E. Franklin Frazier attracted a lot of criticism for his scathing critique of the black middle class in the mid-20^th century. Much of this criticism was justified, since—as Professor Bobo mentioned in class—the same black middle class that Frazier excoriated also played an enormous role in launching the civil rights movement almost as soon as Black Bourgeoisie was published. This movement achieved significant progress for blacks of all socioeconomic levels in education, housing, employment, and many other aspects of life. But at the same time that this success was achieved—and partially because of the opportunities opened up by this success—middle-class blacks were moving out of inner-city neighborhoods and into the suburbs. As Mary Pattillo emphasizes in the video, they didn’t get very far, and were largely just as isolated from whites and economic success in the inner suburbs as poor blacks in the inner city were. However, their migration did increase the already high concentration of poverty in cities across America, leading to the creation of a “truly disadvantaged” urban black community, in the words of William Julius Wilson, similar to what Hunter described as “secondary marginalization” in Black Citymakers.

When considering more modern evidence of Frazier’s argument, we can look to the rise of the War on Drugs and mass incarceration. A recent New York Times op-ed by Michael Javen Fortner struck me as very relevant to our discussion of the black middle class. Fortner argued that the black middle class played a large role in advocating for and implementing the punitive drug laws in the 1970s that disproportionately hurt poor blacks. Though they supported these laws because of real concerns about crime and violence in black communities, the War on Drugs would turn out to have a disastrous impact on the black community, representing, in the words of Michelle Alexander, a “new Jim Crow.” Another contemporary example is the complaint that the black elite—intellectuals, public figures, and politicians—has lost touch with poor inner-city black communities. In a verse in his song “That’s Life” that particularly struck me, rapper Killer Mike argues “To all you rich bourgeoisie [expletives] out there/Stop ignoring your cousins in the ghetto/Because they’re there/Stop looking down on ’em.” Once again, however, arguments like these may be precipitating important movements—this time, the Black Lives Matter movement—which are driven in large part by the black elite and middle class. It remains to be seen whether arguments in the vein of Killer Mike and E. Franklin Frazier will once again be disproved by the success of a movement driven by the same groups that they criticize.

As I was reading Frazier’s Black Bourgeoisie , something that I kept thinking about is this idea that your wealth diminishes your race. Trevor and Anna both touched on this idea. It definitely was something I struggled with growing up. A lot of my friends called me an Oreo and said I talked white. Since I was smart and spoke like an educated person, I was automatically deemed as acting white. There are many things wrong with this assumption. First, it makes being smart and gaining success something only white people do and this is very problematic. Also, it makes it seem like there is a certain list of things you need to be Black. It almost becomes this checklist and the more statements you have checked off, the more Black you are. The reality is I am Black because I walk the earth as a Black person and I identify such. My speech or intelligence does not affect that.

But, I do think that there can be a sense of arrogance among some in the Black middle class. This idea was brought up in an article called “The New Black Suburbs” that described how the daughter of two parents who were of the Black middle class scoffed when she passed those living in lower income areas. There is this idea that you are somehow better than lower income Blacks because you have money, an education,  success, etc. It’s a very sad idea that I know my parents instilled in me. It ignores all the structural problems affecting the Black community.

From its very beginning, the black middle class was placed at an intersection of society. On the one hand, it sought to emulate certain aspects of white culture with the goal of economic and social equality. On the other hand, this same white culture would never let it forget the “black” part of its identity. From this junction, members of this group sought to form their own black identity that suited their racial, social, and economic backgrounds. I think that understanding this intersectionality is still an important issue today for not only for members of the black middle class today, but also for members of the black community in general.

The challenge of reconciling various identities is one that is ever present in the black feminist movement. I think this challenge parallels the one faced by the black middle class as it sought to bring about social change during the Civil Rights movement. Members of this class faced the issue of using mainstream tactics and white platforms while also staying in touch with the black masses. Today, black women who are a part of the feminist movement often face the challenge of wanting to support a movement, but also recognizing the different struggles faced by themselves in contrast to those faced by the white women who are generally at the forefront of the movement.

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?

I believe many people would consider DuBois’s wish for the “talented tenth” to be “missionaries of culture” to their black counterparts indicative of his now antiquated, respectability-based theory of change. However, when contemplating this term, I became interested in the DuBois’s ideas about the relationship between culture, race, and class. Apparently, he believed that wealthy and educated black people should share their culture with poorer, less educated black people. And although, some readers might disagree with DuBois in this case as a matter of anti-assimilationist politics, I question whether spreading a culture throughout a racial group is even a modern sociological possibility.

