A Long Way From Home? Race,Community,Educational Opportunity,and Residential Choice

Abstract

For several decades, in response to the severe conditions found in low-income urban areas, educational opportunity programs have offered high-achieving students scholarships and placement in predominantly White college preparatory schools in affluent areas. Those who complete their studies most often go to elite colleges and universities, earn advanced degrees, and enjoy the privileged status of educated professionals. Much research has been done on the restricted residential mobility of low-income urban residents and the possibility, or relative lack thereof, of out-migration from neighborhoods with the fewest resources. And while scholars differ on whether out-migration has in fact been achieved by more advantaged residents, they agree that the desire and efforts to do so, particularly among the middle class, are evident. These studies suggest then that given the opportunity, those with the resources and opportunity will choose to live elsewhere. Data presented here offer a more complex picture of residential choice, the way in which the newly middle class born in low-income urban areas conceptualize community, and how and why some of those most poised to permanently out-migrate might make the choice to return to their former neighborhoods or ones that are similarly situated.

Keywords

race community educational opportunity residential choice

Introduction

The Study of Blacks in Sociology

While blacks comprise a relatively small percentage of the U.S. population (McKinnon, 2003), the sociopolitical realities of this racial group have long been the subject of sociological inquiry. From the early work of Du Bois (1986) and the Chicago School (Drake & Cayton, 1945; Zorbaugh, 1929) to the more recent work on underground economies (Venkatesh, 2006), black life in the United States has been central to the investigation of race, cities, and inequality. The prevailing sociological trope for blacks consequently has been urban and poor (Anderson, 1978, 1990; Drake & Cayton, 1945; Liebow, 1967; McLeod, 1995; Moynihan, 1965; Newman, 1999; Stack, 1974; Venkatesh, 2000; Whyte, 1955; Wilson, 1987, 1996) and an only slightly more advantaged yet still problematic and ever precarious middle class (Dennis, 1995; Du Bois, 1903/1986, 1968; Frazier, 1957; Hare, 1965; Kronus, 1971; Landry, 1987; Pattillo, 1999). These tropes have provided important conceptions and theories of black social life, but because they have dominated the field, we are without a consideration of the range of social realities of blacks in the United States. This partial depiction has led us to most closely associate black life with inner city living, limited opportunities, concentrated poverty, female-headed households, inadequate social networks, and a dearth of economic, social, and cultural capital (Walters, 2001). As a result, scholars have accurately concluded that the study of race in sociology has been the study of social problems (Drake, 1957; McKee, 1993).

The Class Divide

The social problem that has most preoccupied sociologists in this area has been urban poverty. Social isolation theory represents a major strand in the work around the effects of racial residential segregation. In it, scholars emphasize changes in the U.S. economy that have disproportionately affected urban blacks and concentrated poverty in black neighborhoods, including deindustrialization, suburbanization, and the increase in low-skilled low-wage service sector jobs (Wilson, 1978, 1987, 1996). Some scholars attribute this concentration of poverty to the depopulation of urban centers, more specifically, the out-migration of Whites and middle-class blacks (Wilson, 1987). This depopulation and general disinvestment in cities leaves the remaining residents with few legitimate opportunities, inadequate social and job information networks, and poor schools (Carter, 2005; Royster, 2003).

Other scholars have challenged the notion that the black middle class has successfully out-migrated (Pattillo, 1999). While allowing that members of the black middle class desire to “translate economic success into residential mobility,” this attempt to leave poor neighborhoods has not yielded the expected outcome. Differently stated, the movement of the black middle class continues to be constrained, and while they may be more mobile than their poorer counterparts, their choices are often limited to nearby racially segregated neighborhoods (Massey & Denton, 1997). And it is this proximity to the urban poor that makes the economic and social position of this group unstable (Pattillo, 1999).

Scholars point to affirmative action programs and the relatively more open admissions policies of predominantly White institutions of higher education as factors in the increase of educational attainment among blacks and the subsequent expansion of the middle class. In these discussions, thinkers highlight instances of upward mobility achieved through educational policy initiatives and programs. While “middle classness” here is associated with increased educational, economic, human, and social capital (membership in clubs, civic organizations, increased social network), it is important to note that scholars recognize the extent to which the movements and life choices (residential mobility specifically) of the black middle class are constrained by virtue of their race. Pattillo (1999) writes, “The black middle class has always attempted to leave poor neighborhoods, but has never been able to get very far” (p. 27). While a fairly innocuous desire for better homes, schools, and safer neighborhoods is to be understood here, the underlying assumption is clear—those who can, desire to and will choose to exit predominantly black (read urban and poor) neighborhoods.

