From Booklist
South Central Los Angeles public school teacher Foster differs from most of her citizen-activist neighbors in that she is a conservative. (Coleman is one, too, but here just helps Foster write.) Like many of her ilk these days, she is also a staunch populist whose prescription for Americans includes those perpetual populist tonics--self-reliance, family solidarity, community responsibility, fellow-feeling, pragmatism, religious faith, patriotism, and moral certainty. Of course, she wouldn't be a real conservative if she didn't say what's wrong for Americans, too. Those ills include, besides the usual conservative bugbears, one that may surprise many, especially white, readers of this black Republican. Foster disputes the portrayal of American black life before the mid-century civil rights movement as overwhelmingly miserable and oppressive. Without denying the realities of institutionalized and terroristic racism, she cites the happiness, the community security, and instances of white kindliness and decency she recalls from her own childhood to belie what she feels are the divisive distortions of black liberals. Hers is a good, zingy black conservative manifesto. Ray Olson
Review
Los Angeles schoolteacher Foster goes against the popular black establishment line in asking readers to reconsider who speaks for black America. Current black leadership, Foster maintains, is media-created and centered: in reality it is a peddler of the welfare state, leaving teachers to pick up the wreckage. Foster promotes traditional American values and a color-blind system of measurement. What's Right for All Americans is an important alternative view of a contemporary issue. Unbank the Fire Janice E. Hale Johns Hopkins 0-8018-4822-9 $14. -- Midwest Book Review
