Tanner Colby, author of Some of My Best Friends are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America, talks with Jessica Moore of the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora

Arts Brooklyn-based author Tanner Colby is the author of biographies of John Belushi and Chris Farley. His book Some of My Best Friends are Black is a historical investigation sparked by Colby’s personal revelations and strengthened with interviews and anecdotes from everyday people, creating a multi-faceted picture of race as it is lived in America. The book covers the clash over school busing in Birmingham; the sordid history of real estate segregation; the racial divide of the Madison Avenue ad world; and a Louisiana Catholic parish’s forty-year effort to build an integrated church. It also explores Colby’s own realization that he did not have any close black friends, despite growing up in Louisiana and living in liberal-minded Brooklyn, and his motivations for this candid account of one white man’s journey to explore the state of things in his, and our, country. Colby will discuss the book with Jessica Moore, a curatorial fellow at the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Arts in Fort Greene, who previously interviewed Jamal Joseph author of Panther Baby at Greenlight Bookstore.