Kin Support of the Black Middle Class: Negotiating Need, Norms, and Class Background

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmine D Hill
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Black Families ◽  
Black Middle Class ◽  
Socioeconomic Background ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Class Background ◽  
Kin Support ◽  
Depth Interviews

Abstract In comparison to middle-class Whites, middle-class African Americans disproportionately provide financial support to their low-income family members. Evidence suggests that this practice is both essential for its low-income recipients and economically detrimental for Black middle-class givers. Scholars often oversimplify Black middle-class identity by describing kin support as motivated solely by racial identity. Gathering insight from 41 in-depth interviews, this article interrogates the conditions under which, despite their financial own vulnerability, middle-class Black families offer kin support. This study explores variations in Black middle-class racial ideology and observes how other dimensions of identity, such as class background, influence attitudes and decision-making towards family. This article demonstrates how socioeconomic background shapes the ways the Black middle class negotiates expectations of kin support and details three kin support approaches as either strategies for social mobility, tools reserved for short-term lending, or opportunities to repay unsettled childhood debts. This work contributes to our understanding of how the Black community deploys kin support, illuminates how the Black middle class makes sense of racial norms around giving, and centers class background in our intersectional understanding of identity.

The Racial Politics of Cultural Capital: Perspectives from Black Middle-Class Pupils and Parents in a London Comprehensive

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derron Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
Black Middle Class ◽  
Black Parents ◽  
Focus Group Interviews ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Group Interviews ◽  
White Hegemony ◽  
Depth Interviews

Drawing on 13 in-depth interviews and three focus-group interviews with Black middle-class pupils, along with 14 in-depth interviews with their parents, this article highlights Black parents’ and pupils’ strategic use of Black cultural capital to contest White hegemony in the curricula at a large state comprehensive school in South London. The findings of this study underscore the racial politics of cultural capital as experienced by the Black middle classes. The results also spotlight the quiet alliances between Black middle-class pupils and parents to challenge the racial blindspots of state school curricula and negotiate changes throughout the school community. This article adds to scholarship in cultural sociology by highlighting the calculated intergenerational work among the Black middle classes – perspectives that are often missing in traditional class analyses.

Something about Baseball: Gentrification, “Race Sponsorship,” and Neighborhood Boys’ Baseball

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 307-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherri Grasmuck
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
Black Middle Class ◽  
New Class ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Unique Character ◽  
Black Politicians ◽  
White Neighborhood ◽  
Depth Interviews

This article examines the factors behind a story of racial accommodation in an unlikely space, one formerly renowned for racial violence and exclusion. The space of boys’ baseball provides an opportunity to understand how class and racial changes in a formerly White, working-class neighborhood of Philadelphia, unfolded over a 30-year period. With gentrification, came new class and racial encounters on the local baseball field. The author’s research included participation as a “bench Mom” over a decade, 2 years of ethnographic fieldwork involving observations of more than 100 games in two boys’ age divisions, and 40 in-depth interviews with coaches and parents of players. Factors identified as central to the smooth racial integration of the space are the centrality of baseball to neighborhood “character,” a demographic shortage of White neighborhood children, the “racial sponsorship” of the first Black middle-class children, a growing external accountability toward new Black politicians, and the unique character of baseball itself.

Low-Income Black Men’s Kin Work: Social Fatherhood in Cohabiting Stepfamilies

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 960-984
Author(s):  
Megan Reid ◽  
Andrew Golub
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Family Systems ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Black Families ◽  
Family Systems Theory ◽  
Biological Father ◽  
Child Discipline ◽  
Raising Children ◽  
Paternal Relationship ◽  
Depth Interviews

We apply family systems theory and the kinscripts framework to advance understanding of cohabiting stepfather involvement and kin work in low-income Black families raising children, from men’s own perspectives. Analysis of in-depth interviews with 15 cohabiting stepfathers revealed three central kin work domains: involvement in child discipline, taking on financial responsibilities for the child, and developing and maintaining a paternal relationship to the child in the context of a complex family. In each domain, participants described processes of negotiating their involvement with their partners. They also described often negotiating with their stepchildren and sometimes also with the child’s biological father. In multifather family systems, cohabiting stepfathers reported acknowledging, accepting, and adapting their involvement to the reality that there was more than one father to the child. Our analysis provides a theoretical advance in understanding men’s kin work, social fatherhood, and complex families.

