To Be Young, Gifted, and a Minority

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It has been almost 20 years since a young black journalist in Chicago, Leanita McClain, first captured public attention with a powerful guest column in Newsweek about the burden of being a middle- class black.

As a rising star at the Chicago Tribune, Ms. McClain acknowledged that she was "a credit to my race." Yet speaking for many blacks, she described the challenge of straddling two cultures. "I have a foot in each world, but I cannot fool myself about either," she wrote. "I know how tenuous my grip on one way of life is, and how strangling the grip of the other way of life can be." She added, "I have made it, but where? Racism still dogs my people."

In the two …