Upward Mobility

Elsewhere in the discipline, class scholars have come to similar conclusions about those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and their prospects. Models for understanding the experience of upward mobility, movement from one socioeconomic position to another, can be characterized by two approaches: They are an anomie or dissociation approach (Bean, Bonjean, & Burton, 1973) and an acculturation approach (Blau, 1956; Blau & Duncan, 1967). The first is based in Durkheim’s notion of anomie as a result of rapid social change, pointing to a sort of irrevocable disruption and breakdown occurring within the self. The second, while conceding a conflict producing aspect of mobility, classifies that aspect as transitional, just one part of a process of acculturation that completes the (economic, social, and ideological) conversion from the group of origin to the new group. It is this process that allows for the progression and release from the group of origin. One approach highlights the negative aspects of mobility, and the other highlights the positive. They do however share a deterministic quality, predicting definitively where the upwardly mobile will land—that is, separated from their group of origin, either for their benefit or eventual psycho-social demise. While these theoretical approaches have been constructed in opposition, a more suitable approach might move us away from a choice between these two separate explanations to one that might integrate them. The point of convergence between the two approaches is this apparent conflict or tension the upwardly mobile individual feels between the group of origin and the new group. The strategies individuals employ to address this tension and the ways these strategies inform life choices, including residential choice, will further illuminate our understanding of the impact of mobility on individuals and communities.

E. Franklin Frazier (1957), in his scathing indictment of those blacks able to achieve middle-class status, came to conclusions similar to those who favor the disassociation model of upward mobility many years earlier. Because they have failed to play the “role of the responsible elite” (Frazier, 1957, p. 235), he bemoans what he sees as a lack of black middle-class presence or participation in a larger black community. Having abandoned black cultural traditions, the “black bourgeoisie” have adopted mainstream American values, namely, the pursuit of capital and conspicuous consumption for social status:

From a sociological standpoint, [this] has been one of the most important consequences of the emergence of the black bourgeoisie, namely the uprooting of this stratum of the Negro population from its “racial” traditions or, more specifically, from its folk background. As a result of the break with its cultural past, the black bourgeoisie is without cultural roots in the Negro world with which it refuses to identify. (p. 24)

Later studies taking up the questions of Frazier have found that more advantaged blacks struggle to maintain their position against the downward pull of racial inequality in all its various and sundry manifestations. Joseph Feagin (1991) crystallizes the central finding of this body of work in his assertion that “no matter how affluent and influential, a black person cannot escape the stigma of being black” (p. 107). In short, racial stigma and discrimination persist in spite of the acquisition of some economic, social, and cultural capital. For members of a stigmatized racial group, interactions demand a level a work from the actor to counteract the stigma. Scholars imagine four ways in which stigmatized groups may ameliorate the situation: They may accept the stigmatization of the group while claiming personal exemption from negative traits, they may reject the inferior status and protest the ideology upon which it is founded, they may opt out of the discussion and assimilate as much as possible into the dominant group, or members of the stigmatized group may adopt the presumed negative behaviors associated with their group and transform them into positives (Goffman, 1963; Willie, 2003). This latter strategy—the ability to play with stereotypes or assume them for strategic purposes—denotes an explicit awareness of the capacity to shape an interaction through the act of performing race. The negotiation of racial stigma by more advantaged blacks then may in part be understood as a set of public choices and performances that must be consciously enacted and managed across contexts.

Research on black executives extends the notion of race as a set of performed negotiations between blacks and whites to the interaction between blacks themselves. Those black executives with higher levels of educational attainment, position, and status within the company tend to have a more cosmopolitan view of the world, embrace friendships with Whites, and eschew racial particularism in the workplace. Favoring blacks in the workplace would subject them to possible sanctions from whites and overidentification with whites would risk sanctions from other blacks in the company: “[one] worries about appearing ‘too black’ in one set of circumstances and ‘too white’ in another” (Anderson, 1999, p. 15). In addition to balancing their loyalty to the company and solidarity with blacks within the company, high-status black executives must act as a bridge between the two groups, communicating information and resolving issues. In this way, their role as brokers between the two groups reflects the concept of “middleness” highlighted by Pattillo.

More advantaged blacks must balance their divergent interests in other realms as well. Recent research on voting and political ideology demonstrates class cleavages in both voting behavior and ideology. Unsurprisingly, more affluent blacks are more likely to embrace incremental reform rather than the complete dismantling of the systems and structures from which they have in part benefited—a dismantling their less affluent counterparts support (Brown & Shaw, 2002). Lacy (2007) also notes the ways in which more privileged blacks distinguish themselves by erecting exclusionary boundaries between themselves and lower class blacks in order to counteract stigma and convey middle-class status to white strangers. They work to blur distinctions between themselves and affluent whites by emphasizing areas of consensus and shared experience, deemphasizing racial identification and difference to defend their ever precarious class position.

W. E. B. Du Bois’ (1903/1986) work on the “Talented Tenth” highlights, much like the acculturation approach, the positive aspects of ascendancy to a distinctly higher class of educated blacks that will in turn advance a project of collective racial uplift. This vanguard would serve as a model to blacks and whites the best of Western progress and enlightenment, and through this advance group, cultural excellence would trickle down to the masses and uplift the whole. More recent work highlights the ways in which college-educated blacks have fulfilled the role as laid out by Du Bois and others; they are more politically and civically active and more likely to be engaged in community activism than both other blacks and college-educated whites (Battle & Wright, 2002; Bowen & Bok, 1998).