When Du Bois was writing in 1903, the legal, economic, and educational systems made clear racial distinctions. Sociological racial boundaries were reinforced or influenced by these public distinctions. With a relatively rigid racial boundary in which to shape a group identity, it might make sense that black elites would have enough social capital to be effective “missionaries of culture” to the general black population. Today, however, we think of “The Declining Significance of Race” and how wealthy and well-education black Americans lives are so distant from the experiences of poorer and less educated black people. Insofar as socioeconomic class relates to racial identity, I would venture to say that some poorer and less educated black Americans might see the black elite as totally–maybe even racially–separate from them (i.e. “He might as well be white”). And to appease Frazier’s characterization of wealthy black people, many members of the black elite might see themselves as totally, culturally separate from other black people. So would such a culturally distinct black elite have enough social capital among the general black population, particularly poorer black Americans, to be “missionaries of culture”?

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.

In the video that Khytie linked, Mary Pattillo describes the misperceptions of the black community as one of the motivations behind her research. She describes the lack of coverage of the black middle class, both by academia and the media, as giving rise to wrong assumptions of the number of poor blacks in the United States and yet simultaneously to unfocused and uninformed opinions about the state of the black community as a whole.

As we talked about in class, Frazier creates a great distance between both the black middle class and the white middle class, as well as the black middle class and the black poor. Pattillo mentions in the video that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. overstates the fragmentation in the black community and argues instead that there is great fluidity across class and both upward and downward mobility. Though there may be large economic distance between the middle class moving into a neighborhood and the original residents, Pattillo describes family, friendship, institutional – church and employment – connections as easily crossing the middle class boundary and that even if a person is considered middle class, blacks are three times as likely to have a poor sibling than those in the white middle class.

Here we see the complicating factors that make up the situation of the black middle class. More people in the black community are middle class than are poor, and yet the middle class continues to be ignored by the mainstream media. The black middle class, unlike the white middle class, often lives in racially homogeneous communities, and often in close proximity to poorer black neighborhoods, resulting in social and cultural mobility. Frazier describes the straddling position of the black middle class as they attempted to leap to a higher social status, but even his depiction was wildly oversimplifying.

A central claim in Frazier’s Black Bourgeoisie is that the black middle class is trying and failing to adopt “white culture”, while simultaneously abandoning their roots as black individuals in the United States. While there were a number of questionable aspects to his analysis, from vague and eclectic methods to a seriously flawed projection for the future, the aspect that I kept thinking about after class was this idea of “white culture”. What even is “white culture”? And how much of what we call “white culture” is conflated with class? This is a challenging topic for me to understand and wrap my mind around. Is “white culture” anything that is not explicitly black–genres and styles themselves, and their roots in white or black communities over time? If so, what do we say to people like Darius Rucker, an African-American country singer? It seems to me that it’s more about the people involved with different aspects of culture–the race of the people who populate music acts, TV shows, movies, books, theater.

This question had me thinking a lot about the TV show 30 Rock, which followed a team that produced a weekly sketch comedy show on NBC. Like most television, the cast was majority white, with the exception of one of the leads, Tracy Morgan (who played an exaggerated version of himself named Tracy Jordan), and one of the supporting characters, James “Toofer” Spurlock–called “Toofer” because he is both black and went to Harvard–a double win as a hire. Toofer and Tracy regularly butt heads over what it means to be black, with Toofer arguing that Tracy “brings down the race” by emulating various racial stereotypes and things in his comedy. In this instance, Toofer would be the black bourgeoisie Frazier references. However, Tracy is not “one of the masses”. He’s an acclaimed movie and television star, extremely wealthy and successful. By Du Bois’s measure, he could be considered one of the “talented tenth”. It’s fascinating how the show turns this trope around, and deals with race (at times) in an open an interesting manner. I’d encourage you all to read this article (which is not perfect, but offers a view of the show’s handling of race) if you’re interested in reading more: http://grantland.com/features/30-rock-race-identity-politics/

Like Trevor, I was fascinated by the apparent racial identity crisis that many members of the black middle class seem to face. I think there is validity to the idea that being middle class and being ‘truly black’ are, in some ways, mutually exclusive – in most cases, to be middle class is to achieve success in an economic sphere dominated by white hegemonic principles. Frazier highlights this in a number of places throughout Black Bourgeoisie; he notes that to perform middle class work is to allow oneself to be measured by “white standards” (217).

