Black middle class
Encyclopedia
The black middle class, within the United States, refers to African Americans who occupy a middle class status
within the American class structure. It is predominately a development that arose after the 1960s, during which the African American Civil Rights Movement led to reform movements aimed at outlawing racial discrimination. Although the size of the black middle class can vary by definition, members of the middle class (for both blacks and whites) can be characterized by families who own their own home or small business, and by the strictest definition, those with a degree from college.
s had limited opportunities for advancement to middle class status prior to 1961 because of racial discrimination, segregation, and the fact that most lived in the rural South
. In 1960, forty-three percent of the white population completed high school
, while only twenty percent of the black population did the same. African Americans had little to no access to higher education and only three percent graduated from college. Those blacks who were professionals were mainly confined to serving the African American population. Outside of the black community, they worked in unskilled industrial jobs. Black women who worked were almost all domestic servants.
Economic growth, public policy
, black skill development, and the civil rights movement
all contributed to the surfacing of a larger black middle class. The civil rights movement helped to remove barriers to higher education. As opportunity for African Americans expanded, blacks began to take advantage of the new possibilities. Homeownership has been crucial in the rise of the black middle class, including the movement of African Americans to the suburbs
, which has also translated into better educational opportunities. By 1980, over 50% of the African American population had graduated from high school and eight percent graduated from college. In 2006, 86% of blacks between age 25 and 29 had graduated from high school and 19% had completed a bachelor's degrees. As of 2003, the percentage of black householders is 48%, compared to 43% in 1990.
Some argue that blacks have less upward mobility than whites. A report done by the Pew Research Center in 2007 says that of the sons and daughters of the black middle class, 45% of black children end up "near poor", and the comparable rate for white families is 16%. The trend of downward mobility has caused the overall majority of middle-class-black children to end up with lower incomes than their parents. While 68% of white children earn incomes above their parents, 31% of black children earn incomes more than their parents did. The lower rate of upward mobility could be caused by the lack of married blacks, and the number of blacks born out of wedlock. In 2009, 72% of black babies are born out of wedlock, compared with 28% of white women.
Sub-Saharan African immigrants to the United States
tend to have higher income levels than African Americans due to their higher education levels. (Sub-Saharan Africans are distinguished from Afro-Americans, who are the descendents of the survivors the Atlantic slave trade
). In addition, African immigrants have the highest educational attainment rates of all American ethnic groups, with higher levels of completion than the stereotyped Asian American
model minority
. Like most Asian Americans, black Africans migrated to America in the last few decades after the Jim crow/African American Civil Rights Movement era ended. Prior to the mid-1970s, there were very few non-white immigrants because of immigration laws, banning non-whites; that is, up until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which was an extension of, and made possible by way of the African American Civil Rights Movement. Despite this, U.S. immigration policies are still discriminatory insofar as favoring immigrant candidates that have professional skills and higher education over the many immigrant candidates who don't.
In 1997, 24.6 percent of all adult white Americans and 13.3 percent of all black Americans held a bachelors degree, while 48.9 percent of African immigrants held a bachelor's degree. Though the U.S. Census Bureau counts white populations who emigrated from Africa in the same category as black Africans, it shows African immigrants were more than three times as likely to hold a bachelor's degree than native-born African Americans. Despite the high educational achievement of African immigrants, African immigrants still tend to have lower median household incomes compared to other immigrant groups. Many African immigrants hold strong ties to their home countries and send remittances to their relatives.
A phrase used somewhat interchangeably with black middle class is black urban professional, whose acronym is buppie, a parallel structure to yuppie
, or young urban professional. The acronym has a pejorative connotation when used in describing a person.
As of 2009, while the poverty rate among non-Hispanic whites sits at 9.4%, the poverty rate among African Americans sits at 25.8%.
credited affirmative action
with bringing the black middle class into being.
But Larry Elder wrote:
And black economist Thomas Sowell
wrote:
According to a study by the University of Cape Town's Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing and TNS Research Surveys, South Africa's black middle class has grown by 30% in just over a year in 2007, with their numbers increasing from 2-million to 2.6-million and their collective spending power rising from R130-billion to R180-billion.
Read more: http://www.southafrica.info/about/people/blackdiamonds-230507.htm#ixzz1doq4PMPl
American middle class
The American middle class is a social class in the United States. While the concept is typically ambiguous in popular opinion and common language use, contemporary social scientists have put forward several, more or less congruent, theories on the American middle class...
within the American class structure. It is predominately a development that arose after the 1960s, during which the African American Civil Rights Movement led to reform movements aimed at outlawing racial discrimination. Although the size of the black middle class can vary by definition, members of the middle class (for both blacks and whites) can be characterized by families who own their own home or small business, and by the strictest definition, those with a degree from college.
