Eddy L. Harris has spent years trying to figure out what makes him black, and what makes him an American. This search has taken him down the length of America's most mythical river in a canoe, a quest he chronicled in "Mississippi Solo" (1988), and on a long African journey that left him feeling more American than ever ("Native Stranger," 1992). For his recent book, "Still Life in Harlem," Harris made his home in Harlem, "the alabaster vessel that holds the Blackamerican heart." He discovered a place far from its glorious Renaissance days, a once shining cultural capital now filled with the shards of broken dreams. While he found "there is still life in Harlem ... there is a barrenness to it." In the most jagged moments of anguish during his two-year stay, Harris was even driven to declare, "I refuse to be black." One such moment occurred in the middle of the night, when Harris was shaken from this sleep by the sounds of a man beating a woman in the street below his apartment. "In the few moments of my indecision I told myself that enough was enough, told myself that I wanted no longer to be black if this is how black men behaved, told myself that I wanted nothing more to do with a world without beauty in it, and that cared not for beauty. It had been beautiful and joyful once, but this — this man beating a woman — this is what we've let it all come down to: this man beating this woman, the drug dealers lining too many streets in the neighborhood, women willing to sell themselves for a pittance and men willing to buy them, the rats and the roaches, the joblessness, the fatherless children and the mothers who do not care, the far too many people who do not seem to care." Then Harris slipped on his jeans and T-shirt and went downstairs to confront the woman's attacker. "Perhaps in time I can indeed refuse to be black ... but not this night. This night I am here. This night I am black and I am in Harlem and I have no choice but to be in this moment and make of it what I can." We spoke recently with Harris by phone in Baltimore, where he was stopping over during his book tour.  When you were 10, your family moved out of the St. Louis ghetto and into the suburbs. Later you went to Stanford, traveled far and wide, lived in Europe, became a writer, someone who fairly easily crosses the color barrier. Then you decided to move to Harlem, to the heart of black America. To find out, in a way, in what sense are you black. So what did you discover? What is it about you that is black, other than your skin pigmentation? I still don't have an answer. I think it's wholly absurd, the notion that I am who I am because of the color of my skin. If you come up to me at a cocktail party, I want it to be impossible for you to make assumptions about me because my skin is black and I'm tall and I wear a beard. I could be the meanest guy; I could be the sweetest guy. If you want to know who I am, I want you to have to talk with me. To find out who is the whole person. So that's what I'm trying to explore in this book — what does it mean to be black in America, apart from the fact that white people, and black people too, expect something from me because of my skin color. All right, so what does it mean to be black? Well, apart from skin color, there is a rich cultural heritage. It comes from the historical treatment of black people. There is blues and jazz and gospel; there is barbeque, black-eyed peas. There is so much that is emblematic of being black. But does that mean that a white person can't enjoy black-eyed peas? Yes, as Stanley Crouch has said, to a large extent black culture is American culture. Look at Michael Jordan and see how black athletes have changed this American pastime, basketball — they're not playing Bob Cousey basketball anymore. We're playing a different brand of basketball and football and baseball, which then, because it's so inspiring, makes white athletes want to play it. We are a part of this culture, another rich piece of the fabric. We all need to recognize this and to stop trying to limit ourselves based on our skin colors. So if you feel that blackness is essentially just skin tone, why do you encourage professionals, middle-class blacks such as yourself, to move back to Harlem? Why "give back" something to a community if that community is based only on such a superficial thing as skin color? Well, in my ideal world, it wouldn't be only black professionals who move back, it would be every stripe of middle-class person. Neighborhoods should have more variety, period. I did a book reading in Seattle and some white kid asked me, "Could I move to Harlem?" I would love to find a way for her to do that, a way that would be no more dangerous than moving into any urban neighborhood. Do you really think that's realistic? No I don't. But I think it ought to be. I think anyone who wants to live in Harlem should be able to. In your book, you draw a stark contrast between the world of your father and the world of today. What went wrong with urban black America, between your dad's generation of strivers and freedom fighters and the '90s? Communities like Harlem sowed the seeds of their own destruction by succeeding so well. My father's generation tried its best to deliver their sons and daughters from the ghetto, by ending segregation. And because we no longer have to live in a segregated neighborhood, those of us who can have moved away from the black community. Even if we still live in the Harlems, if we can afford to, we send our kids to private schools downtown, take our trips to Europe, spend our money in fancy French restaurants instead of the corner soul food place. So all of those institutions that were underlying the black community in the days of segregation just disappear, as people like my father climbed up and out and took his kids with him.  