I really enjoyed Patrick Sharkey’s Stuck In Place this week because it really gave a lot of food for thought. I took a sociology course last year on Money, Work and Social Life that was offered for joint credit with the Economics department, and some of the people in my class were definitely there for more of an ec perspective than a sociological one. In section, someone suggested (with total seriousness) that the focus on black advancement is pointless because black families make more today than they ever have in the past…

The ways black economic advancement is used to discredit the need for social programs and assistance is always crazy to me, because so much work still needs to be done. On that note, I really liked that Sharkey directly addressed the ways in which black economic advancement has actually been incorrectly pumped up due to immigration. Indisputably, there has absolutely been large economic progress made, but this cannot distract from the large work that still lies ahead.