Black people who try to be accepted by cacs are playing a game they will never win.
The issue with this assumption is that many of what Umar called the "inner circle" live completely segregated lives. Like they don't be coming in contact with white people on the daily like that.
You talking about people that grew up in Grand Boulevard, went to Wendell Phillips or Englewood High School, then went to Fisk or Howard. Came back to Chicago and became teachers at Pershing Elementary or opened up a medical practice on Stoney Island. Go to Trinity United Church of Christ or Apostolic on Sunday. Sorority meetings at AKArama on 63rd and Dorchester or Fraternity meetings at the eXcel Center on 83rd and Western on Tuesdays. Golf League Night at Jackson Park, Harborside, or Joe Louis on Wednesday. Tennis Lessons at XS Tennis on 53rd and State on Thursday. Live music at 35th St. Harbor on Friday. And a play at the Logan Center of the Arts on 59th and Ellis.
Like you be around more white people than alot of these folks. Granted you have people like Primo who lives in Lake Forest, but the overwhelming majority still live, shop, socialize exclusively on the South Side of Chicago because that was the world that they grew up in. So "white acceptance" doesn't hold up against those facts. They ain't around white people for white people to offer acceptance.
Security wasn't Graham's issue as much as doing everything he could to try and make white people comfortable in his presence.
I don't think it was trying to make whites comfortable as it was more trying to get whites not to see his blackness. And yeah there is a difference.
He thought that with the acquisition of upper class accoutrements, symbols, and signifiers, that those things would inform his interactions with others. That those things would override race and have upper class white folk view him as one of their own or lower class white folk recognize him as superior and treat him with respect.
However, as Frank Wilderson points out, blackness is defined as an anti/inverse definition to humaness. Blackness is the perpetual state of not being human and global people define their identities in opposition to blackness.
So Larry was naive in thinking that he can dress up his blackness with accoutrements as if that would get white people to see him and his children's humanity when whiteness as an identity and as a form of humanity is defined directly in opposition to his blackness.
. Brehs aka prince hall masons be throwing fish frys, car shows, car washes and block parties for the community. 
