Black Picket Fences

Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class

• Author(s): Mary E. Pattillo, Mary Pattillo-McCoy,
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Pages: 276
• ISBN_10: 0226649296
  ISBN_13: 9780226649290
  
• Language: en
• Categories: Science / Earth Sciences / Geography , Social Science / General , Social Science / Ethnic Studies / American / African American & Black Studies , Social Science / Minority Studies , Social Science / Sociology / Urban , Social Science / Discrimination , Social Science / Social Classes & Economic Disparity , Social Science / Race & Ethnic Relations ,

Description:... Black Picket Fences is a stark, moving, and candid look at a section of America that is too often ignored by both scholars and the media: the black middle class. The result of living for three years in "Groveland," a black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, sociologist Mary Pattillo-McCoy has written a book that explores both the advantages and the boundaries that exist for members of the black middle class. Despite arguments that race no longer matters, Pattillo-McCoy shows a different reality, one where black and white middle classes remain separate and unequal.

"An insightful look at the socio-economic experiences of the black middle class. . . . Through the prism of a South Side Chicago neighborhood, the author shows the distinctly different reality middle-class blacks face as opposed to middle-class whites." —Ebony

"A detailed and well-written account of one neighborhood's struggle to remain a haven of stability and prosperity in the midst of the cyclone that is the American economy." —Emerge