One idea that I brought up in my reaction paper for last week was self-segregation between the black elite and ‘the masses’. Because the black bourgeoisie stemmed from free mulatto men and women during slavery, wealth and status within the black community were originally tied to an intrinsic quality within the elite individuals: their partial ‘whiteness’. Because of this they saw themselves as innately superior and did not wish to be associated with the greater black community. Each of the readings last week spoke to middle class black communities distancing themselves from poorer blacks, whether they did so by aligning themselves with white communities or just sticking close to other wealthy blacks. This interesting phenomenon has been widely observed and proven empirically, and it highlights the (often detrimental) focus on class disinfection within the black community. I think it is important to consider what effect this practice of self-segregation and distinction has on the black community at large. I, for one, see the rift between black people from different classes as a large problem for the black community. It impedes progress for the whole group by preventing the unity that the black community needs to find solutions for its problems. When, as we mentioned in class, prominent and/or wealthy black individuals disparage movements like Black Lives Matter, it makes it that much easier for others outside of the movements to discredit and dismiss them. It justifies inaction on the part of people in power and adds doubt to the validity of the movement. After all, if something like Black Lives Matter was really that important to black people, wouldn’t they all agree about it? Further, self-segregation and the like within the community contribute to the narrative of the homogenous monolith of the black masses. This mindset is extremely harmful because of how dehumanizing it is – it stops ‘outsiders’ from seeing individual poor black Americans as humans and seeing their issues as real human issues. Instead, they are ignorable. Further, it can give a ‘pass’ to people outside of the community (who do not bother to learn its roots or the injustices inflicted upon it) to blindly criticize poor blacks for laziness or other undesirable traits. If certain black people can make it into the white mainstream, shouldn’t the rest of them be able to? This inaccurate argument is made to seem less inaccurate when the very black people who have made it into the white mainstream endorse this kind of thought.
2 thoughts on “The Middle Class vs. The Masses”
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Great post Madison!
You raise some critical issues for consideration.
Miles brought up Du Bois’s “missionaries of culture” concept in his post and the idea that well-to-do blacks are charged with the responsibility of elevating the entire race. His question was about whether or not this was even a sociological possibility. I find resonances in your question. While I don’t have the final answer to your query, it does make me wonder about Du Bois’s Talented Tenth vanguard and the weight of that charge, particularly within an American society where individualism, picking one’s self up by the boot strap, etc are common and desired (if imagined) ideals.
The black community is itself a nebulous term and automatically joins black people into a community of other blacks whether they want to be or not and with that comes notions of responsibility to a group, where nothing you do is ever for yourself only but directly tied to the fate of others in the community, and I think many well-to-do blacks feel restricted by this view and aim to run as far away from that as possible. There is no talk of “the white community” or the responsibility of well-to-do-whites for the uplift of poor whites or to use Du Bois’s term the white submerged class. In fact, as I mentioned in Avni’s post about trying middle class to whiteness, there is an assumption that whiteness is by definition middle class and no underclass exists. This ties back to Frazier’s discussion of how poor blacks and whites were prevented from mobilizing together, wherein they were lulled into a false sense of security by propertied and capitalist whites who then scapegoated blacks. In any event, I think what it means to be white and successful and what it means to be black and successful carry such different meanings and responsibilities. Will it be that as long as racism exists successful blacks will be inextricably tied to a community for whom they are responsible for elevating? Is this a Sisyphean task?
Thanks for the response Khytie! I also think that the definition of being white and successful is very different from the definition of being black and successful. Immediately my mind goes to this week’s Black Picket Fences and its descriptions of the black middle class. The black middle class is very different from the white middle class both socially and economically – in both aspects, the black middle class is less stable. According to Pattillo, black middle class families are more at risk for falling into the lower economic class or “underclass”, and also make less than white middle class families. In terms of opportunity (housing, bank loans, etc.) as well, Pattillo provides evidence that the black middle class is much closer to the white lower class than white middle class. To further support this point, I always think of a Chris Rock joke from one of his stand up shows. Explaining the ethnographic makeup of his upscale neighborhood, he states that the only black residents are three very famous entertainers and himself. His white next-door neighbor, however, is a dentist. Though this is part of a comedy show and not a formal work of sociological research, I think the anecdote is highly indicative of the inequality of opportunity between black and white individuals. Black people often have to work much harder and achieve much higher levels of success to gain access to the opportunities that relatively normal white people have. That this persists even today, in a time some people consider to be “post-racial”, is just proof to me that much more progress has to be made to eradicate systemic discrimination against the black community before we can ever really combat American racism.