Though this body of work reflects the differing positions on how upwardly mobile blacks (achieved through education attainment, occupational prestige, and higher earnings) navigate the disparate spaces through which they move, it leaves unquestioned the assumption that some distance, some separation must exist between them and blacks generally and less advantaged blacks specifically. This kind of intellectual consensus begs the question this research seeks to answer—must those blacks born into predominantly black economically disadvantaged neighborhoods who have been able to acquire resources desire to out-migrate? Does upward mobility always necessitate separation? Under what circumstances might those who have acquired more resources decide to remain in the kinds of neighborhoods in which they lived their early lives? How is residential choice shaped by mobility experiences? What implications might these kinds of residential choices have for our understanding of the complexities of class status, racial identification and belonging, and meaning making around issues of community more generally?

In this article, I position the data I gathered through qualitative interviews as a crucial beginning to a necessary intervention into this larger discourse. Investigating the residential choices of those who have experienced upward mobility provides a way to gage the impact of upward mobility. It is in the how and why of these residential decisions that we can locate conceptions of identity and community. The narratives constructed by the respondents offer a lens through which to uncover the ways that class mobility, community, and conceptions of home are negotiated and reconciled by those who benefit from programs that target academically exceptional,¹ socioeconomically disadvantaged urban blacks. Here I argue that through a close examination of these narratives, the field’s understanding of the impact of upward mobility on individuals might be advanced. The importance of interrogating strategies to achieve upward mobility, the impact of upward mobility on individuals who experience it, and the larger effect it has on the marginalized populations it is meant to elevate cannot be overstated. Increased access to educational opportunity is part of a larger set of strategies designed to redress the systemic racial inequality that continues to marginalize black populations in the United States across class strata. At this moment in history, as mainstream society hails the symbolic victory of the nation’s first black president as the end of racism, it is crucial to demonstrate the ways in which racial hierarchy persists and to evaluate the strategies employed to dismantle it. The goal of this research is to serve this larger purpose.

Educational Opportunity: A Vehicle for Upward Mobility

Background on the Programs

For several decades, in response to the severe conditions found in low-income urban areas, educational opportunity programs have offered high-achieving students scholarships and placement in elite college preparatory schools. Research in the area of school performance and educational attainment for students of color from low-income urban areas has focused mainly on the barriers to achievement and the controversial “oppositional identity” created in response to stigmatization. Although there has been less focus placed on those students who are high achieving, there are studies that suggest a general sense of social isolation, from their fellow white students on the basis of race, and from their peers of color for “acting white” (Fordham & Ogbu, 1986; Cary, 1991; Cookson & Persell, 1991; Datnow & Cooper, 1997; Simons, 2003; Darity & Tyson, 2005) . This research illuminates the ways in which participation in educational opportunity programs aimed at desegregating elite schools may affect an individual’s sense of self in relation to his or her family, neighborhood or geographic community, school, and racial group. While it is not the intention of this study to negate or discount the increased inclusion of historically underrepresented populations as a direct result of desegregation policies and mobility programs, it does seek to complicate the romanticization of post-segregation America by asking on a more micro-level: at what benefit and cost to the individual and communities and to what end? In other words, this study situates the experiences of these particular individuals as a systematic way to uncover the experience and impact of marked upward mobility.

The missions and mottoes of educational opportunity programs provide some insights into the kind of students selected to participate. One program’s motto is “Reaching Kids Who Reach Higher,” identifying those students who have the tools to excel and a proven track record of having done so in the face of significant obstacles. Near perfect grade point averages, standardized test scores in the highest percentiles, demonstrated leadership, extracurricular activities, and model behavior are common denominators among students recruited to educational opportunity programs. They must be nominated by a teacher or administrator in their elementary or middle school, submit a lengthy application (including essays and letters of recommendation), undergo a round of interviews, perform well on the Secondary School Admissions Test (SSAT), and complete a preparatory program (ranging from one summer to a full school year). This preparation includes academic enrichment, mentoring by program alumni, and team-building exercises. These structures help to ensure the success of the program, measured in the graduation of the program student from the independent school and college thereafter. It is no surprise then that blackprogram students at National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) institutions solidly outperform black students in other private schools and public schools on standardized tests and have significantly higher graduation and college matriculation rates (Schneider & Shouse, 1992; Arrington, Hall & Stevenson, 2004).

The goals of the programs are threefold: to provide opportunities to high-achieving students of color from low-income areas, to diversify the campuses of the nation’s elite schools, and to provide leadership that can effect change for urban communities of color. While it may be the current mission to act as a vehicle to facilitate upward mobility for exceptional students, goals were conceived and developed as a direct result of and demand for desegregation policies and programs. In 1954, the Supreme Court handed down the Brown v. Board of Education decision that declared the “separate but equal” policy of segregated schools unconstitutional. Some 10 years later, while the majority of American public schools remained segregated, President John F. Kennedy made the call for equal access to the nation’s top private schools.² The Merrill Foundation answered that call and issued a grant that allowed 23 elite independent schools to offer full tuition scholarships to black students from “disadvantaged” backgrounds. In 1964, 50 academically gifted young black men matriculated into those 28 boarding schools, including Andover, Exeter, Choate, St. Paul’s, Groton, and Deerfield. From that relatively small beginning, the first organization was born, along with a movement to desegregate elite schools that inspired scores of funders and spawned countless educational opportunity and mobility programs.