United States
African AmericanAfrican American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s had limited opportunities for advancement to middle class status prior to 1961 because of racial discrimination, segregation, and the fact that most lived in the rural South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
. In 1960, forty-three percent of the white population completed high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
, while only twenty percent of the black population did the same. African Americans had little to no access to higher education and only three percent graduated from college. Those blacks who were professionals were mainly confined to serving the African American population. Outside of the black community, they worked in unskilled industrial jobs. Black women who worked were almost all domestic servants.
Economic growth, public policy
Public policy
Public policy as government action is generally the principled guide to action taken by the administrative or executive branches of the state with regard to a class of issues in a manner consistent with law and institutional customs. In general, the foundation is the pertinent national and...
, black skill development, and the civil rights movement
African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)
The African-American Civil Rights Movement refers to the movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring voting rights to them. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1955 and 1968, particularly in the South...
all contributed to the surfacing of a larger black middle class. The civil rights movement helped to remove barriers to higher education. As opportunity for African Americans expanded, blacks began to take advantage of the new possibilities. Homeownership has been crucial in the rise of the black middle class, including the movement of African Americans to the suburbs
Black flight
Black flight is a term applied to the out-migration of African Americans from predominantly black or mixed inner-city areas in the United States to suburbs and outlying edge cities of newer home construction...
, which has also translated into better educational opportunities. By 1980, over 50% of the African American population had graduated from high school and eight percent graduated from college. In 2006, 86% of blacks between age 25 and 29 had graduated from high school and 19% had completed a bachelor's degrees. As of 2003, the percentage of black householders is 48%, compared to 43% in 1990.
Some argue that blacks have less upward mobility than whites. A report done by the Pew Research Center in 2007 says that of the sons and daughters of the black middle class, 45% of black children end up "near poor", and the comparable rate for white families is 16%. The trend of downward mobility has caused the overall majority of middle-class-black children to end up with lower incomes than their parents. While 68% of white children earn incomes above their parents, 31% of black children earn incomes more than their parents did. The lower rate of upward mobility could be caused by the lack of married blacks, and the number of blacks born out of wedlock. In 2009, 72% of black babies are born out of wedlock, compared with 28% of white women.
Sub-Saharan African immigrants to the United States
African immigration to the United States
African immigration to the United States refers to the group of recent immigrants to the United States who are nationals of Africa. The term African in the scope of this article refers to geographical or national origins rather than racial affiliation....
tend to have higher income levels than African Americans due to their higher education levels. (Sub-Saharan Africans are distinguished from Afro-Americans, who are the descendents of the survivors the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade
The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...
). In addition, African immigrants have the highest educational attainment rates of all American ethnic groups, with higher levels of completion than the stereotyped Asian American
Asian American
Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan,...
model minority
Model minority
Model minority refers to a minority ethnic, racial, or religious group whose members achieve a higher degree of success than the population average. It is most commonly used to label one ethnic minority higher achieving than another ethnic minority...
. Like most Asian Americans, black Africans migrated to America in the last few decades after the Jim crow/African American Civil Rights Movement era ended. Prior to the mid-1970s, there were very few non-white immigrants because of immigration laws, banning non-whites; that is, up until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which was an extension of, and made possible by way of the African American Civil Rights Movement. Despite this, U.S. immigration policies are still discriminatory insofar as favoring immigrant candidates that have professional skills and higher education over the many immigrant candidates who don't.
In 1997, 24.6 percent of all adult white Americans and 13.3 percent of all black Americans held a bachelors degree, while 48.9 percent of African immigrants held a bachelor's degree. Though the U.S. Census Bureau counts white populations who emigrated from Africa in the same category as black Africans, it shows African immigrants were more than three times as likely to hold a bachelor's degree than native-born African Americans. Despite the high educational achievement of African immigrants, African immigrants still tend to have lower median household incomes compared to other immigrant groups. Many African immigrants hold strong ties to their home countries and send remittances to their relatives.
A phrase used somewhat interchangeably with black middle class is black urban professional, whose acronym is buppie, a parallel structure to yuppie
Yuppie
Yuppie is a term that refers to a member of the upper middle class or upper class in their 20s or 30s. It first came into use in the early-1980s and largely faded from American popular culture in the late-1980s, due to the 1987 stock market crash and the early 1990s recession...
, or young urban professional. The acronym has a pejorative connotation when used in describing a person.
As of 2009, while the poverty rate among non-Hispanic whites sits at 9.4%, the poverty rate among African Americans sits at 25.8%.
