Invisible middle-class Black space: Asymmetrical person and space stereotyping at the race–class nexus

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney Bonam ◽  
Caitlyn Yantis ◽  
Valerie Jones Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Residential Segregation ◽  
Black People ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Racial Stereotypes ◽  
Class Versus ◽  
White People ◽  
Racial Wealth Gap ◽  
Stereotype Content ◽  
Physical Spaces

In addition to racial stereotypes about people (e.g., Black people are poor), perceivers hold parallel racial stereotypes about physical spaces (e.g., Black spaces are impoverished; Bonam, Bergsieker, & Eberhardt, 2016). Three studies extend these findings, showing that (a) Whites describe Black space as impoverished and undesirable, but describe White space as affluent and desirable, and (b) this racially polarized stereotype content is heightened for spaces compared to people (Studies 1 & 2). Perceivers are accordingly more likely to racially stereotype spaces than people (Study 3). This asymmetry in racial stereotype application is exacerbated when targets are objectively middle class versus lower class, likely because Whites have more difficulty incorporating counterstereotypic information into perceptions of Black spaces—compared to perceptions of Black people, White people, and White spaces (Study 3). Finally, we provide and discuss evidence for potential consequences of invisible middle-class Black space, relating to residential segregation and the racial wealth gap.

Inconceivable Middle-Class Black Space: The Architecture and Consequences of Space-Focused Stereotype Content at the Race–Class Nexus

2020 ◽  
pp. 014616722096027
Author(s):  
Caitlyn Yantis ◽  
Courtney M. Bonam
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Residential Segregation ◽  
Mental Image ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Black Neighborhood ◽  
Stereotype Content ◽  
Content Analyses ◽  
White Neighborhood

White Americans tend to stereotype a Black neighborhood as lower class and less desirable than a similar White neighborhood. A strong mental image of Black areas, in general, as lower class and undesirable contributes to this perceptual race-gap. The present studies show that a weak mental image of middle-class Black space as middle class and desirable may also contribute. First, stereotype content analyses reveal how Whites’ diffuse mental image of middle-class Black space— rundown, suburban, clean, crime-ridden—overlaps with both Black and middle-class space stereotypes. Second, the more difficulty Whites experience imagining middle-class Black space as invariably middle class and desirable, the more likely they are to stereotype a Black (vs. White) neighborhood as low quality, feel less connected to it, and devalue a house there. Whites’ diffuse mental image of middle-class Black space may thus contribute to ongoing racial injustices (e.g., wealth disparities, residential segregation).

Ambivalent Attachments to Place in London: Twelve Barbadian Families

1993 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Western
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Adult Children ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Immigrants ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
White People ◽  
Return Home

There are good reasons for assuming that places symbolic for and valued by black people exist in Britain, One such locale is London's Notting Hill, which was, with Brixton, one of the two earliest zones of Afro-Caribbean settlement in the metropolis from the mid-1950s onwards. Notting Hill was also, in 1958, the locus of riots by young white people against black immigrants; the site of the Mangrove Restaurant, associated with the Black Power movement, and harassed continually by the police from its establishment in 1969 until its demise in 1991, Also, most notably, this area is the venue for the vast, annual, black-accented Notting Hill street carnival. These attributes did not, however, seem to engender strong responses in interviews with a set of twelve families of Barbadian origin. The interviewees, now materially successful, no longer inhabited the neighborhood, nor did their London-raised adult children. For the thirty-four interviewees, Notting Hill was a place that might once have been important for black people, but was no longer greatly valued for any such symbolisms; its looming gentrification by whites, for example, was not viewed with regret. This weak attachment to the place Notting Hill—or indeed to any other purportedly ‘black’ locales in London or Britain—has multiple sources in the particularity of this set of respondents: middle-class, respectable, generally conservative, homeowners, many of whom exhibit marked Barbadian island chauvinism. Most strikingly, some of the households still, after over thirty years in London, view themselves only as sojourners in Britain, who will before long return home to Barbados. Indeed, at least one household already has.

Gentrification and the Making of Craft Beer White Spaces

2020 ◽  
pp. 131-154
Author(s):  
Nathaniel G. Chapman ◽  
David L. Brunsma
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Black People ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
White People ◽  
Craft Beer ◽  
White Spaces ◽  
The Creation

This chapter evaluates the ways in which craft beer has reshaped spaces, places, and cultures in the image of white people, whiteness, and white supremacy. Craft beer spaces and places are typically located in gentrified areas, which have become signifiers of gentrification and middle-class consumption. The chapter then argues that craft breweries socially and culturally construct authentic identities that reflect middle-class values. It also explores the ways in which gentrification and craft beer are entangled, and the processes whereby such beer gentrification leads to the creation of 'white spaces.' Using interview data, the chapter examines how these spaces discourage and exclude black people and other minorities from participating in craft beer cultures, and therefore its consumption.

scholarly journals THE NARRATOR’S VOICE OF FREEDOM IN RALPH ELLISON’S INVISIBLE MAN: A STUDY OF POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Khotimatul Khusnah ◽  
Vita Vendityaningtyas
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Black People ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
White People ◽  
Invisible Man ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Mental Disturbance ◽  
The Voice

<p>The purpose of this research is to<strong> </strong>describe<strong> </strong>the position of Black people as the folk who get discrimination in America and explain the Narrator’s voice as the Black people in conveying the equality between Black and White people in America that is represented in<em> Invisible Man</em> novel. This research uses qualitative research. The researcher needs postcolonial literature by Lois Tyson to get evidences the effects and goals of the author in creating a story. The analysis reveals that Black people include subordinate people, oppressed minority group, and lower class that always suppressed and exploited by superior people who have power. Black people try to fight against superior to show their feeling of freedom for getting the same position and equality as White by conveying their voice through protest. The conclusion shows that inferiority makes Black people who have lower position in society get oppression that cause physical and mental disturbance from superior and the Narrator tries to struggle and get confession of Black people from the domination of White in order to survive their existence in society by conveying the voice with non-violence way through speech, action and music.</p>