Today, there are over 22,000 black students attending the 911 NAIS member institutions, indicating a significant growth in that population. The increase in the sheer number and visibility of independent schools, financial aid, and flexible payment plans that make tuition more manageable, the decreased faith in the value of public schools, and the growth of the black middle and upper classes may account for a good amount of this growth. In this school year, the numbers total more than 3,800 students at 740 schools for just two of the programs, a snapshot of their collective scope and impact. Programs then may account for a larger percentage of the black and Latino students than those whose families may identify, apply, be admitted to, and afford the tuition at elite schools without assistance. Targeting the population considered most in need, the students of color from socioeconomically disadvantaged areas,³ these programs have been able to achieve quantifiable success, reporting college graduation rates greater than the national average for this population of students. One program boasts that 84% of its students who graduate college have attended institutions designated as most selective by U.S. News & World Report. All of the programs boast a strong presence of their alumni at competitive universities and in the elite professions of law, medicine, higher education, and financial services.

Methodology and the Sample

The use of qualitative methods interviews in this case offers what I contend is the best source of data for this investigation as it is concerned with processes of meaning making (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Patton, 1980; Leahey, 2008; Schaeffer & Presser, 2003; Strauss, 1987). Questions regarding the effect of upward mobility on perceptions of identity and community are best explored by analyzing the narratives of the participants themselves. The focus of the study is to examine the lived experiences of participants, the way they consciously think about, talk about, negotiate, and ultimately make decisions about reconciling these disparate experiences and to situate these experiences as a systematic way to examine the impact of marked upward mobility.

Twenty individual interviews were conducted with educational opportunity program alumni, lasting between 1.5 and 3 hours (See Table 1). Respondents were asked a series of questions regarding their experiences in their home communities, boarding school, and university, and their adult lives post-graduation. The interviews also covered the impact of the programs both on their own lives and what they perceived to be the impact on their home communities. I recruited the first round of interviewees through university alumni association email lists. Because the educational opportunity programs I studied list the most selective colleges in the nation as destinations for their graduates, I sent recruitment materials to the black alumni associations of those institutions and the subsequent respondents constituted the first group of participants. I then employed respondent driven (snowball) sample methods to enlist the rest of the participants. This method was effective for a couple of reasons. First, it helped me reach a population that is not easily accessible, in this case elites (see Atkinson & Flint, 2001) and for whom information is not readily available (Gile & Handcock, 2010; Handcock & Gile, 2011). None of the educational opportunity programs I contacted were willing to share their members’ information or to circulate my request for study participants and once the initial round of interviewees circulated my materials within their networks, I had a sufficient number of informants willing to participate. It could be argued that there is a bias in this sample toward those who might identify themselves as black and organize their social and professional networks around that identification, and therefore share a common conception of the notion of community. It is important to note that, in order to limit bias in the sample toward those who identify as black and actively participate in alumni affinity groups, I interviewed a number of respondents (35%) who are not a part of any black (or otherwise) identified alumni association of a program or university.⁴ And the data show that even for those respondents who are members of these alumni organizations, they have a diversity of reasons for their membership (job announcements, philanthropic endeavors, networking, investment opportunities) and membership is not an effective predictor of responses.

Table 1.

Descriptive Characteristics of Respondent Sample.

Name	Age	Gender	Hometown	Boarding school	College	Advanced degrees	Career	Location
Malia	25	F	Bronx, NY	Dana Hall School, MA	Elite University	PhD	Artist/academic	Chicago, IL
Brandon	29	M	Newark, NJ	Lawrenceville School, NJ	Elite University	MA	Educator	New York, NY
Shelly	33	F	Newark, NJ	The Gunnery School, CT	Ivy League University	MA	Diversity recruiter	Newark, NJ
Carol	42	F	Boston, MA	Northfield Mount Herman, MA	Elite University	—	Investment banker	New York, NY
George	41	M	Bronx, NY	Concord Academy, MA	Ivy League University	—	Youth worker	Philadelphia, PA
Charles	61	M	Richmond, VA	Philips Exeter, MA	Ivy League University	MA	Department of Housing and Urban Development Director	Richmond, VA
Keema	30	F	Oakland, CA	Branson College Prep, CA	Ivy League University	MA	School principal	Oakland, CA
Lori	29	F	Pittsburgh, PA	Philips Andover, MA	Elite University	MBA	Management consultant	Chicago, IL
Tracey	32	F	Los Angeles, CA	Northfield Mount Herman, MA	Elite University	PhD	Academic	Oakland, CA
Denise	27	F	Brooklyn, NY	George School, PA	Ivy League University	JD	Lawyer	Washington, D.C.
Jason	32	M	Cincinnati, OH	Cate School, CA	Ivy League University	MA	Grantmaker to and trainer of Community Based Organizations	Washington, D.C.
Marlene	27	F	Brooklyn, NY	Kent School, CT	Ivy League University	MSW	Social worker	Brooklyn, NY
Sam	41	M	New York, NY (Harlem)	Daycroft School, CT	Elite University	—	Documentary filmmaker	Brooklyn, NY
Anthony	25	M	Philadelphia, PA	Deerfield Academy, MA	Ivy League University	PhD	Educator/ academic	Chicago, IL
Pam	30	F	Brooklyn, NY	Groton, MA	Ivy league University	MBA	Investment banker	New York, NY
Candace	31	F	Philadelphia, PA	Westtown School, PA	Ivy league University	MD	Physician	Miami, FL
Naima	23	F	Boston, MA	Concord Academy, MA	Elite Historically Black College/ University (HBCU)	—	Marketing associate	Boston, MA
Hasan	33	M	Newark, NJ	The Hotchkiss School, CT	Ivy league University	—	Technology consulting	Washington, D.C.
Ndidi	22	F	Newark, NJ	George School, PA	Ivy league University	—	Program assistant	Princeton, NJ
Anika	32	M	Brooklyn, NY (Crown Heights)	Choate Rosemary Hall, CT	Elite HBCU	—	Teacher	Brooklyn, NY

