Book Reviews                                                             

Mitchell Duneier. Slim's Table: Race, Respectability, and Masculinity. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Pp. 192 with photographs, notes and index. $19.95 (cloth).

Slim's Table is an ethnography of working-class African-American males who range in age from their early 50s to their early 80s and who patronize the Valois Cafeteria on Chicago's South Side. Although the book reads as effortlessly as a novel, it is a doctoral dissertation in sociology at the University of Chicago. Mitchell Duneier discovered Valois as a graduate student and ate there regularly over a period of four years to gather material.

Slim's Table is the latest in a series of scholarly treatments of African-American life in the inner city. It follows such earlier classics as St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton's Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (1945); Ulf Hannerz's Soulside: Inquiries into the Ghetto Culture and Community (1969); and Elijah Anderson's A Place on the Corner (1978). In narrative style it resembles Elliot Liebow's ground-breaking Tally's Corner (1966), a study of the street corner culture of black men in Washington, D.C.

Despite its general similarities to these previous sociological studies, Slim's Table departs from tradition in both its focus and its conclusions. Duneier concentrates on a category within the black population which has received little attention — aging working-class males. He argues that they constitute a caring community whose moral values contradict popular stereotypes about contemporary African-American society.

Duneier bases his conclusions on intensive observation of the regular customers at Valois, a cafeteria located in Hyde Park, which is bordered on three sides by the largest contiguous African-American community in Chicago and on the fourth side by Lake Michigan. Valois' patrons include blacks from Hyde Park and adjacent neighborhoods as well as lesser numbers of whites from Hyde Park and students from the University of Chicago.

The title of the book refers to the table at the cafeteria which for more than a decade served as a daily meeting place for a core group of black men. Among these regulars are Jackson, a retired crane operator and longshoreman; Harold, a self-employed exterminator; Cornelius, a retired meter inspector; Ted, a film developer for Playboy; and Earl, an administrator with the Chicago Board of Education. Duneier provides character sketches of these patrons, but their interactions with Slim, a local mechanic, and his relationship with other regulars — white as well as black — form the center of the study.

Slim is described as "a reserved black man who has lived near the Hyde Park neighborhood for most of his life." "To most people who don't know him, he seems aloof and proud," but Slim "is one of the most respected mechanics on the South Side." "Unimposing but self-assured and dignified," he carries "a chain with many keys (a symbol of responsibility in the ghetto)." Despite the fact that he is "hardly outgoing and rarely demonstrative," Slim emerges as a central figure at Valois, which he usually patronizes for breakfast and after-dinner coffee. By coming to understand Slim's special influence, Duneier finds a basis for critiquing previous research on urban black males as well as challenging their pervasive images in the mass media.

Specifically, Duneier takes issue with the tendency of urban social theory to dismiss members of the working class as ethical role models in the ghetto. He disputes the assumption that moral leadership departed from the inner city when middle-class blacks moved out. Duneier counters by detailing Slim's concern for others, including Bart, a prejudiced older white regular whom Slim treats solicitously, and an unnamed elderly black man whom Slim adopted long ago as "father." Duneier also describes Jackson's pride in paying his heavy medical bills through hard physical labor. The self-respect and mutual regard revealed by these men is well documented.

Furthermore, Duneier believes that the contemporary men's movement can learn from the aging black men of Valois and their upbringing in the ghettos of the past. Many middle-class white men of today, like most of the working-class black men of Valois, grew up in homes where fathers were often absent. Leading proponents of the men's movement like Robert Biy believe that this paternal absence causes sons to lose touch with the deep masculine side of their psyches. Duneier disagrees, showing how the Valois regulars demonstrate positive masculine traits while at the same time revealing their sensitivity without being soft. They also seek these same qualities in their friends.

Slim's Table reminds us that African-American men are more diverse than sociology or journalism has admitted, and that working-class black men offer more positive role models than expected. Nevertheless, the book has one serious drawback. In telling their personal stories, the Valois regulars often stereotype black women as promiscuous, dominant, demanding and competitive. Duneier acknowledges that the Valois patrons stereotype middle-class blacks and young blacks, but he ignores their stereotyping of black women. Because the relationships between African-American men and women are often complex and conflicted, Duneier's failure to address this issue could further strain them.

Generally, however, he has done a commendable job of portraying a neglected segment of the black community. His book should become mandatory reading not only for those interested in black and ethnic studies, but also for educators involved in developmental programming for black male students in elementary and secondary schools. *

Rosalind A. Morgan is director of the Counseling Center at Chicago State University, where she has provided psychological counseling for African-American adults over the past 16 years. She also taught 12 years in the Chicago public school system.

August & September 1993/Illinois Issues/63