E. Franklin Frazier’s Black Bourgeoisie raises much controversy: it’s controversial in its claims, in its tone, and in its purpose. It is important to preface, therefore, that this text ought to be framed and recognized as a piece grounded in subjective opinion, rather than an objective sociological study into the behavior and practices of the black middle-class. As Professor Bobo in class and Mary Pattillo in Black Picket Fences point out respectively, the writing of this book actually fell at a time when the black middle-class were mobilizing significant change with the Civil Rights movement, a far cry from the lazy and trivial depiction that Frazier gives. Nevertheless, there are numerous merits to Black Bourgeoisie within the larger fabric of sociological study of the black-middle class. When one looks past Frazier’s sensational attacks and accounts for their potential exaggeration, it ought to be used as a comparative tool of history, we can determine the similarities and differences between the black middle-class pre- and post-Civil Rights.

As with many others this week, I found myself most taken by the crises of identity that the black middle-class faced in last week’s readings. The black middle-class toe the line between whiteness and blackness, recognizing the former as a means of integration and success in a white hegemonic world. As Lacy explains, this strategic assimilation still allows for black parents to immerse their children in black culture and develop associations with other black children and families. This model gives agency to the black community that other models of assimilation have been unable to afford. However, this “double consciousness” problem that the black middle-class face is not confined simply to the whiteness/blackness binary. Other tensions arise too. How does the black middle-class reconcile its position in the supposed “middle” of society with the clear socioeconomic disadvantages it holds against the white “middle-class”? Where is the room for the black middle-class on this class spectrum, when the concept of class is one that has been determined, shaped, and evolved by the “white” class system? Is it a detriment, even, to black “middle-classers” that they are held in direct comparison to the white “middle-classers”, when their respective middle-classes look so different?

I was also fascinated by Frazier’s suggestion that “divorces and scandals in family and sex behavior do not affect one’s social status; rather the notoriety which one acquires in such cases adds to one’s prestige” (127). Frazier asserts here that for the middle class, no notoriety is bad notoriety. Although a seemingly absurd claim, does Mary Pattillo point to something similar in Black Picket Fences, when she discusses interviewees respective forays into the drug world? In particular, she describes girls’ attention to boys that comes with the money and power that is accrued from drug money. Pattillo distinguishes those who are thrilled by popular gangsta culture from those who are consumed by it – is the notoriety of rebellious delinquency a mechanism for the latters’ continued indulgence and reiteration on the theme? Was Tyson Reed, who was charged with the attempted murder of his mother’s boyfriend after stabbing him, spurred on to continue on this trajectory by the whispers that followed?