You write about how when you were growing up in the inner city, you lived across the hallway from a young up and coming St. Louis pitcher named Bob Gibson and down the street from other impressive role models. Yes, I looked out my window and could see the dentist who lived on the corner, the piano teacher, a whole range of people I could grow up to be or not be. I had all these choices. Now when you look at the black community, at least what we consider the black community — the hard-core urban centers — all these role models have disappeared. It leaves only the gangster and the drug dealer for kids to see. There are no decent jobs there anymore, no factories, nothing but the guy on the corner selling drugs. And without legitimate male authority figures around to help guide them, these young men grow up thinking the way of the gun is the only way. One day, while walking in Harlem, you had occasion to meet one such young man and it could have ended very badly for you. Yes, I was just trying to tell this guy that he had options, that he didn't have to automatically resort to violence. On this particular day, as I was walking down the street, my way was blocked by this young man who who was taking up all the room on the sidewalk, talking to his girlfriend who was sitting on the stoop. In order to be who I am, I almost had no choice but to brush by this guy, or otherwise I would have had to step off the sidewalk into the gutter. I wasn't looking for a fight, but in order to be me I had to intrude on his territory, and in order to be him, he had to show me his gun and threaten me. And when he did, I turned to talk with him and tried to show him that he had a choice, that he didn't have to use the gun, he didn't have to shoot me. Somebody should have told this to the guy years ago. All too often, because people in places in Harlem think they don't have choices, they just fall in line, they pull the trigger. So it fell to me, in this moment of terror, to explain this to the guy. How much of Harlem's trouble is self-inflicted? A lot of it. Because of what I mentioned earlier, all of the successful people who left it and turned their backs on it. And also because of this crazy disregard for education you see in black schools. Instead of saying education is a good thing, you need to learn white English to infiltrate the mainstream culture, kids are getting this message that if you're smart, you're a traitor. So in that sense, it's totally self-inflicted. Do you think the ebonics controversy is an example of that? When I first heard about it, I just shook my head and said, "Well, America's fucked. It's going right down the tubes into the realm of Bosnia, where everybody is claiming his cultural quarter." But then I heard a woman on NPR the other day saying that ebonics is actually a way to bring these kids into the world of standard English. So in that sense it may not be so harmful. The sad thing is that it's come to the point where we have to divide the culture this way. Instead of retreating to our own corner, black people should be saying we want ownership of all the country, we want to be able to share in every aspect of this society. I can't stand it when I hear people say that black culture is distinct from the general American culture. We're all part of this culture. When it comes to filling out the census questionnaire and you're asked what are you — black, white, yellow, brown — do you think people should be able to check "none of the above"? I would like for people to check that box. Would you be able to check that box at this point in your life? Yes, if I weren't trying to get some advantage from checking the black box. To get a scholarship or something like that. But I mean for you personally, at this point in your life. You have a career as a writer, you're not a kid anymore. Yes, but in a sense I'm capitalizing on being black — by writing these books that have an underlying theme of race. So you're saying that's the only reason you identify as black, because it's of some use to your career? No, but it's a genuine concern. And I wish that the need for that wasn't there. But it doesn't do anyone any harm for me to check the black box. What about those opponents of affirmative action who would say that claiming special privilege based on your skin color does in fact do harm. If you want a genuinely color-blind society, should everyone drop these special claims to privilege? Yes, when we get to a certain point, I agree we should drop all such claims to privilege. But no one's dropping these claims now, whether it's a black kid filling out his college application or a white suburbanite using his father's connections.
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Harlem photographs UPI/Bettmann
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