Black picket fences

"Black Picket Fences is a stark, moving, and candid look at a section of America that is too often ignored by both scholars and the media: the black middle class. After living for three years in "Groveland," a black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, sociologist Mary Pattillo-McCoy writes, "I had seen three groups of eighth-graders graduate to high school, high school kids go on to college, and college graduates start their careers. I also heard too many stories and read too many obituaries of the teenagers who were jailed or killed along the way. The son of a police detective in jail for murder. The grandson of a teacher shot while visiting his girlfriend's house. The daughter of a park supervisor living with a drug dealer who would later be killed at a fast-food restaurant." Both troublesome and hopeful, these are the discontinuities in the daily life of Groveland residents that Pattillo-McCoy seeks to explain."--BOOK JACKET. "Despite arguments that race no longer matters, Pattillo-McCoy shows a different reality: Even the black and white middle classes remain separate and unequal."--BOOK JACKET.

First sentence: There is a paucity of contemporary studies on the black middle class, making it necessary to define who belongs in the black middle class, when such a group emerged, and where many middle-class African American live.

Year

1999

Language

English

Publisher

University Of Chicago Press

Editions

3

Pages

283

ISBN

9780226649290

Data source: Wikidata