Roger White

Roger White is a light-skinned Black lawyer whose ties to Mayor Wesley Dobbs Jordan draw him into the public controversy surrounding Fareek Fanon. Initially valued for his access to the mayor, Roger becomes more than a messenger between powerful men: the case brings him into contact with Black Atlantans who recognize him, and their welcome alters how he understands his own identity and political belonging.

Identity and Background

Roger is himself a light-skinned blueblood, related to prominent figures, but he lacks the effortless self-confidence and cutting cynicism he admires in his old friend Wesley Dobbs Jordan. At Morehouse College, Jordan had seemed to embody the ideal of the Morehouse Man and then exceed it: he led Omega Zeta Zeta and the student body, and carried himself as someone destined to lead. Roger’s comparison with him introduces a persistent tension. Their backgrounds overlap, but Jordan’s public authority and confidence seem to Roger like qualities he does not possess.

Their friendship began long before either man held his present position. They had known each other since grade school and high school, attended Sunday school together, and became fraternity brothers at Morehouse. Roger understands that this shared history is not merely personal: it is the reason Fanon’s legal team wants him in the case. Roger is candid with Jordan that the lawyers have retained him because the mayor may listen to someone who has known him since childhood, rather than to an unfamiliar advocate. His value at first is relational and political, resting on access rather than on any claim to be the case’s leading litigator.

Entry into the Fanon Case

When Roger raises Fanon with Jordan, the mayor already knows the young football player from sharing a dais at a Special Junior Olympics event. Roger explains that he represents him alongside Julian Salisbury, a white litigator, and Don Pickett, a Black litigator. He does not conceal why he has been added to the team: the lawyers hope that his connection to Jordan can open a conversation with the mayor. The arrangement places Roger between the legal defense and the city’s political leadership, but also makes the history of their friendship part of the case’s practical machinery.

The work quickly becomes public. At a press conference in the library of Wringer Fleasom & Tick, Roger is nervous, having never taken part in one before. Salisbury seems eager for the encounter with reporters, while Pickett watches with relaxed composure. Roger, by contrast, worries about how he will appear and whether he will say too much. He introduces himself as a partner at the firm, identifies Salisbury and Pickett, and announces that they represent Fanon. A reporter’s interruption unsettles him, but the scene establishes the difference between the measured professional introduction he has prepared and the unpredictable public contest into which he has stepped.

The Fanon story spreads through the press after circulating online, while newspapers report on its dissemination without naming the young woman at its center. Roger’s role therefore unfolds in a charged public arena: the case is not confined to legal argument but is already being read through Atlanta’s racial divisions. When he later approaches Charlie Croker, Roger says that he wants to prevent the matter from becoming a racial battleground. He knows that the publicity has escaped the control he hoped to maintain, and he seeks Croker’s prominence as a way to influence what happens next.

Friendship, Politics, and Atlanta

Roger’s conversations with Jordan also expose the political setting around the case. Jordan describes Atlanta as a city whose Black population holds decisive power in the city proper, while millions of white residents live in the surrounding counties. He presents the Atlanta Way as a system of negotiation between those constituencies, in which political support and community benefits are exchanged. His account of the airport expansion, including the commitment that thirty percent of the work would go to minority contractors, gives Roger a concrete example of how that bargain operates.

The mayor’s account of Atlanta’s ambitions adds another dimension. Driving through the towers along Peachtree, Jordan describes the business community’s drive to make the city a national and eventually global center. He characterizes Atlanta’s developers and business leaders as unusually driven: people willing to pursue goals despite the odds, without abandoning rational calculation altogether. Roger is thus hearing from his friend not just a defense of the city’s political customs but an explanation of how commercial ambition, civic identity, and racial power interlock.

Jordan also recounts Reverend Isaac Blakey’s blunt response to white developers seeking help with opposition to Highway 600 in South Atlanta: the developers had money, while neighborhood leaders had power. Jordan distinguishes this bargaining for day-care centers, youth centers, clinics, parks, and swimming pools from bribery. These accounts give Roger a language for the city’s compromises, but they do not make his own position simple. He is a lawyer whose career has involved looking good in the eyes of the business establishment, while his relationship with Jordan and his defense of Fanon place him within a racially charged political dispute.