Reading ‘Race’ in Bourdieu? Examining Black Cultural Capital Among Black Caribbean Youth in South London

Sociology ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (5) ◽  
pp. 907-923 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derron Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Black Middle Class ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Black Caribbean ◽  
Class Privilege ◽  
Depth Interviews

This article extends Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital in relation to ‘race’ and ethnicity by exploring the significance of black cultural capital among middle class black Caribbean young people in a large state school in south London. Black cultural capital is here defined as the appropriation of middle class values by black ethnics. Based on a 14-month-long ethnography, with specific attention to three focus group and 13 in-depth interviews with middle class black Caribbean young people, this piece outlines the benefits of and backlash to black cultural capital that students encounter from white middle class teachers for deploying black middle class tastes and styles in the classroom. The findings suggest that while black middle class pupils draw on black cultural capital to access advantages in formal school settings, they are also invested in challenging the terms of class privilege that marginalise the black working classes.

scholarly journals Brother's Keeper or Only Child? Black Middle Class Responses to Residential Mobility Initiatives in Prince George's County, MD

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carley Shinault
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Residential Mobility ◽  
Affordable Housing ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Binary Logistic Regression ◽  
Subject Area ◽  
Census Bureau ◽  
Black Middle Class ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Housing Options

The implications of urban revitalization, gentrification, and residential migration have attracted widespread interest and ongoing debate among scholars across a range of disciplines. While a significant body of literature explores race and class interactions within urban gentrifying neighborhoods, few have examined the environments that await those displaced by this process. This study explores the social and political impact of urban gentrification and class stratification within the black community by examining responses of black middle class residents in Prince George’s County, MD to the growing in-migration of low-income and minority residents from Washington, DC. Drawing on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, a multi-neighborhood sample of ninety-five black middle class residents of Prince George’s County, and informal interviews with subject-area experts, this study explores how race and class shape residential decisions and their impact on residential mobility initiatives. Residents responded to a 26-item survey that covered demographic information, political and community engagement, and their attitudes and beliefs about the poor, changes in their community, and racial unity and responsibility. Findings from cross tabulations and binary logistic regression indicate that lower middle class residents are the most likely to resist in-migration by exiting their communities and/or voting against proposals to create affordable housing options. Core and upper middle class residents were the most likely to stay in their neighborhoods despite increases in low-income migration, to vote in support of policies to create affordable housing options and to believe their responsibility to poor blacks could include sharing residential space.

Black Mothering in Action: The Racial-Class Socialization Practices of Low-Income Black Single Mothers

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 242-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Turner
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Single Mothers ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Racial Socialization ◽  
Parenting Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Middle Class ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Black Single Mothers

African Americans have long dealt with racism, discrimination, and racialized state and vigilante violence. As such, African American parents must educate their children about the realities of racism in the United States and how to cope with racism and discrimination. This practice, known as racial socialization, is a key aspect of Black parents’ parenting practices. Much of this labor tends to fall on the shoulders of Black mothers. To date, most of the scholarship on Black mothers’ racial socialization practices focuses on Black middle-class mothers. In this study, the author uses in-depth interviews with low-income African American single mothers in Virginia to examine how low-income Black single mothers racially socialize their children, what major concerns they express regarding raising Black children, and how their racial socialization practices and the concerns they express compare with those of Black middle-class mothers. Paralleling previous studies, the findings show that low-income Black single mothers generally fear for their children’s, especially their sons’, safety. They also invoke respectability politics when racially socializing their children, encouraging them not to dress or behave in ways that will reinforce stereotypes of Black boys as thugs or criminals. Diverging from previous research, however, the author argues that low-income Black single mothers’ employment of respectability politics is largely aspirational, as, unlike middle-class mothers, they are not able to assert their class status in an effort to prevent their children from experiencing discrimination.

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