, I was a pretty serious player myself,
having read several books and competed against some of
the best on campus, so I was surprised when I couldn’t
even hang with this gifted kid.
Stephen Carter:He was a very, very highly-rated player pretty young, an
expert on the U.S. Chess Federation scale. He could’ve
done very well in chess, but he got bored and quit after
a few years to pursue some other things.
Kam Williams:
How are Leslie and your folks doing?
Stephen Carter:
My mom died a number of years ago, in 1989.
Kam Williams:
Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I remember her as such a
warm, intelligent and beautiful woman.
Stephen Carter:thanks. My father has since remarried and is in
Virginia. And Leslie is doing well. She’s in Washington,
where she works as an occupational therapist.
Kam Williams:
Please give them my regards. Let’s talk about
your novels. Do you consider yourself a member of the
black elite you write about?
Stephen Carter: It’s not the
way I grew up. That is to say, although it is true that,
when I was a little boy, we went to Martha’s Vineyard a
couple of times, it wasn’t a regular feature of our
lives. I didn’t write about this class somehow because I
was fascinated by my family history. No, it’s really a
group of people I became fascinated with when I lived in
Washington, DC in the early 1980s, because I had never
really understood the existence of the “older families,”
although I’ve been told I really shouldn’t call them
that, because all the families are old. But
nevertheless, if I can use “older families” one more
time, I’m talking about families who have had education
and money, and a variety of these things that the
culture counts as achievements, for a very long time.
The notion that there have been such families in the
African-American community for generations fascinated
me. And it was that fascination, rather than anything
about my own family’s history, that led me to think
about setting fiction there.
Kam Williams: Are you familiar with
Our Kind of People by Lawrence Otis Graham?
Stephen Carter:
Of course. That book intrigued me years ago when I read
it.
Kam Williams:
I remember it being an eye-opener for me,
because I grew up in a bourgie black neighborhood. We
were invited to join Jack and Jill, and we spent our
summers in Sag Harbor. Yet, I was raised without any
pretensions or conscious hint that we might be part of
any elite.
SC:
It’s interesting that you mention Jack and Jill. That
wasn’t something that ever came up in our family. We
weren’t quite there, but on the other hand, my
grandmother was a lawyer in New York, my father’s
mother, so professionals go back in the family a long
way. And that is not as unusual a story as it seems. One
does not have to be completely a product of the almost
assembly line aspects of that culture to have been
touched by it, and to, in certain ways, for lack of a
better word, “appreciate” it. I think there’s a tendency
among us, among African-Americans, to mock the
pretensions of that culture. But they were trying to
build something for their kids. They were trying to
create, in the face of segregation, a world in which
achievement mattered, in which you worked to get ahead,
where solid values were the key to success. They didn’t
build it completely right, in a sense, and it didn’t
look like the way it would if you or I would have built
it, but they tried. And they tried at a time when a lot
of people would have stopped trying. I think that is to
be saluted.
Kam Williams:
Yeah, I grew up in the Fifties in a tight-knit
black enclave where everybody was achievement oriented
because it was full of role models, not only Jackie
Robinson and other pro athletes, but entertainers like
Count Basie, Coltrane, James Brown, the Ellingtons, Ella
Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, and Billie Holiday, plus plenty
of professionals, too, doctors, lawyers, bankers,
accountants, stock brokers, dentists, etcetera.
Stephen Carter:
That’s just fascinating. But that’s more like what I’d
read about, than what I’d lived in. For my next novel,
much of which will take place in Harlem in the Fifties,
I’ve had to do a lot of reading and a little bit of
interviewing, too, to educate myself and to get more of
a sense of that world.
Kam Williams:
It’s very weird for me sometimes to have
people challenge my blackness, and to suggest that I’m
somehow not authentically black because of the way I
speak, when I grew up in an all-black neighborhood where
everybody spoke the way I speak.
