cover image Basic Black

Basic Black

Karen Grigsby Bates. Doubleday Books, $27.5 (496pp) ISBN 978-0-385-48434-3

Home Training Some call it good manners; in African American vernacular, it's called ""home training."" With Basic Black: Home Training for Modern Times, media freelancers Karen Grigsby Bates and Karen Elyse Hudson provide a modern African American alternative to Emily Post and Miss Manners. Addressed to the growing black middle class, this user-friendly volume is filled with information on social rites of passage, the new corporate workplace and everyday rules and rituals that make for more gracious living. Covering such situations as how to handle yourself in a restaurant where you've received unacceptable treatment, common courtesies to be shown to household help and how to respond to racial harassment at work, Bates and Hudson offer a guide that will be of benefit to men and women, singles and families.