Pressing Croker and the Public Appearance

Roger’s attempt to enlist Croker makes the stakes personal. When he visits, Croker is tired and suspicious; Roger notices that his yawn is not necessarily a sign of boredom but of severe insomnia. Roger explains that he has already lost the battle to contain publicity and that his objective is now to keep the controversy from becoming a racial confrontation. Croker’s status as a prominent business figure and former Georgia Tech football star could, Roger believes, make a public appearance influential.

After Croker disappears into the hospital for knee surgery, Roger learns where he is through information passed along after the surgeon’s name was mentioned. He finds Croker in bed and tells him that the mayor is lined up for a press conference, that the city needs him, and that his presence could make a difference. Roger is aware that Croker is no longer the unchallenged business power he once appeared to be, yet he still needs the developer to honor his commitment. The visit makes their connection feel, to Croker, like an unwelcome entanglement; Roger, meanwhile, sees the missing public figure as essential to a civic effort he has helped organize.

When Croker continues to avoid answering, Roger goes to him in person. Croker is on crutches, accompanied by a young attendant, and asks Roger not to press him because he has just undergone surgery. Roger does press him. He lists the calls, messages, fax, and two letters sent by Federal Express, then demands to know whether Croker will appear, provide a videotaped statement, or do neither. Roger warns that if Croker refuses, other parts of the arrangement will have to change, including the effort to get PlannersBanc off his case. His approach is a marked departure from the self-conscious nervousness of his first press conference: he now insists on an answer and invokes the consequences of refusal.

At the televised event, Roger sits in the front row where he can watch Croker directly. He means to keep the developer to his part of the morning’s proceedings through an accusing, threatening stare. Serena Croker is seated nearby, and reporters fill most of the room. Croker enters limping and leans heavily on the attendant’s shoulder, then grips the young man’s hand as he lowers himself into a banker’s chair. The image of the injured developer, visibly dependent on help, contrasts with the imposing business figure Roger had been trying to recruit. Roger’s plan to manage Croker through pressure is also complicated by what Croker says publicly: Roger is left stunned, angry, and guilty that he has failed to deliver the fully broken man he had promised Jordan.

Change and Narrative Significance

Roger’s change becomes clearest in his later account to Jordan. Recalling the first visit to the mayor’s office about Fanon and Elizabeth Armholster, Roger notices that he has now taken Jordan’s former place as the one who paces while the other remains seated. The physical reversal registers a change in confidence and position. He remembers confronting Croker on crutches, demanding an answer, and telling him that the press conference was crucial for the city. In telling the story, Roger takes pride in having held his ground against a man whose size and former power had once made him intimidating.

The larger transformation is not simply professional assertiveness. Roger says that he entered the case with trepidation: Fanon disliked him at first, and Roger feared that representing him would alienate the firm’s white clients. He had spent years cultivating the approval of the business establishment. But after the library press conference, Black people on the street began recognizing him from television and greeting him with support. At the larger press conference, Congressman Gibley Berm, a man Roger had never met, praised his work and told him he had his support. Roger admits to Jordan that he loved hearing it. He had previously experienced himself as a Black man who had risen far above his own people; now he felt that he was with them.

That admission gives the case a consequence beyond its legal and political calculations. Roger had been recruited because he could reach Jordan, and he had hoped to use Croker’s status to steady a city under strain. Yet the work also changes the direction of his own allegiance and the way he experiences public recognition. His movement from Roger Too White toward Roger Not a Bit Too White is not presented as a solved identity so much as a new awareness: the people whose approval he once feared losing have begun to claim him, and he finds that their recognition matters deeply. Through Roger, the Fanon controversy becomes a story not only about political access and racial crisis, but also about the difference between being useful to power and feeling accepted by one’s community.