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Title: The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream
Authors: Drs. Sampson Davis, George Jenkins and Rameck Hunt, With Lisa Frazier Page
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Price: $24.95
Pages: 288

By Philip Shropshire


“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”.