Dalton Conley's Report

Honky details the life of its author, Dalton Conley, as he grew up in a poor inner-city housing project in New York in the 1970s and 1980s. He and his younger sister, Alexandra, represented the only white kids in a neighborhood made up of mostly black and Puerto Rican families. Conley exhibited a fascination with and acute awareness of race -both of his whiteness and the distinction non-whiteness of those around him- from a young age, and this largely sets the tone for the rest of the book. Conley describes his childhood as being “a social science experiment” (XIII) on class and race, both of which are heavily emphasized throughout his memoir.

Conley describes his childhood in the projects with the kind of clarity and retrospect that only

comes from the ability to look back. It was a very poor area, with more residents that not on food stamps and various other government programs. The area also contained a large amount of crime, so much so that Conley writes that “by early in [his] childhood [he] had cultivated a keen sense of caution probably not unlike like developed by soldiers in the bush,” (55). Theft, muggings, assault, rape, and even murder were not entirely uncommon. “[He] had an awareness of what was going on around me that someone who grew up in the suburbs would have had great difficulty acquiring,” (55). This is a great example of the differences cultivated between classes. A child growing up in an upper-class area with little to no crime would not develop the kind of paranoia, care, or awareness of one’s surroundings the same way that someone exposed to higher levels of crime would. Despite some of the downsides of living in the projects, Conley also describes a sense of community that prevailed throughout. “Kids seemed to roam freely, but in reality, everyone watched everyone else’s children; there was a degree of community-based social control that would not have been obvious to the casual observer,” (24).
One of Conley’s first and most pervasive themes in this memoir is the idea of upward and downward mobility, and how it relates to minorities. Before recounting his own life, Conley begins by recounting the lives of his grandparents, Jewish on his mother’s side. His paternal grandfather was solidly middle class, whereas his own parents, who were both artist (his mother an author and his father a visual artist) experienced the downward mobility of class and wound up lower-class for many of his formative years. This becomes an important discussion throughout the book as it relates to the projects, and then later to the neighborhoods of Conley’s classmates. Throughout his childhood, Conley notes that upward mobility is an almost unobtainable dream for those in the projects. Even when Conley begins working to make money in an attempt to keep up with his classmates, and has more money that he ever had before, it made little difference as his classmates continued to get more as well. “Their allowances now stood at twenty dollars a week. [he] would never be able to keep up, it seemed,” (101).
It is also important to note that despite this childhood pessimism, some of the kids in the projects did get out. Conley and his family moved to a better neighborhood just before he started high school. He made it to the west coast, where he attended school at UC Berkley. His close friend Jerome followed his dreams and made it out to California, where he pursued as acting career, despite the obstacles of his quadriplegia and his upbringing.
Another major theme of Conley’s writing is his conjecture on the matter of if different aspects of his life would have turned out differently had he not been white. He begins this line of thinking when recounting the story of his mother breaking into a hospital lab when he was a baby to run her own tests to save his life. He wonders “what would have happened had [his] mother not been white. No one questioned her as she rushed around the hallways -but a frantic black or Hispanic woman might have drawn greater scrutiny,” (18). Later on, in elementary school, Conley considers if the fact that he was always spared from physical punishment at school to be another benefit of his race, and much later on, when he accidently set fire to a friend’s apartment, the fact that he managed to get off with few repercussions is once again attributed to his race. “[They] were lucky -for Raphael’s family represented the right class, and [he] the right race,” (181). This is an interesting and potentially thought-provoking point, but ultimately falls flat in the face of what it is: conjecture; a “what if.” It is impossible to tell what might have happened had things been different.
When looked at closely, this clearly becomes the story of a kid who simply did not fit in. He was the wrong race in his own neighborhood, the wrong class in his school, never truly belonging. Over the course of time, and, after moving to a more middle-class neighborhood filled with other kids who now shared his ethnicity and living conditions, Conley came to realize something. He overheard a number of his peers talking about him as “the new kid,” and wondering what he was like. The only kid there who already knew him from school described him simply as “socially awkward,” (192). It is in this moment that he realized something: “[his] problem had not been [his] skin at all, but what it contained,” (193). Having overheard this, Conley found himself “wishing [he] were back in [their] old neighborhood, where at least [he] had [his] skin color to blame for not fitting in,” (192).
For much of his early education, Conley found himself in higher class schools due to his parents’ finessing to get him a better education.