Historically, blacks have been largely excluded from the middle class. Today, barriers to entry to the middle class still exist for people of color, though it is more feasible for blacks to ascend the socioeconomic ladder. However, the middle class is still a place dominated by whites, not only in number but also in cultural and social norms. The cultural practices of the white-dominated middle class have, in large part, failed to incorporate elements of non-white culture. For example, black members of the middle class usually code switch in their professional lives, as speaking AAVE is socially unacceptable in this space. Sociologist Lisa Delpit argues that in order to give black children the opportunity to succeed, schools must teach them how to conduct themselves in ‘white’ ways (she also argues that teachers must give opportunities to celebrate and acknowledge black culture, too). Lacy also provides evidence for this, stating that middle class blacks cannot “be who they are” in most middle class spaces (920). Instead, they must alter their behaviors to adapt to white norms that require them to mask elements of their black cultural and racial identity. To achieve middle class economic success, then, requires that an individual accept and embody, to some degree, standards set and maintained by whites.

It seems very reasonable, then, that members of the black middle class experience a kind of racial identity crisis, like that of Dre in “Black-ish.” Usually, to achieve middle class status means that one has, to some degree, accepted and adhered to white standards of behavior. This means “putting away” visible aspects of black culture in many middle class, white-dominated spaces. It also means living and working in a space in which white culture is valued and black culture is not, requiring extra effort on the part of blacks to maintain their black racial identity (Lacy, 924). Middle class status and blackness, then, struggle with each other in a social world dominated by white-set standards.

A recurring theme that really struck me as interesting in Black Bourgeoisie was the idea of fake-ness, or inauthenticity. The black middle class is described as emulating many middle class activities, like socializing through formal events, buying nicer clothes, nicer vehicles, etc. However, instead of seeing this as the black middle class achieving, Frazier sees these activities as a way to cut ties with their black underclass roots and just try to emulate white people. He makes some very scathing claims, like the claim that the black middle class buys all these fancy books but never reads them, implying that their attempts to look middle-class are just fake and meaningless. There is the implicit idea in Frazier that these activities are implicitly, “white,” and when the black middle class tries to emulate them, it just comes across as fake.

This idea of people losing their “blackness” is something we still see today. People like CNN’s Gene Seymour describe being criticized as not being black enough if they have too many white friends, talk “whiter,” or like “white” things. Charles Barkley goes as far to say that black people are criticized not just for acting white, but for being successful in general. Commenting on how Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson was seen as being “not black enough” by his teammates, Barkley went on the attack, claiming, “For some reason we are brainwashed to think, if you’re not a thug or an idiot, you’re not black enough. If you go to school, make good grades, speak intelligent, and don’t break the law, you’re not a good black person. It’s a dirty, dark secret in the black community.” Barkley seems to think that “being black” is tied with the underclass, so much so that having mainstream success, or even intelligence is seen as “white.”

While Barkley’s view is on a very controversial end of the spectrum, and has been heavily criticized, the idea of black people losing their blackness has been a real issue for many people, which we can see in pop culture. In the sitcom Black-ish, Anthony Anderson’s character feels like his kids are losing their black roots since they start to emulate the culture and behavior of their predominantly white friends at school. In the movie Dear White People, a character feels alienated because he likes “white” things like Mumford and Sons.

What does it mean to retain one’s blackness in the middle class? If one adopts middle class behaviors, is this being middle class, or is this just emulating a “white middle class”? If white people have shaped the American power structure, are “middle class values” and “white middle class values” inherently tied? When a black person acts differently in the middle class, is this a natural process that occurs with anyone moving up the social ladder, or is it losing a sense of identity, and what is that identity? Is that identity tied to the underclass, like Barkley seems to believe, and thus is it desirable to hold onto that identity? Frazier seems to think that the middle class activities black people were emulating were inherently white, and not just middle class behaviors in general. In that case, what would a more “authentic” black middle class look like?

