Dr Barry Wolfe

Izzy White? Dr Barry Wolfe

Publisher Marketing: It's 1958 and school desegregation has already challenged so much of what Izzy White thinks he knows about Negroes, life, and himself. Jewish and insecure, Izzy has fallen in love with Rhythm and Blues, Black dance styles, basketball, and any girl who smiles at him. At the same time he fears that Negroes will either contaminate him in some way or kick his ass. A year later, because he has no money, feels guilty about his own racism, and has a ton of curiosity about Black people, he chooses to go to Howard University, "The Harvard of Negro Education." He enters Howard just when students in the South are beginning to challenge the Jim Crow Laws that have governed race relations for the past half-century. Izzy is filled with painful conflicts as he navigates between his white world in the suburbs and his Black world at Howard. He is shocked by the brutality experienced by American Negroes, astonished at the range of ways Negroes attempt to deal with second class citizenship, bemused by some of the Negro stereotypes of whites, and enraged at the current state of race relations. Izzy's sojourn involves many humorous attempts and missed opportunities to fully integrate himself into Howard's college life and a convoluted search for self-discovery.