Free but fragile: Human relations amidst poverty and HIV in democratic South Africa

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-94
Author(s):  
Christina Landman
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
Black People ◽  
Hiv Treatment ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
White People ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Black Township

Dullstroom-Emnotweni is the highest town in South Africa. Cold and misty, it is situated in the eastern Highveld, halfway between the capital Pretoria/Tswane and the Mozambique border. Alongside the main road of the white town, 27 restaurants provide entertainment to tourists on their way to Mozambique or the Kruger National Park. The inhabitants of the black township, Sakhelwe, are remnants of the Southern Ndebele who have lost their land a century ago in wars against the whites. They are mainly dependent on employment as cleaners and waitresses in the still predominantly white town. Three white people from the white town and three black people from the township have been interviewed on their views whether democracy has brought changes to this society during the past 20 years. Answers cover a wide range of views. Gratitude is expressed that women are now safer and HIV treatment available. However, unemployment and poverty persist in a community that nevertheless shows resilience and feeds on hope. While the first part of this article relates the interviews, the final part identifies from them the discourses that keep the black and white communities from forming a group identity that is based on equality and human dignity as the values of democracy.

The Reflection of Apartheidic Trauma / Traumatic Apartheid in None to Accompany Me by Nadine Gordimer

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 328
Author(s):  
Şahin KIZILTAŞ
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Black People ◽  
Native People ◽  
Nadine Gordimer ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
White People ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Violence Victimization ◽  
White Settlers ◽  
Almost All

The world has gone through a trauma for centuries. Almost all nations have experienced all sorts of traumatic events and feelings in this period. Among those nations, the black seem to be the most unlucky and ill-fated suffered from traumatic disasters. However, among those black nations, the natives of South Africa have been the most piteous and wretched ones. Their misfortune began in 1652 with the arrival of white colonists in the country. Since then, the oppression and persecution of white European colonists and settlers on natives increasingly continued. Those native people were displaced from the lands inherited from their ancestors a few centuries ago. They were not allowed to have equal rights with white people and to share same environment in public premises. The natives have put up resistance against the racial and colonial practices of white settlers which excluded them from all living spaces; yet, they could not manage, even they came into power in 1994. Today their exclusion and violence victimization still go on and they are still subjected to inferior treatment by (post)colonial dominant white powers. As a white intellectual and writer who had European origins, Nadine Gordimer witnessed the repression and torturing of European settlers on native people in South Africa. In her novels, she has reflected the racial discrimination practiced by white people who have considered of themselves in a superior position compared to the black. This study aims to focus on how Gordimer has reflected the trauma which the black people of South Africa have experienced as a consequence of racist practices. This will contribute to clarify and get across the real and true-life traumatic narratives of native people in the colonized countries.

Who is Rational?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Ben Prestel
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Urban Change ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Local Newspapers ◽  
Dynamic Transformation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Emergence

Beginning around 1860, authors in the Egyptian capital portrayed Cairo’s changing cityscape and the recent emergence of local newspapers in terms of their impact on rationality (‘aql). In their descriptions, these contemporaries depicted rationality as an education of the heart that especially enabled men from the middle class to control their bodies and passions. The chapter shows that Cairo’s transformation was, however, not always associated with rising rationality by drawing on a different set of sources. Police and court records from the 1860s and 1870s demonstrate that contemporaries also described processes of urban change as a danger to the “honor” of lower-class women. Like the debates in Berlin, emotional practices in Cairo thus served as a way to address the social formation of the Egyptian capital during a time of dynamic transformation.

Social Class and Ethnicity Effects on Clinical Judgments

1978 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph D. Norman ◽  
Ricardo Martinez
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Treatment Recommendations ◽  
Clinical Judgments ◽  
Involuntary Hospitalization ◽  
Professional Help ◽  
Class Bias ◽  
Psychotic Behavior

To resolve conflict between earlier studies finding contradictory recommendations on need for professional help of middle- vs lower-class persons given normal, neurotic, and psychotic behavior descriptions, and to explore ethnicity effects, 92 students (70 Anglo, 22 Chicano) rated fictitious biographical vignettes. A pro-middle-class bias was found consistent with Routh and King's study but inconsistent with that by Schofield and Oakes. Also contrary to the latter, treatment recommendations agreed with ratings. Ethnicity bias appeared, since Anglos recommended Chicanos more often for involuntary hospitalization. Inconsistency between the two earlier studies results from a methodological variation, discussed in this study.

Sex-Role Preference and Parental Imitation within Groups of Middle-Class Whites and Lower-Class Blacks

1972 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 651-654 ◽  
Author(s):  
William D. Ward
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Sex Role ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Black Children ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Second Grade ◽  
Black Boys ◽  
White Children ◽  
White Girls ◽  
Role Preference

32 second-grade children were assessed on measures of sex-role preference and parental imitation. The middle-class white boys were more masculine in preference than the middle-class white girls were feminine ( t = 3.43, p < .01), and lower-class black girls tended to be more mother imitative than the lower-class black boys were father imitative ( r = 2.09, p < .06). No such differences were found in sex-role preference for blacks or in imitation for whites. The results indicated that there was a dominant masculine influence in the development of sex-role preference among middle-class white children and a dominant feminine influence in parental imitation among lower-class black children.

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