Review of "The Pact" That BET wouldn't Run

“The Pact” offers an intriguing premise: three African
American men, raised in tough New Jersey
neighborhoods, agree to support each other in their
quests to become doctors. Right off the bat, it’s not
quite successful as nonfiction suspense because we
know that Sampson Davis and Rameck Hunt become doctors
and George Jenkins fulfills his lifelong ambition to
become a dentist.

Now, suspense squandered, try to imagine what that
book would be about. I promise you that “The Pact” is
exactly, down to the drug-addicted parents, gang
problems and varied police harassments, what you might
imagine it to be. Usually, I don’t find that to be a
mark of excellence in books that I read. Yet I say to
each his own. There’s no absolute good or bad per se,
but what you like and dislike. That’s my theory
anyway. Say, for example, that you are genuinely moved
by ABC Afterschool specials, then perhaps you will
like this book. Say, for instance, that you are driven
to tears by an effectively written Hallmark card, then
perhaps you will like this book. Say, to beat this
point into the ground, that you don’t get the jokes in
George Wolfe’s play “The Colored Museum”, then maybe
you will appreciate the merits of this book. It’s all
relative.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not necessarily a bad book.
It’s competently written and I admire the black men
who are portrayed in it. I also think that this book,
along with another book that I reviewed called “The
Miner’s Canary”, strongly suggests that black kids
should use group study methods. I also enjoyed the
celebrity stunt casting as well, one of the few
surprises that the book actually offered up. You get
cameos from Dr. Juwanza Kunjufu, poet Amira Baraka,
singer Faith Evans and there’s even a spotting of the
late Biggie Smalls—who, shockingly enough, turns out
to be a guy who can polish off a lot of fried chicken
in record time.

I suppose I just have overall Big Picture problems
with this book. For example,
It would not be unlike a dramatic tale of how black
men rose up in the South African police force during
the apartheid era. I might find their tenacity
admirable but I would find the book remarkably empty
without a prescription as to how to end apartheid.
Likewise, when I read “The Pact”, I can’t help but
notice that there’s a health care crisis within the
United States, driven not only by ruthless and greedy
HMOs, but the artificial shortage of doctors (and
probably nurses) mandated by the doctor’s union, the
American Medical Association. And while these black
doctors have made a commitment to give back to the
community—and this is honorable—the black community in
total might be better served by a single payer system
of health care and less wealthy doctors. In other
words, “The Pact” treats some symptoms, but offers no
cure for the various diseases of: under funded
inner-city schools, prohibitively expensive college
educations, the national turn away from affirmative
action, and a technology gap between rich and poor
that will only grow.  And frankly, I don’t see how
“group study” or even the laudatory success of these
three guys changes these disturbing macro trends one
bit.

So, to sum up, I recommend this for struggling black
students and people who really really like Tales of
Inspiration and expressive Hallmark cards. For
everybody else I would recommend the classic
“Autobiography of Malcolm X”, Richard Wright’s “Black
Boy” and even Nathan McCall’s “Makes Me Wanna Holler”
before you wade into “The Pact”.