Controversy over how it grew
In 1999, NAACP Chairman Julian BondJulian Bond
Horace Julian Bond , known as Julian Bond, is an American social activist and leader in the American civil rights movement, politician, professor, and writer. While a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, during the early 1960s, he helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating...
credited affirmative action
Affirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
with bringing the black middle class into being.
But Larry Elder wrote:
- In their book, America in Black and White, Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom show that the black middle class existed and grew well before affirmative action. Moreover, they point out that affirmative action did not accelerate the growth of the black middle class.
And black economist Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social theorist, political philosopher, and author. A National Humanities Medal winner, he advocates laissez-faire economics and writes from a libertarian perspective...
wrote:
- "Yet the rapid growth of that [black] middle class began even before the civil-rights revolution of the 1960s, much less the racial quotas and preferences that began in the 1970s. ... The rise of blacks into professional and similar occupations was faster in the five years preceding passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964Civil Rights Act of 1964The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...
than in the five years following its passage."
South Africa
The black middle class in South Africa is another important instance of a black middle class that developed in size and power in the wake of political change (in this case, the end of the apartheid).New research shows that there is a burgeoning black middle class in South Africa – with a significant boost to the number of black South Africans entering the middle-income brackets.According to a study by the University of Cape Town's Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing and TNS Research Surveys, South Africa's black middle class has grown by 30% in just over a year in 2007, with their numbers increasing from 2-million to 2.6-million and their collective spending power rising from R130-billion to R180-billion.
Read more: http://www.southafrica.info/about/people/blackdiamonds-230507.htm#ixzz1doq4PMPl
Sources
- Landry, Bart. "The New Black Middle Class". 1987.
- Harris Jr., Robert. "The Rise of the Black Middle Class". The World and I Magazine. Feb. 1999. Vol. 14, pg. 40.
Additional reading
- E. Franklin FrazierE. Franklin FrazierEdward Franklin Frazier , was an American sociologist. His 1932 Ph.D. dissertation The Negro Family in Chicago, later released as a book The Negro Family in the United States in 1939, analyzed the cultural and historical forces that influenced the development of the African American family from the...
, Black Bourgeoisie Free PressFree Press (publisher)Free Press is a book publishing imprint of Simon and Schuster. It was founded by Jeremiah Kaplan and Charles Liebman in 1947 and was devoted to sociology and religion titles. It was headquartered in Glencoe, Illinois, where it was known as The Free Press of Glencoe...
, New York 1957 - Lawrence Otis GrahamLawrence Otis GrahamLawrence Otis Graham is an African-American attorney, speaker, and a named best-selling author by The New York Times.-Biography:Lawrence Otis Graham was born in New York, New York and raised in Westchester County, NY....
, Our Kind of People Harper PerennialHarper PerennialHarper Perennial is a paperback imprint of the publishing house HarperCollins Publishers. Harper Perennial has divisions located in New York, London, Toronto, and Sydney. The imprint is descended from the Perennial Library imprint founded by Harper & Row in 1964...
, New York, 1999 - Mary Patillo-McCoy, Black Pickett Fences University of Chicago PressUniversity of Chicago PressThe University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, dozens of academic journals, including Critical Inquiry, and a wide array of...
, Chicago, 2000 - Bart Landry, The New Black Middle Class, University of California PressUniversity of California PressUniversity of California Press, also known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish books and papers for the faculty of the University of California, established 25 years earlier in 1868...
, BerkeleyBerkeley, CaliforniaBerkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, 1987. - Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro, Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality, RoutledgeRoutledgeRoutledge is a British publishing house which has operated under a succession of company names and latterly as an academic imprint. Its origins may be traced back to the 19th-century London bookseller George Routledge...
, New York, 1995. - Susan Tolliver, Black Families in Corporate America, Sage PublicationsSAGE PublicationsSAGE is an independent academic publisher of books, journals, and electronic products in the humanities and social sciences and the scientific, technical, and medical fields. SAGE was founded in 1965 by George McCune and Sara Miller McCune. The company is headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California,...
, Thousand Oaks, CaliforniaThousand Oaks, CaliforniaThousand Oaks is a city in southeastern Ventura County, California, in the United States. It was named after the many oak trees that grace the area, and the city seal is adorned with an oak....
, 1998. - Michael DysonMichael DysonMichael Eric Dyson is an American academic, author, and radio host. He is a professor of sociology at Georgetown University. Described by Michael A. Fletcher as "a Princeton Ph.D. and a child of the streets who takes pains never to separate the two", Dyson has so far authored and edited 18 books...
, Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Minds?, New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2005. | ISBN 0-465-01719-3
External links
- From Recession to Depression: The Destruction of the Black Middle Class - video report by Democracy Now!Democracy Now!Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...