As Karyn R. Lacy's innovative work in the suburbs of Washington, DC, reveals, there is a continuum of middle-classness among blacks, ranging from lower-middle class to middle-middle class to ...upper-middle class. Focusing on the latter two, Lacy explores an increasingly important social and demographic group: middle-class blacks who live in middle-class suburbs where poor blacks are not present. These "blue-chip black" suburbanites earn well over fifty thousand dollars annually and work in predominantly white professional environments. Lacy examines the complicated sense of identity that individuals in these groups craft to manage their interactions with lower-class blacks, middle-class whites, and other middle-class blacks as they seek to reap the benefits of their middle-class status.
The majority of Americans live and work in suburbs, but the social problems arising in these communities are rarely studied by sociologists. Far more scholarly attention is devoted to understanding ...the distinctive character of urban communities. This review directs attention to three emerging trends affecting the nation's suburbs disproportionately: the suburbanization of poverty, the settlement of post-1965 immigrants in the suburbs, and the impact of reverse migration to the South on black suburbanization. The review provides a critical discussion of the valuable contributions demographers have made to our general understanding of these trends, then it engages the work of ethnographers to assess the processes underlying these outcomes. These emerging trends constitute the basis for a robust research agenda rooted in the sociology of suburbs.
While white ethnics and immigrants of colour have been studied in terms of their attempts to assimilate into the American mainstream, sociologists assume that ongoing racial discrimination obviates ...the need for an extensive examination of the actual assimilation trajectories of middle-class blacks. Many middle-class blacks travel from the black to the white world rather than existing exclusively in one racially distinct environment. Yet, we do not fully understand how middle-class blacks conceptualize their own integration into American society. Drawing on data collected through in-depth interviews with middle-class blacks and ethnographic research in a white and a black suburb, I establish the link between an affinity for black spaces and the alternative assimilation trajectories of middle-class blacks. I find that middle-class blacks engage in a variant of segmented assimilation, privileging the black world as a site for socializing even if they live in a white suburb. This selective pattern of assimilation, what I term strategic assimilation, suggests that this population of middle-class blacks does not perceive itself as permanently constrained to the bottom rung of a racial hierarchy.
Is the protracted foreclosure crisis eroding the Black middle class? Foreclosure rates in the United States have reached an all-time high. Blacks have been hit especially hard by this crisis. I focus ...here on intraclass distinctions within the Black middle class precisely because scholars and journalists so often fail to distinguish between the experiences of the Black lower middle class and those of middle and upper-class Blacks, leaving the unintended impression that middle-class Blacks all have the same odds of losing their home. I argue that conventional explanations of the foreclosure crisis as a racialized event should be amended to account for the differential impact of the crisis on three distinct groups of middle-class Blacks: the lower middle class, the core middle class, and the upper or elite middle class.
When Wilson argued back in 1978 that by the mid-twentieth century social class mattered more for getting ahead than race, he launched a rigorous scholarly debate about the relative importance of race ...and class that continues to this day. Since the 1970s, the gap between the black middle class and the black poor has widened, lending credibility to Wilson's claim, but also raising new research questions for scholars to ponder. In this essay, I suggest that extending Wilson's model to include a new period, encompassing the last twenty-five years, would help to illuminate more recent structural advantages that contribute to class privilege in American society as well an emerging fault line within the black middle class.
We tend to think of the Census Bureau as merely a bean counter, but the institution performs another, less apparent, role: signaling which demographic shifts carry the most weight in society. Trump's ...insistence that the Census Bureau include a controversial citizenship question on the 2020 census would mark a decisive shift in the Bureau's ability to count unauthorized immigrants accurately and in the distribution of federal resources to communities where immigrants settle in large numbers. This essay considers what these consequences, should Trump prevail, would mean for social scientists who study immigration. This distressing prospect presents an opportunity for demographers to consider how the work of ethnographers could be utilized to circumvent the data limitations a citizenship question would likely impose.
As Karyn R. Lacy's innovative work in the suburbs of Washington, DC, reveals, there is a continuum of middle-classness among blacks, ranging from lower- middle class to middle-middle class to ...upper-middle class. Focusing on the latter two, Lacy explores an increasingly important social and demographic group: middle-class blacks who live in middle-class suburbs where poor blacks are not present. These "blue-chip black" suburbanites earn well over fifty thousand dollars annually and work in predominantly white professional environments. Lacy examines the complicated sense of identity that individuals in these groups craft to manage their interactions with lower-class blacks, middle-class whites, and other middle-class blacks as they seek to reap the benefits of their middle-class status.
Abstract
Since ethnographers tend to study poor, urban black communities most often, it is not surprise that the methodological literature contains a wealth of information designed to help scholars ...do this kind of work. Far less is known about the challenges ethnographers face when “studying up,” that is exploring middle and upper-middle-class communities. Less is know too about the challenges of working in a suburb versus an urban community. This chapter helps to fill that void. By chronicling the challenges I faced in the field while collecting the data for Blue-Chip Black, my book about the identity options of middle and upper-middle-class suburban blacks, I show that the strategies ethnographers of the urban poor employ in their work are not necessarily transferable to studies of the upper classes. I identify a set of methodological tools appropriate for analysis of the upper classes. I then turn to the theoretical contributions of my study as a way of showing the kinds of insights that can be gleaned from a study of those near the top of the class ladder.
Compares race relations in two suburban communities in order to show that middle-class blacks meet with some success when they temporarily exchange their racial identity for a class-based identity. ...Collects data through ethnography and individual interview to examine the conditions under which middle-class blacks construct and assert a sub-urban identity. States that success varies with the racial composition of the suburban community and the white neighbours' level of the satisfaction with the community.
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