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Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class
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2003
Year
EducationSocial StratificationRacial StudyBlack ExperienceMarginalized Groups StudiesRacial Segregation StudiesAfrican American HistorySocial SciencesRaceContemporary RacismUrban SocietyAfrican American StudiesBlack WomenCivil RightsRacial EquitySocial InequalityBlack Picket FencesSouth SideBlack Middle-class NeighbourhoodBlack Social MovementsIntersectionalitySocial ClassAfrican American FreedomDisadvantaged BackgroundBlack ProtestRacial ViolenceAfrican American SlaverySociologyGentrificationUrban Social JusticeBlack Middle ClassSociologist Mary Pattillo-mccoySocial JusticeSocial Diversity
In Chicago’s South Side, black middle‑class families in Groveland enjoy stable jobs, home ownership, and private schooling, yet remain economically fragile due to persistent wealth gaps, segregation‑driven poverty, crime, limited resources, and a consumer culture that romanticizes hardship. Pattillo‑McCoy finds that black middle‑class families, despite material privileges, confront distinct perils and that racial separation and inequality persist between black and white middle classes.
After living for three years in Groveland, a black middle-class neighbourhood on Chicago's South Side, sociologist Mary Pattillo-McCoy sought to explain the discontinuities in their daily life, both troublesome and hopeful, she witnessed. Residents work in stable middle-class jobs and many have single-family homes with a backyard and a two-car garage. Some send their children to private schools and are able to retire with solid pensions. Yet despite such privileges, Pattillo-McCoy argues, they face unique perils. Continuing inequities in wealth and occupational attainment make these families economically fragile. Racial segregation confines many middle-class African Americans to neighbourhoods with higher poverty rates, more crime, fewer resources, less political clout, and worse schools than most white neighbourhoods. Finally, youths are targets of and participate in a popular consumer culture that romanticizes the hard life of poverty. Despite arguments that race no longer matters, Pattillo-McCoy shows a different reality: even the black and white middle classes remain separate and unequal.