The respondents range in age (at the time of interview) from 22 to 61, and while the majority are between the ages of 28 and 35, hail from the New York Metropolitan area, and currently reside there, others live in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, Chicago, Illinois, and Oakland, California. Most interviews were conducted either in mutually agreed upon public spaces or via telephone.⁵ Once the data collection was concluded, I transcribed the interviews myself and used both manual and computerized coding methods to analyze the data.⁶ Finally, at the tail end of the interviews and as the research and analysis began to take shape, I engaged in member checking as a “quality control process” to ensure “the accuracy, credibility and validity” of the data and findings (Harper & Cole, 2012, p. 510).

The interviews covered a range of topics, including family identification (the extent to which the family emphasized racial/cultural identity and the extent to which the participant remained connected to the family), home community (the extent to which racial/cultural identification was emphasized in the social world to which the family belonged and the extent to which the participant remained connected to that community), elite school culture (degree of openness, diversity efforts, critical mass of students of color, faculty of color, etc.), program supports, college culture (same as high school), and time (period in which the participant attended boarding school). All of these data were coded into scores of themes, though this article focuses primarily on the relationship between respondents’ school and community experiences and decision-making processes. The themes illuminated by the coding process uncovered concerns, beliefs, and logics that shape the strategies that participants use to navigate these disparate worlds and the narratives they construct around their sense of self, community, and related residential choices.

Findings: Race, Mobility, and Residential Choice

Conventional wisdom suggests that the journey of upward mobility necessitates a sloughing off of one’s old ways in order to fully acclimate to a new and better status group. In the case of upwardly mobile blacks, because blackness has often been conflated with poverty and low status, it has meant “forgetting where you came from,” adopting white cultural norms and values and abandoning the race (Frazier, 1957). While there is much more evidence (Anderson, 1999; Battle & Wright, 2002; Bowen & Bok, 1998; Collins, 1986; Dawson, 1994; Dennis, 1995; Feagin, 1991; Feagin & Sikes, 1994; Kronus, 1961; Landry, 1987; Pattillo, 1999; Willie, 2003; Zweigenhaft & Domhoff, 2003) to refute than support these stark claims that more advantaged blacks so bent on assimilation have uprooted and burned any vestiges of their racial origins and summarily reject any connection to blacks of lower socioeconomic status, this critique continues to inform studies of the black middle class and has become part of a common parlance when referencing or thinking about this group.

This line of thinking also influences behavior and the ways in which those rising experience and respond to mobility—bringing about a hyper-awareness of how their attitudes, actions, or allegiances might be co-opted by whites or construed as a betrayal by blacks. It has contributed to a questioning of the strategies that are employed to achieve the common goal of racial uplift. This discourse begs the question if racial solidarity has been sacrificed for the individual comfort and profit of the few. In light of the dearth of empirical evidence, I would like to offer the trends identified in my own research that support the following claim: Upward mobility is not a totalizing process and does not necessitate discarding one’s racial identity, cultural norms, and practices. What it might do is provide a different set of tools through which to re-imagine and rethink blackness vis-à-vis one’s economic and social status (as it might with one’s national or religious or gender status). However, this blackness is aligned with or refracted through other attributes and interests, it remains blackness, and the interests remain black interests. Specifically, in the case of my research, residential choice is conceived of as a part of the individual and collective interests of blacks and there are a range of choices to me made within a broad spectrum.

The phrase “outsiders within” (Collins, 1986) has been used to describe the “participation in the activities of institutions yet their incomplete acceptance in the minds of those within them” (Datnow & Cooper, 1997, p. 62). Outsiders within are markedly different and their difference is seen as normatively questionable or negative. In this way, outsiders within “experience a peculiar marginality capable of yielding rich insights into self and social structure” (Collins, 1986, p. 11). It is the marginal status of high-achieving students of color from poor neighborhoods that gives them insights into their own positionality, vis-à-vis their neighborhoods and their elite schools, and larger structures. For program participants who gain entrée to but often do not fully belong to these groups, achieving success in one group may require some level of separation from another, on multiple levels and negotiated multiple times. Movement between disparate status groups and contexts requires some negotiation and effort toward the reconciliation of participants’ position vis-à-vis these different communities.

