Dalton Conley

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Andrew Roberts

SO 302

Dr. James

Book Review

Dalton Conley is a white sociologist who grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in an predominantly Latino and African-American neighborhood around the late 1970’s, early 80’s. He details his experiences in the book Honky which offers readers a unique insight into the what life was like during these times, how the social constructs of class and race affected everyday life, and how the subsections of these groups created a system in which certain groups were afforded greater opportunities than others.

Typically in America, when someone talks of being a part of the white race it means to be a part of the majority, to be a part of something seen as superior or separate from other races. For Dalton Conley, who came from a impoverished middle class family, this was not his reality. For most of Dalton’s young life the notion of race was entirely foreign to him. He thought of himself as no different than the people he saw everyday. They all went to the same schools, lived in the same squalor which to Dalton meant that they must be the same. According to Dalton the three signs that he was the same as everyone else were the fact that there was graffiti everywhere, they were separate from the rest of the world due to the Con Edison Plant, and that they lived in Slums, all typical signs of poverty at that time. At this time Dalton was pretty much the only white kid in his apartment complex.

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Around the age of three Dalton attempts to acquire himself a new baby sister by abducting a young girl from a family of black separatists. His youth and innocence to how the world really was made him naive to the racial constructs around him, but as he grew he started learn the complexities that came along with race and racial status in America. When describing his childhood Dalton talks about it as some sort of social experiment about figuring out what it really meant to be middle class. This type of unique perspective in conjuncture with Conley’s flair for observance offers the reader an interesting viewpoint of how the issues of race and class intersected.

In keeping with this Dalton details the moment in which he started to realize he was different from those around him. Him and his sister attended a nursery school that was funded by the federal government, where they had to deal with issues because their skin was white and no one elses was. It was here that Dalton and his family learned that skin color mattered in the world in that can define where you belong in terms of social standing. Dalton desperately desired to be a part of the group of his peers, to recieve the same treatment as they did, so much so that he wished to be called “nigga” so that he would feel like one of them. In this Dalton shows an interesting turn in which he as white person is experiencing the stigma that can come along with being a minority in his world, while at the same time still possessing white privilege and being a part of the majority in the world at large.

This was just the first of many lessons Dalton would learn about race relations. Another came when Dalton entered his first public school and experiences classroom segregation. He chooses to be a part of the black class so that he may interact with those who he sees as his peers but quickly grows to regret that as he is the only

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student who is not a victim of corporal punishment. A fact that does not go unnoticed by his classmates and which makes Dalton extremely uncomfortable, so much so that

he transfers to another class that was predominantly Chinese and then to another school where things were not much better. His new school introduces him to to reality of classism as his new classmates place class in higher importance than that of race. This experience also enlightened Dalton to the privileges that being a part of certain races can afford you. His ability to choose what class he wanted to be was a choice not offered to his classmates, and Dalton was aware that this choice was a product of his white skin. Another example of this privilege according to Dalton was that after one of his friends is shot and paralyzed Dalton is able to transfer across town to a new predominately white school. It was here that Dalton learned the benefits of cultural capital and the type of power it can hold when used properly. It was also here that Dalton realized that there were other forces besides choices that affected how ones life turned out. The realization that outside forces, such as familial connections, and the languages people know can all have an impact on peoples opportunities, which once again showed how race and class intersected.

Around this time Dalton details his experiences trying to make friends as a growing young man. During their summer vacation Dalton gets into an altercation with a group of black kids playing baseball that results in him being threatened with a knife. His sister meanwhile experiences racism while at her summer school and also while attending a sleepover. He details how he had trouble making friends in junior high school because other kids were always teasing him. It was also around this time that his family’s financial situation greatly improved with both of his parents getting new better paying jobs. But at this point the culture in which Dalton has grown up in