SlickHeads and How to Make a Slave

There is a connection between Slickheads and How to Make a Slave. Both are about being a black man in America who grew up in tough neighborhoods and then became professors. In Slickheads the narrator says "Sonnt dying like he did definitely motivated me to to finish graduate school and teach at university level. But going to college for eleven years was no doubt the most sterile experience". His friend Sonny's death motivated his further to finish school and become a professor at university level. In "How to Make a Slave" the narrator mentions how his neighborhood was "some people like you, live in communities with drugs, crime, bad schools, police brutality, and the collective view that white people were and will always be racist". Then he says " The ghetto was never an option, But instead move to one that is 96 percent white .. want a  racially diverse, progressive, urban community but instead move to one near Boston that you and your wife land professorships".