Using residential choice as a way of marking notions of group membership and community, I have uncovered three different approaches taken by individuals in this study. I have termed these approaches homecomer, role model, and individualist. While all respondents share varying senses of discomfort, desire for belonging, and at times alienation from the disparate groups of which they are a part, they have employed different strategies for navigating, both in the choice of where to live and in the roles they might play in the communities in which they choose to live. Upwardly mobile program graduates vary in the roles they see themselves occupying and it is this diverse conception of roles that delineates the groups.

Though the findings and conclusions presented here have been reached through the collection, coding, and interpretation of all the data, I highlight three informants here whose experiences exemplify the three approaches I identify in this section. These three narratives from my research are particularly instructive. Pam⁷ is a Brooklyn-born graduate of the Groton School, University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business (BS) and Harvard’s Business School (MBA):

I learned to just take everything as it is. So when I was home even though I wasn’t overly excited about sitting on the stoop listening to music, what else was I gonna do? I did not try to bring any of Groton home. I did not bring anything from home to Groton. I just kept the separate lives. When I was home I didn’t talk to anyone from Groton. And when I was at Groton I did talk to family, but it really wasn’t the same. Because it was too hard to bridge the gap and nobody was trying to do that—other than “how’s it going?” I think those who do well in these programs learn to wear the world loosely because you end up not really belonging anywhere . . . until you meet some [black] folks like you. Until then you fake it ’til you make it. And now I’ve made it.

In her formative years, Pam went to great pains to separate her home life from her boarding school life. She was certain it would be an error in judgment to bring anything from “home” to Groton and a hindrance to her development to follow in the path of her family. Success, she learned, was only possible outside of her neighborhood and any effort to include her family in her ascension might impede her progress. Pam believes that she best serves her family and other blacks by doing her job in corporate finance well, owning property, and promoting the image of one who accumulates wealth through legitimate means. She gives substantially to local charities, is the head of her district’s homeowners association, and regularly attends meetings and events with city politicians. Because she believes that every bright, motivated child has the right to attend a school befitting his or her academic talents, Pam is strongly in favor of school vouchers. In fact, she supports any measure that, in her estimation, gives more power to blacks to make decisions for themselves rather than a government that overtaxes its citizens and spends in its own best interest. Pam exists in a world primarily populated by people of color who are of similar professional, economic, and social status who equally value art, culture, and literature. Maintaining some social distance from non-elite blacks then forms the basis of her enactment of the middle-class status.

Pam lives in Harlem, New York, which historically has been known as a black residential, cultural, and business “mecca.” Like most black neighborhoods, it has experienced periods of both rising prosperity and decline and disinvestment. Between 1960 and 1990, Harlem lost a third of its population and half of its housing stock in an era fueled by a crack economy and plagued with drug-related violence and death. In its current incarnation, it is a gentrifying multi-racial neighborhood experiencing rapid turnover in its real estate market and in the local institutions that many old timers feel have sustained the area through its worst days. Local small grocers, known as bodegas, have been replaced by superstores, and delis and budget stores hawking 99 cent wares have been supplanted by global brands like American Apparel, H&M, The Gap, and MAC Cosmetics. In those churches that remain, weekly town hall meetings are held to discuss strategies to stave off gentrification and displacement, doing little to curb the fears of those who justifiably believe they may be forced out. Their apprehension is more often than not directed at the growing number of affluent Whites they see moving into newly developed condo buildings and gutting and renovating crumbling brownstones. But other affluent blacks like Pam, who chose the neighborhood for the promised return on her real estate investment, are a large part of the gentrification process as well.

Pam shares,

I guess my community is Harlem to a certain extent. I’m president of the homeowners association here. I’m not necessarily trying to be a part of the Harlem community. I’m trying to live the kind of life I wish I had seen growing up in my community [Brooklyn]. Everyone did the same thing, working for transit or the post office. Everyone complained and never did anything. I want to be a part of the political landscape. I go to fundraisers. I want to see change in the schools. There are a lot of kids around here. So, I’m not really that hands on, not really that involved, but the kids see me in my suit leaving early and coming home late and say, “what is she doing?” They see me in my two-seater convertible Benz and they know I got it legitimately and that I’m doing something different.

And while Pam maintains a level of social distance from blacks who do not enjoy her level of education and class status, she believes that she may have a positive impact by voting, contributing financially to service organizations, and role modeling “legitimate” success to the youth in the area. Others build their performance on a premise of close connection to the larger black population.

Anthony was born in North Philadelphia and after attending local public schools for some years, transferred to the Deerfield Academy in the eighth grade. Accepted early to Columbia University, Anthony enrolled there and earned a BA in African American studies. He went on to teach history in the Philadelphia public school system while earning his MA in secondary education from Harvard. After a few years of teaching, Anthony decided to return to graduate school and pursue a doctoral degree and a career in the academy. Boughetto is the term he used to describe himself and his way of moving in the world—valuing professional acclaim and enjoying the material comfort of prosperity while maintaining a decidedly black way of being and a direct connection to his home community, friends, and family. In prep school, he started an organization for students of color and actively sought to create a friendship circle and support group in which blacks, from a range of economic backgrounds, were the majority. Returning home often, he was able to maintain friendships with many of his peers from the neighborhood. He believes he best serves other blacks by teaching in the community, focusing his scholarship on predominantly black neighborhoods in large metropolitan areas, and by supporting legislation that will increase funding to cities and public education. Anthony is openly critical of whites and actively resists the adoption of White cultural norms as a by-product of his professional success. He refuses to be carried along into a world of what he considers to be white ways of being, unapologetically choosing to shape the contours of his mobility experience to fit the black world he imagines for himself.

