SLIM’S TABLE: Race, Respectability, and Masculinity ...

SLIM’S TABLE: Race, Respectability, and Masculinity by Mitchell Duneier (University of Chicago Press: $9.95; 200 pp., illustrated). In this modest study of working-class men, Duneier argues, “Black men are badly misunderstood, probably no less because of the well-meaning liberal media’s constant barrage of images showing how bad things have become to Republican advertisements indicating that liberals have placed killer like Willie Horton back on the streets.” Slim and his friends are unassuming men who socialize in a cafeteria at the edge of the Chicago ghetto. Unlike the media images of African-American males as dope peddlers, gang bangers and felons, they believe in honesty, hard work and “modes of conduct that testify to respectability.” Duneier presents a brief look at a neglected sector of society that offers much-needed role models for teen-aged boys of all races.