This sitcom is a comical spin on the black bourgeoisie/black middle class. It raises several issues about consumption, professionalism, culture, identity, status, class and the meaning of blackness in America today among well-to-do blacks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNqqjDv6_dU

Reflecting on this week’s seminar, I was struck by Khytie’s rhetorical question about whether the talented tenth is synonymous with the black middle class. As Professor Bobo pointed out, the black middle class largely encompasses people employed in sales and clerical positions, and encompasses more than the community’s top decile of earners. Prior to reading statistics about the black middle class’ composition and occupations, however, I equated achieving middle class status with being a professional (doctor, lawyer, etc). This automatic association underscores how nebulous the term is, and how people representing a broad range of educational experiences, incomes, and other privileges may either identify themselves as part of the middle class or be labeled as a part of this group.

Given the fluidity inherent to social stratification, I am curious about how individuals’ identification with a social stratum is impacted by the class others may ascribe to them. Consider a child who grows up in a household earning $70,000 annually and occasionally wears designer clothes. Perhaps her friends could label the child as “boujie” or “rich,” leading the child to see herself as “upper class” despite her parents not be amongst the richest ten percent of black Americans.

In addition, I recently logged onto Amazon.com and searched for Black No More by George S. Schuyler, a book that Matt Clair and Professor Bobo referred to briefly. A work of fiction, it follows Max Disher as he bleaches his skin in 1930’s New York and gains access to white society. The book’s summary says that, in Max’s eyes, there are three options for black people in society, “Get out, get white, or get along.” I found it coincidental that Schuyler’s words could be used to reframe Frazier’s argument. Indeed, in Frazier’s eyes, the black middle class did not want to “get along,” alienating itself from the rest of black America, and could not “get white” since its constituents barred from entering white society. Frazier believes that the black middle class then “[got] out” of society itself, existing as a cultureless people that was neither black nor white. This parallel between Schuyler’s humor and Frazier’s polemic leaves me wanting to pick up the former work from the library.

There are so many different ways sociologists and laypeople approach defining class. In section, the overview of different theoretical conceptualizations was helpful. Marxian views on one’s relation to the means of production is helpful, as is Weber’s more comprehensive inclusion of things such as prestige and status. But I think what’s most interesting is how people self identify within certain classes.

Mary Pattillo speaks to this in her video interview as discusses the difficulties sociologists face when thinking about class. Even the most objective measurements (being literally in the middle of the income distribution, or having a middle class job) have very wide applications (for example both blacks and whites can have a middle class white collar job, but if black people are all working in clerical positions whereas whites are holding managerial and ownership roles).

I would be interested in further exploring aspects of self class identification, especially because Fraizer and DuBois seem to think that a lot of middle class African American define themselves as middle class based off how far away they are from the disadvantaged poor. There is a purposeful distancing from the poorer classes, and a general sense of discontentment at being lumped together under the common label of “Negro” expressed by both The Philadelphia Negro and Black Bourgeoisie despite the decades in between their publishings. I’m hopeful that this tendency has decreased somewhat with Tumblr social justice, “#staywoke”ness, and a general awareness of classism, but is this widespread or mostly due to the academic settings I’m currently in?

What’s next? Put simply, the great question asked by all movements for political liberation is, “How do we best get what we want for our people?” How is obviously a key word – we need to know what course of action to take. But also, best is an important concept to keep in mind, with respect to efficiency, ease, morality, and group satisfaction of the means. By group satisfaction, I mean, is everyone in the group satisfied with the results or the goal? As Chris Crass stated in his keynote at the 2015 White Privilege Conference, an antiracist educators’ conference in Louisville, Kentucky, “No step is 100% liberatory.” Still, what steps are most liberatory for the majority of people? And, cue the series of questions:

How do we avoid being divisive, especially in black communities? How do we make sure efforts towards black civil rights don’t just benefit the self-interested and eponymous black bourgeoisie portrayed in Frazier? How do we fight for African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants while also capitalizing on the powerful narrative of black as native in the U.S.? How do we act strategically essentialist in our needs to unify blacks without reifying the very oppressive constructs of race? How do we fight for racial equality without marginalizing the millions of black women, womyn and others? How do we, as DuBois encourages in his Souls of Black Folk, protect and defend the threatened institution of the black family without marginalizing the queer black American (intellectuals like Baldwin, hooks, Hughes, Lorde, and Walker) who force us  through their very queerness to reconsider our definitions of families? How do we advocate for the rural black and the urban black? How do we #StandWithAhmed at the intersection of Islamophobia and antiblackness while criticism and holding entirely accountable the lunacy of Ben Carson? How do we end racial inequality? How do we best get what we want for our people?