Stephen Carter:It’s a problem for young black people today to know so
little of our history and to think about our history the
way that white people do, that somehow our culture has
always come from the streets, and that education is
unusual. And they also tend to associate black wealth
with being an entertainer or a sports star. Entertainer
and athletes work very hard, I don’t begrudge them their
money, but that is a very tiny corner of the history of
success and hard work and achievement in our
community.
Kam Williams:
Are you familiar with Ellis Cose’s book about
the black bourgeoisie called
The Rage of a Privileged Class?
Stephen Carter:
Yes, I used to write a lot of book reviews in the
Eighties and Nineties. I don’t remember all of them, but
I think I might have reviewed it. I actually can’t
recall right now.
Kam Williams:
Well, I’m asking because I often think of that book
in conjunction with one of yours,
Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby, which
was published just prior to that. How do you feel you
were positioned because of that book?
Stephen Carter:
I don’t really think about it that much. I know that
might sound like a peculiar thing to say, but I really
don’t know. It’s funny, when I was out in the Midwest on
book tour for
The Emperor of Ocean Park
a few years
ago, a woman asked me, “Can you tell us how you got from
Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby to
The Emperor of Ocean Park
?” It took
me a while to understand what she was really asking,
that she saw these books as fundamentally opposed to
each other in some sense. I think that what she was
getting at was that I had been out of the mainstream and
had now rejoined it. But I never thought about it that
way. I never thought of
Reflections as being outside of the mainstream.
I thought of it as a book that was trying to make a
point, maybe with more heat than was needed, but it was
still trying to make a book. Ellis Cose called it rage,
but what you’ve seen in the semi-autobiographical,
non-fiction writings of many black professionals from
that period was really frustration, a sense that so many
things were lined up in ways that made it awkward to be
who we were.
Kam Williams:
His book resonated with me, since I experienced my
share of that rage. How do you explain that phenomenon?
Where do you place the blame for the widespread
discontent of so many relatively-privileged blacks?
Stephen Carter:It’s not a matter of ascribing fault. It’s a matter of
trying to think of the dynamics that produced a lot of
that writing by people who, by the world’s definition,
had succeeded, and had really succeeded extremely well.
Kam Williams:
Tell me a little about your new murder
mystery,
New England White.
Are your main characters, Lemaster and Julia, based on
your parents? After all your dad was a university
president at one time, like Lemaster.
Stephen Carter:
[Laughs heartily] No, until you just mentioned that, it
had never occurred to me. [Laughs some more]
Kam Williams:
So, I guess, in that case that their daughter,
Vanessa, wasn’t inspired by your sister Leslie either.
Stephen Carter:No. Of course, fiction is inspired by life, but there’s
never been an instance in my work thus far where
somebody’s meant to be just like someone real. I don’t
do the kind of fiction where I sit around and ask
myself, “Well, who shall I next use?”
KW:
When I see words in the book like “sinecure”
and “abstemious” which had me reaching for the
dictionary, and “dandling” and “soteriology” which were
completely new to me, I have to wonder who your intended
audience is.
Stephen Carter:
Here’s the thing. I want to, of course, have as many
readers as I can get. So, I’m not aiming for a
demographic which knows all of the words I use. In fact,
many of these words were not a part of my own
vocabulary. “Soteriology,” I didn’t even know what it
was, until I had to learn the lingo of a divinity school
for part of this book. So, I discovered new words in the
course of my research. When I’m writing, I try to think
about the people I’m writing about how they talk and
think and see the world, more than how I or my readers
view it. That’s what I’m trying to get at.
KW:
Who’s your favorite murder mystery writer?
Mine is Gore Vidal who wrote several excellent thrillers
in the Fifties under the pseudonym Edgar Box.
Stephen Carter:
That’s interesting. I’ve read a lot of Gore Vidal over
the years, but I have not read his mysteries.
KW:
Has any writer served as your source of
inspiration?
