JC
The New York Times reviews new release, Angry Black White Boy - Or, The Miscegenation of Macon Detornay, by Adam Mansbach. Main character Macon Detornay is a “down whiteboy” who attempts to atone for his people’s sins and find acceptance within the black community by attacking and terrorizing other white people.

A graduate of Newton South High School, Macon has grown up as a Jewish kid on the leafy streets of the Boston suburbs, where he has witnessed liberal white hypocrisy first hand. ”Even the most concerned white people,” he observes, ”have always been able to back away from race . . . when the truth is too ugly or complicated.”

Macon first becomes aware of these ugly truths on the day of the Los Angeles riots following the acquittal of the officers charged in the assault on Rodney King. The pre-adolescent Macon, enraged by the verdict, storms out of his house determined to ”make his contribution to the struggle by providing whiteness for the stomping.” But since there aren’t any black people within miles who might consent to stomp on him, he tries instead to start his own riot. …

But absolution is not the only thing Macon is after. He seeks vengeance, too. As a freshman at Columbia University he takes a job as a cabdriver; whenever obnoxious white people get in his taxi, he flashes a gun, calls them ”ignorant white devils” and demands their wallets and neckties. Soon he’s a tabloid celebrity; The New York Post anoints him ”the city’s most controversial criminal since Bernhard Goetz.” Even more than vengeance, though, it often seems that Macon simply wants to be accepted by the black culture he idolizes. Eager to impress his black roommate on the first day of college, he pulls back the sleeve of his T-shirt to reveal the date of the King verdict, 4-29-92, tattooed in small green characters on his biceps. ”A Jewish kid with numbers tattooed on his arm,” cracks his roommate, who was actually in Los Angeles during the riots. ”Now I’ve seen it all.”