Some of My Best Friends Are Black

Frank, funny, and incisive, Some of My Best Friends Are Black offers a profoundly honest portrait of race in America. In a book that is part reportage, part history, part social commentary, Tanner Colby explores why the civil rights movement ultimately produced such little true integration in schools, neighborhoods, offices, and churches—the very places where social change needed to unfold. Weaving together the personal, intimate stories of everyday people—black and white—Colby reveals the strange, sordid history of what was supposed to be the end of Jim Crow, but turned out to be more of the same with no name. He shows us how far we have come in our journey to leave mistrust and anger behind—and how far all of us have left to go. 

“A wonderful book that deserves to be read widely.”

—The New York Journal of Books

“Colby presents himself not as an expert in history or politics, but rather as an every-white-man whose own experiences can be a useful way into a vexing topic.”—The Boston Globe

“An immensely readable narrative.”—Ebony.com

“Eye-opening… It’s difficult to imagine anybody—African American or Caucasian or some other ethnicity, female or male, elderly or young—finding the book boring.”

—The Seattle Times

“Engrossing… An invitation for both blacks and whites to let go of racial fear and indulge their curiosity.”

—The Wilson Quarterly

“The picture Colby creates, of base tribalism and failed good intentions, is simultaneously disheartening and inspiring, but this contradiction seems perfectly in keeping with the larger contradictions of the land of the free.”—The Daily Beast

“Some of My Best Friends Are Black looks at integration and the ways it has failed from a fresh perspective…[it] moves the discussion forward and into new territory.”—Book Page

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