My First White Friend

June 3, 1996
Reared in suburban Denver, a black woman of middle age, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Colorado, Raybon decided to challenge her demons and "trace journey from rage to racial reasoning." This diaristic mix of anecdote and meditation shows her embracing complexity, trying to treat people as individuals while recognizing how race still matters. She writes of her father, an auditor, born poor in Mississippi, who willed himself to be a success in the white world but could never relax. She explores the specter of interracial sex, laden with taboo, and suggests that love would mean a healing, quotidian remedy. She has learned from Gandhi and King, flawed men who found inner peace in larger struggle. Marrying a light-skinned black man had forced Raybon to confront her own color prejudice, while her classroom experience has prompted students and professor alike to challenge their stereotypical attitudes. Raybon's terrain here is not all new, but her confessional has the intimate voice of hard-won honesty.