Malcolm Gladwell revisionist history about Sammy Davis Jr. Reviled for hugging Nixon, booed when tried to perform at Jesse Jackson’s civil rights rally, even though he supported Kennedy in the past, donated large sums to Martin Luther King, and grew up performing as a child to support his father and uncle, never going to school.
Was he a sell out?
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, “Some Effects of Proportions on Group Life: Skewed Sex Ratios and Responses to Token Women,” American Journal of Sociology 82, no. 5 (Mar., 1977): 965-990.
Studied women in a predominately male sales force. Found that in a “Skewed” group, with just one different type (the rare “tokens”), you see 3 classic phenomena – visibility (tokens capture a disproportionate awareness share), polarization (differences between tokens and dominants are exaggerated), and assimilation (tokens’ attributes are distorted to fit preexisting generalizations about their social type).
As a result, there is “performance pressure”; polarization leads dominants to heighten their group boundaries; and assimilation leads to the tokens’ role entrapment. Sammy Davis Jr needed to entertain rich white folk to survive. It’s not selling out when you feel forced to behave a certain way, to fit in with the dominant group. Sammy Davis Jr endured abuse in the name of comedy at the hands of so called friends eg Dean Martin which would never be tolerated by people now.
When interviewed, and asked “Was there a time you felt you had something to prove?”, Sammy Davis Jr said “The first 45 years of my life”.