This is conscious work he does to counteract what asserts are possible negative effects of educational opportunity programs; he argues,

[They’re] gonna create more “I got mine, why can’t you get yours?” mentalities. I think [they’re] gonna create a lot more people who, when they get in a room and talk about Bill Cosby’s message, think what’s wrong with them? Even though the “them” may be their brother or sister. Matter of fact, even more so in that case if it is their actual brother or sister because they would have come up in the same exact circumstances as you—but they made different choices. Negatively it can take very viable leaders out of communities and not bring them back. It’s really dependent on the individuals to give back to the community in some particular way, which these programs can’t facilitate, they can’t mandate. And I don’t know if it’s causing a further disconnect by taking students out, giving them these opportunities and they can’t even relate to the people they grew up with. You’re further fracturing the black community, even though you are making pieces of it better, you’re still fracturing it. That’s definitely a negative long term impact. Addressing inequality at the individual level is a crap shoot. You are giving great opportunities, but how is this disseminated? How is my success, our success flowing back into the community? That’s what we need to work on. That’s going to be an issue long term.

Anthony lives on Chicago’s South Side. He chose the area for its proximity to Bronzeville, known for its rich history and significance to blacks in the city. Like Harlem, Bronzeville enjoyed a well-documented period of great prosperity and acclaim during the early part of the 20th century. Once a storied home to the middle class and affluent, its time as a black economic and cultural epicenter was followed by decades of disinvestment and blight, which many attribute to segregationist policies and practices of city government and banks. The area is now enjoying somewhat of a resurgence, unquestionably slowed by the recent economic recession, with the return of the black middle class seeking to restore the area, returning historic buildings to their former glory and attracting restaurants, coffee houses, art galleries, and the like to the neighborhood. The process is not without its detractors, including long-time residents and renters who feel excluded from improvement programs and in danger of being priced out of the area by their more advantaged counterparts. Anthony values the neighborhood’s socioeconomic mix and grassroots community institutions. He sees the contentious discussions in block association and meetings as a positive sign of investment and a necessary foundation for what he believes can be a strong, inclusive black community. Of his neighborhood choice, he says, “I want to live in a black neighborhood with black people. It feels inauthentic to me, to my sense of community, to my work, not to.”

Hasan was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey. He was identified early and matriculated into one of the city’s gifted and talented elementary and middle school programs. It was by one of the program’s administrators that he was nominated for the educational opportunity program that provided him a full scholarship to the prestigious Hotchkiss School in Connecticut. While he and his mom had some trepidation about him leaving home at such a young age, they were convinced that the rewards of such an experience were too great to let pass. He remembers,

We had no idea what was to come. My mom thought it was the right thing to do. They convinced us it was a great opportunity for me, an opportunity people like me didn’t get very often. It was like this golden ticket that would guarantee me success in life, that would put me in the right circles with the right people. It was like I was one of the special people, just living in the wrong place, in the wrong environment to do what I was meant to do—that I had some kind of gift, some special destiny that I had to go for. From some of my family members, it was like, you made it out, don’t come back. From my other family members, it was like “don’t forget where you came from. Don’t get too big to talk to us.” My uncle said, “you better not be messin’ with no white girls. Don’t you come back with no white girl, don’t forget you’re from Brick City.”

Hasan did not adjust well socially to the Hotchkiss environment; he found the differences between himself and his classmates too great and their alternating benign neglect and morbid fascination with his “ghetto” home left him angry. On his trips home, the alienation he felt from his contemporaries in his family and neighborhood that began when he was first identified as exceptional and tracked into gifted classes was only magnified. Hasan attended Princeton University where he majored in math and cultivated a deep and abiding interest in computer technology that, upon graduation, he parlayed into a prestigious position at a leading technology firm in Washington, D.C., and eventually his own consultancy. He considers himself a staunch individualist, unaligned with any particular community and equally disparaging of the black elite establishment or what he calls “those fancy negroes,” the White “good old boys” he encountered at Hotchkiss and Princeton, and the folks from his home neighborhood who he believes spend more time making excuses for their relative disadvantage than working toward any improvement. He finds difficulty relating to and moving between the different groups and has chosen instead to limit his interaction with each and employs an overall strategy of distance and disengagement.