Stephen Carter:
The question of inspiration is one I’ve always tried to
be very cagey about, partly because it’s difficult to
say who one’s inspirations are. But the other reason is
that there’s always the risk of slighting someone. You
wouldn’t believe the angry notes I got, saying “How
could you leave out so-and-so” after I’d once listed in
an article some of the people who’d inspired me. I’m
serious. So, I prefer not to talk about that.
Kam Williams:
Well, can you at least tell me which mystery
writers you enjoy reading?
Stephen Carter:
I don’t read as much fiction as I used to. And I almost
never read fiction that is related even tangentially to
what I may write. But there was once a period in my life
when I read a lot of the classic, Agatha Christie-type
mysteries and the potboilers from the Thirties and
Forties.
Kam Williams:
Then why don’t you write in a more compact
style, instead of producing such densely-developed,
multi-layered crime capers.
Stephen Carter:They didn’t necessarily teach me how I write mysteries.
They just piqued my interest in mysteries, which goes
back a long way. It’s not so much that I’m trying to
write in the style of mystery writers whose style I
admire, it’s more that those are some writers whose
mysteries I’ve enjoyed, and they help explain my
interest in writing mysteries.
Kam Williams:
Why are yours over 500 pages long, which
appears to be a trademark of your novels?
Stephen Carter:I hope they’re not too long, but I like reading long
books. If I’m really enjoying a book, I generally hate
to see it end. I also care about character and scene.
Further, I like to give background, and had to, in a
sense, I believe, for the reader to establish the bona
fides of the class of people I’m talking about.
Otherwise, many people wouldn’t believe it exists, as if
it’s a kind of interesting and cute fantasy, almost.
Kam Williams:
Yes, your devotion to character development
prevents readers from easily dismissing the
African-American upper class as some popular bourgie
black archetypes, ala George Jefferson.
Stephen Carter:
Naturally, as a writer, I’m glad to achieve that. I
don’t principally write novels to spread ideas. But if
people still find them provocative, worth wondering and
thinking about, and arguing and reflecting about, so
much the better.
Kam Williams:
There’s a passage on page 33 of your book
which reminded me of Invisible Man, which I
thought of because a friend of mine just published a
biography of Ralph Ellison.
Stephen Carter:
Arnold Rampersad?
Kam Williams:
Yeah.
Stephen Carter:
I read his biography of
Langston Hughes, which I enjoyed immensely. The Ellison
book is on my summer reading list, and I’m looking
forward to it.
Kam Williams:
Anyway, in
New England White
you describe how black males are barely noticed on Ivy
League campuses and how black females are invisible
there.
Stephen Carter:Yes,
that is a little homage to Ralph Ellison. There are
hidden in the book in different places a series of
homages to various writers, black and white. Little
lines here and there... Turns of a phrase woven into the
text. It’s interesting that you picked up on that one.
In another instance, a character is inspired by a
character from another novel, though I’m not going to
say who that is.
Kam Williams:
What do you want your readers to come away
with after reading the book?
SC:
Here, I’m going to sound like a hack, I suppose. The
most important thing for me is that they enjoy it and
feel entertained. I cannot emphasize that enough. First
and foremost, I really think of it as entertainment. I
want people to relax, get away from their problems, and
have a good time. And most importantly, when they’re
done, feel that it was worth their while, and maybe feel
a little bit sad that it’s over. Beyond that, it’s fine
with me if the reader is provoked by some of the ideas
expressed in the book. But that’s not my main reason for
writing it.
Kam Williams:
Thanks for the time Stephen and good luck with it.
Will you be coming through Princeton on your book tour?
Stephen Carter:
No, but I’ll be in Philadelphia, that’s the closest I’ll
get. Over the years, there have been a number of times
when I’ve been invited to speak a Princeton, but I’ve
never actually gotten down there. Well, this has been a
great conversation.
Kam Williams: Absolutely, I loved it, and I hope I can make
it to Philly.
Stephen Carter:
That’d be
great, bye.
posted 28 July 2007
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Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
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Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
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principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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update 8 December 2011
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