Nathan McCall

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They end up
hating themselves.

"I learned to hate myself by the time I was 12 years old," he said. McCall
said he and his friends did not believe they had a future. Self-
destructive behavior was the result. He credits his 12 year prison sentence
for changing his attitude. His fellow inmates told him "don't do what
we've done," and encouraged him to change his lifestyle. He read books as
part of the prison programming and was influenced by authors that wrote
about being Black.

In February '94 he landed a contract with Random House; the hard-back
edition of his book made The New York Times best-seller list.

"I'm one of those brothers who slipped through the cracks," he said. But
being successful meant he had to learn everything about the White world,
from "how to hold a fork" to "how to behave."

He told the Whites in the audience, "If you don't know anything about me it
won't reflect negatively on your career at all." Whites do not need to
know Black history in order to ...

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