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Black middle-class comes into view

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mwkruse
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Christian Science Monitor: Black middle-class comes into view

Whittier, Calif. – These tidy streets of well-manicured lawns and hedges gracing modest, but well-appointed California-style bungalow homes are Richard Nixon country, home to his alma mater and next door to his birth and burial place, Yorba Linda.

This has long been a bastion of conservative, white American Republicanism, says resident Lonnie Jordan, an African-American musician who lives in the Friendly Hills district of town. Married to a mixed-race wife whose mother was white and father black, Mr. Jordan says this was not always a comfortable place for a mixed-race couple. But, that has begun to change, he adds. The reason? The presidential aspirations of candidate Barack Obama.

"He's put the image of black families on the national dialogue," says Jordan. "Now I walk around and I don't feel odd or out of place. It's come out of the shadows and into the everyday light."

Middle-class, African-American life has been invisible to mainstream America for most of the 20th century, says American University professor Leonard Steinhorn, coauthor of "By the Color of Our Skin: The Illusion of Integration and the Reality of Race." This derives largely from what he calls the sin of decades of segregation in the suburbs, the traditional home of the middle class. …

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2 responses to “Black middle-class comes into view”

  1. phil_style Avatar
    phil_style

    I find this an interesting comment “Middle-class, African-American life has been invisible to mainstream America”. Now I’ve never lived in the USA, but it seems to me that mainstream US culture has long been at least aware of the black middle class life. Popular US culture has exported this via TV shows such as “The Cosby Show” and “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” (albeit upper middle class set – but certainly targetted at a middle class audience). Now hile these shows may rely on stereotyped representation of the black middle class, they provide evidence at least that this group is not “invisible”. I think the word ‘invisible’ is applying a little creative liscence.
    I’d also be interested to know if the author is critical or just simply observant of the apparent lack of ‘intergration’. The subject of intergration is contentions becaue it always begs the question – Who is being asked to intergrate with who?
    Certainly in my experience with how indigenous culture has been dealth with in the past (New Zealand) – often ‘integration’ is code for “why hasn’t everyon adopted white/anglo/european cultural norms?” I’m not suggesting this is where the author is going here, but it is worth thinking about.

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  2. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    I think the article’s point is that while there has been an increase portrayal middle class Black families and individuals in the U.S. media, relatively few White middle class families have personal experience with Black middle class families. As you suggest, the interesting question is why.
    My brother is at a church that includes 18 different ethnic groups (mostly middle class) with none in the majority, including Anglos. Only recently have they been seeing significant numbers of Black worshipers and that has been through concentrated effort at relationship building. By far, inclusion of Black families has been the biggest challenge.
    I was briefly part of church that was half White and half Black with a Black pastor. It requires a lot of work. If churches who are supposed to have an underlying point of unity that brings us all together find this challenging, what would we expect to see more broadly in the culture?

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