Slim's Table: Race, Respectability, and Masculinity (Paperback)

by Mitchell Duneier (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
While a graduate student during the 1980s Duneier, who is white, hung out for four years with the black and white regulars at Valois Cafeteria, a restaurant on the fringes of the black ghetto on Chicago's South Side. Through his eyes we meet Slim, a reserved black car mechanic whose solicitude for Bart, a retired white file clerk from the rural South, strips the latter of his preconceptions about blacks. A moving testament to the power of integration over ingrained beliefs, this sensitive study reveals that the underclass has many faces. Unlike the "outer-directed, attention-seeking" black male stereotypes portrayed in sociology and the mass media, Duneier's African American cafeteria buddies are "consistently inner-directed," deriving their sense of self-worth from adherence to personal standards of civility, solidarity, decency, pride and discretion. Duneier, who recently received his doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago, shows how the collective life of the cafeteria helps its clientele overcome their sense of living in a moral vacuum. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal
This book deals with the lives of older working-class African American men of the South Side ghettos of Chicago. The author spent four years getting to know these men at their gathering place, the Valois "see your food" Cafeteria in Hyde Park. The men who comprise Slim's table are a representative group of employed, mainly single men living in rooms or small apartments. They exhibit tolerance and pride and demonstrate respect and civility toward others. The author believes that the way they live is a model for all races and hopes to refute media stereotypes by reporting the reality of their situations. The book is written for a college-educated audience. Recommended for large public libraries.
- Del Cain, V.A. Medical Ctr. Lib., Bedford, Mass.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (May 28, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226170314
• ISBN-13: 978-0226170312
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #53,545 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sociology with a Human Face, January 30, 2001

By	Brian Sullivan "vtsullivan" (Burlington, Vermont USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Slim's Table: Race, Respectability, and Masculinity (Hardcover)

I've read other sociological works on inner city residents and was invariably disturbed by the soulless way in which the subjects were portrayed. No doubt, the authors of those works would defend their method as being objective and showing rigor. However, at some level, the objectivity becomes stultifying and numbing.

Duneier cuts through all of this by portraying real people as human beings for whom he cares deeply. At the same time, he is able to pull back from the personal stories and draw conclusions that are intellectually sound. One feels a deep sense of pride in the men whose lives are profiled in Slim's Table and a lingering sense of regret that they seem to be a dying breed.

This book is the rare work that appeals in equal parts to the intellect and the soul.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dark skins and deep substance, March 5, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Slim's Table: Race, Respectability, and Masculinity (Hardcover)

This is not only insightful sociology; it's a warm and often funny exploration into the psyches of black men who have a keen sense of their "moral worth." Duneier has provided a most needed counterbalance to the preponderance of literature on black urban males which paints pictures of violence, desperation, and loss of civility. The patrons of Valois cafeteria are men who possess the virtues of compassion, loyalty, and personal integrity. True, they often speak as though the modern generation of black men has somehow passed them by; but they remain steadfast in keeping their virtues alive and well around the coffee table. Reading this book, you almost get the feeling that you have spent some time (as Duneier did) "hanging out" with these guys; getting to learn their hopes and frustrations but first and foremost seeing that, beneath dark skins, are men of profound substance and character. Highly recommended for those who have allowed their fears of urban blacks to skew their judgment.

4.0 out of 5 stars A Sad Story, December 24, 2008

By	Solomon Rabinowitz (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews

Mitchell Duneier's Slim's Table begins with a sad story. Bart was a young man from Kentucky who started undergraduate school at the University of Chicago in 1928. Unfortunately, he never finished college and never became a doctor as he had planned. Instead, he became a career file clerk. He remained in the city of Chicago and died there in the 1980's.

Why were Bart's career aspirations dashed? We are told that the economic rigors of the Great Depression put an early end to his schooling. However, one cannot help but wonder whether Bart's problems were entirely economic in nature, or whether he was in fact an academic casualty case. Although the book does not explicitly make this point, it is a fact that the number of such cases is not small. "Chicago," as it is known in the academic ivory tower, has long had a high attrition rate. The students, who usually refer to is as "the U of C," know that it is a demanding place. Some fare very well, some take years and decades to finish their degree programs, and some never finish at all.

Not only is the U of C a tough school, but the surrounding neighborhood is tough in its own right, and life in this neighborhood is the subject of the book. Hyde Park, as it is called, is bordered on three sides by ghetto and one side by water. Even with heavy patrolling by the university's private police force, the fear of street crime persists. This fear of crime casts a dark shadow over community life.

Now comes the subject of food. For Duneier, the author of the present work, food is an important topic, and people's dining spots are a laboratory in which much sociological data can be collected. Like most university neighborhoods, Hyde Park has its share of eateries. Duneier's account focusses on Valois, which was a place where people of different walks of life regularly met and congregated. Though some of Valois' customers (including Duneier himself) were university people, the majority were working people who lived in Hyde Park or surrounding areas. As such, Valois became the venue for a rich urban culture.

Bart, the retired file clerk and former U of C student, ate regularly at Valois. Bart was white, and at Valois, he became friends with Slim, who was a black car mechanic who lived and worked in the ghetto. Bart had grown up in the South and had internalized the racist attitudes with which he was raised. In spite of this early conditioning, he eventually came to recognize Slim as an equal. Slim defies popularized negative characterizations of the black male, and Duneier goes to considerable lengths to drive home this point. Slim had a strong moral constitution, was keenly interested in current events, and cared deeply about the welfare of the community in which he had grown up. He remembered warmly a time in which the black community was beset by fewer urban problems than those that developed later, and was saddened by the moral decay that in his view had taken place during his life.

Although the black ghetto surrounding Hyde Park is mostly poor, Chicago also has well-to-do black neighborhoods. In observing the behaviors of the more affluent blacks, Slim saw as much a decay in values as he did among the poor. Frequently, the more affluent blacks were given to the same habits of conspicuous consumption that are seen the general population. Accordingly, they would eat at more expensive restaurants, even though the food at working-class spots such as Valois was of comparable quality. In Slim's view, this behavior served to fragment the black community along class lines when more unity was needed.

Bart and Slim were certainly both men of fine character, and perhaps if everyone shared their sensitivity, the world would be a better place. Should we be surprised to learn that such people exist? Rather than being encouraged, the reader would like to know what needs to be done to arrest the urban decay about which Slim was so terribly concerned. As Duneier explains it, the proximity of the U of C to the black ghetto has served to make the latter the subject of much sociological research; the present book represents the furthering of that intellectual tradition. As far as solving the problems that beset urban communities, the solution remains as much a mystery as ever. The existence of upstanding men like Slim and Bart does little in itself to offer any real hope. In this respect, Slim's Table tells a sad story, and the overriding impression with which the reader is left is certainly not a happy one.