In the following essay excerpt, Alter explores the racial pessimism present in "Black Is My Favorite Color," focusing on the story's "ironic discrepancy between desire and reality."

When we examine "Black Is My Favorite Color," we can see the further disintegration of traditional egalitarianism in the face of history.

The idealism concerning the possibilities of racial harmony that dominates the surface of "Angel Levine" is the motive force behind the civil rights movement of the early nineteen sixties. Blacks and whites together "We shall not be moved") integrated lunch counters, picketed Woolworth's, rode freedom buses South, desegregated schools, were bombed, hosed, bitten by dogs, jailed, beaten, sometimes murdered. Under pressure exerted by both races, the institutions of government and society seemed increasingly responsive to the demands for justice, ready to redeem the pledges of the American Revolution owed to its black citizens. On a hot, steamy day...