They would use a friend’s mailing address from a richer part of the city to enroll him in classes, and then switch back to their own address after the October 1st deadline that would mark the point in the semester that would be too late to switch schools, forcing the school district to send a bus to the projects. This was a method employed by several lower-class families in order to get their child out of the poorer school districts. Conley fit in with his middle-class schoolmates about as well as he fit in with his black and Latino neighbors. He found himself unable to enjoy the same pizza parlors, candy shops, and arcades that his classmates did due to a lack of money, and found himself unable to spend the same time after school mingling with his peers as he had to catch the bus back to his own neighborhood, while his classmates lived close enough to the school that they could linger. “The fact was that I had no money for pizza -and even if I had, I had no choice but to board the yellow school bus that carted me home to the projects, from which I had begun to feel estranged,” (75-76). He learned an important lesson during his time spent among these peers: class distinctions matter. “The dynamics between [him and Michael] reflected a type of status hierarchy that simply did not exist at [his] old school in either the black or Chinese class,”

(73).
Conley found himself trying to fit into this new school, even going so far as to misuse the emergency that his mother had given him. She found out and he struck a deal to repay it by doing household chores. This incident opened a new opportunity for him to earn his own money as he took on these tasks regularly, allowing him some measure, even if small, of financial freedom and choice. Conley’s mother often played a significant role in his life. It was his mother who saved his life as a baby, and his mother who played the role in having the family moved to the projects in the first place, and it was his mother who facilitated their move out. His sister went through a number of wild teenage years, accompanied by drug use and flunking out of high school, however, “she was surrounded by enough protective influences that her teenage rebellion never gathered enough momentum to ruin her life chances, as it had for Marc,” (202). His mother acted as a great protective force in his life, keeping him safe in any way she could.
One important thing to note, and one thing this book does, is to realize that, as Conley puts it: “My life, like anyone’s, is only a sample of one, hardly statistically generalizable,” (204). The human experience is an individual one, as seen in the fact that Conley’s younger sister experienced and viewed their upbringing differently than he did, despite living in the same home and experiencing many of the same things. Many of the social sciences -with political science in particular- seem to have abandoned the notion of subjectivity. If something is true for one person, then it must be true for the rest of society. If a woman, or even a group of women, experience life a certain way, then that must now hold true for all women, regardless of other factors. This is a dangerous generalization, as it often has very little to speak of regarding the population as a whole, and can even ostracize those who do not fit this generalization; they think that because their experience differs from the perceived norm, that they must not be a real member of that group.
Conley exhibits a deep fascination with class and race, almost an obsession later on that he is constantly and painfully aware of. It’s this awareness that in large part prevented him from relating to and fully connecting with his peers. He notes that this is something that neither his younger sister nor his father seem to have any trouble with as they both connected to their neighborhood and the people in it without issue. He also notes that his mother found happiness as well with her carefree attitude. “The rest of [his] family seemed to slide as smoothly across the racial and disability divide as Jerome did across [their] parquet floor in his motorized wheelchair,” (195).
Conley ends his memoir with the following analogy regarding the freedom he feels while driving:
I can go anywhere as long as I have some gas left in the tank. But if one were to pull back and take an aerial view of the ebbs and flows of traffic, the image would change dramatically. From a helicopter, traffic flows seem absurdly constrained and rhythmically patterned. Masses of cars lunge and recoil according to some not-so-complicated algorithm. Pulling back even further, we would notice that roads cover only a small portion of the earth’s surface. From above, we don’t appear to have much choice in where we are going, or how fast we get there, but that does not deny each driver’s experience of freedom and agency. It’s the same with race and class, (203).
With a broad perspective, it appears that no one truly has any control over their lives, ability to move how they wish, or change things for the better, but in many ways, this ‘broad’ perspective is far too narrow. Life is lived at an individual level, with an individual belief in the ability to move and improve in life. Even though the view from above appears constricting, but even the seemingly futile act of believing in one’s own ability to make something better of their life can allow them to actually achieve it.
Conley’s memoir is an important read, and offers a unique look into a world experienced by so very few. His life offers a distinct perspective into the differences that race provides among the same class, and the differences that class provides among the same race.