Hasan lives in a neighborhood transitioning from all black and mostly low-income to a racially and ethnically mixed, predominantly middle-class neighborhood in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. He chose the neighborhood based on its amenities, including the ever-increasing property values, central location, and proximity to his and his wife’s offices, restaurants and cafés, and nightlife. While he is cordial to his neighbors (though he cannot recall any of their names) and patronizes local businesses, he is not a member of any community organizations and does not participate in local politics. He quite enjoys living in the area and cannot imagine moving elsewhere in D.C. or another area that might offer him the unique combination of a prime residential area conveniently situated within a large metropolitan center. Pam, Anthony, and Hasan are now solidly middle class and upwardly mobile members of what Frazier calls the “black bourgeoisie.” Like others I have interviewed, they are highly educated, professionally prominent, and enjoy the social status and material comforts their substantial resources afford them. In analyzing the narratives respondents constructed around their residential choices, I have identified three approaches that individuals employ in making such decisions. Pam, Anthony, and Hasan are exemplars of the role model, homecomer, and individualist approaches, respectively.

The Role Model Approach

The role model approach encompasses a group of respondents whose residential choice is driven by their housing budget and quality of life considerations (investment opportunities, neighborhood amenities, name recognition, social status); they don’t necessarily feel tied to a particular geographic community, and they feel that their role in the larger black community is to be a role model and excel in predominantly white environments from which blacks have traditionally been excluded, thereby creating more opportunities for those who come after them. This involves modeling appropriate behaviors for blacks as well as to whites the suitability of blacks to elite environments. Modeling for blacks may occur either in their local neighborhoods or in their volunteer spaces and social organizations. This group is also characterized by a greater emphasis on individual agency than on structures in determining outcomes, both for themselves and for their families.

The role models, including Pam, Candace, Denise, Nia, George, and Sam, do not live or work in their home communities but most often live in racially mixed middle-class and/or gentrifying neighborhoods. Nia shared, “I’m definitely not trying to live in a place like where I grew up. I’m not trying to go back to the Bronx.” Sam commented,

I don’t think [the educational opportunity program] has an impact on the black communities the students come from, but I think it has an impact on the White people who may end up one day running the world—at least they know that there are competent black people who exist. The main problem with black people when they go into interviews for jobs, and the like, is White people’s complete lack of familiarity with black people. So the more students of color we can get interacting with these quote unquote “masters of the universe,” then the better it will be for any black people in the future that they may encounter.

Candace’s comments speak to this group’s emphasis on agency over structures in determining individual outcomes:

I make six figures as a single black woman. I travel. I’m always doing something different. My circle is the Penn circle. I hang out in the city in swank places. I’m in mixed atmospheres. So my life is very different from my cousins. They make less than 50,000 dollars. They have husbands and children. I mean I get down with the get down and they’re family so I try to find ways we can see eye to eye. When I visit family we try to have cookouts and things. Outside of that, it’s an effort to try to include them in my world. They don’t have the financials I have. They don’t have the drive. It’s a different way of thinking. All of my cousins are doing stuff that someone they know already did. They’re doing what they know. I’m doing something that no one in my family has done.

While Candace continues to attend functions in the old neighborhood, she is aware of a social distance between her and her family members. She attributes this distance to what she has been able to accomplish in her career, her high income, and the experiences it has afforded her. She further attributes her success to her drive and creativity and her family’s relative deprivation to their apparent lack of the same. Individual effort rather than opportunity structure is used to explain the different outcomes. And while Candace can draw from her cultural repertoire what she thinks are authentic signifiers of her belonging at cookouts, she is painfully aware of the difficulty of bringing her family into “her world,” signaling their inability to adapt. It seems that Candace sees herself as more closely aligned with other blacks who have experienced upward mobility than her family and friends from her former neighborhood. Candace and other role models have not completely adopted the ways of their new status group nor have they restricted their contact exclusively to Whites who share their socioeconomic status. They do, however, make residential choices that highlight both their racial and newly acquired class and financial interests. George’s thoughts echo the sentiment:

I want to be clear. When I say go back to the community, I don’t mean go back to poverty. I don’t mean you need to go live next to the projects in order to make an impact. I’m talking about if you go through [educational opportunity program] and you go work for [elite law firm] and you live in an apartment on the Upper East Side, that does make an impact because you know what? There is power being negotiated all over America and in order for you to change the system, we have to be in the system. And there are a lot of ways that corporate America influences and creates a cycle of poverty in this country. And we need to be in corporate America in order to stop that. We can’t keep agitating from the outside. So that’s what I mean by contributing, being aware of the inequalities and being willing to address them—first for your own benefit and then in the macro sense as well.

Others employ different approaches to making residential choices.

The Homecomer Approach

The homecomer is typified by respondents, including Keema, Charles, Marlene, Shelly, Malia, Anika, and Brandon, who live and often work in their home communities (or racially and economically similar urban communities) and share the following commonalities: They explicitly talk about their own experiences and those of their contemporaries as being tied to macro-structures of inequality; they see themselves as part of a local black community (described in both geographic and racial terms); they see their role in the larger black population as being one of active participation and direct service. Keema, who lives and is a principal in her home school district, shared,

I share this with my staff all the time, I want to try to provide the kids here the type—the quality of education that I had. Even the kids who do well in public schools sometimes struggle when they get into good colleges because of the lack of rigor, people not spending the time teaching them how to think. A lot of people, even teachers who are black, don’t think the kids can think. So that’s been a major challenge, trying to do my best and give the kids a good education.

Others who concentrate their work in their home communities share this outlook. For respondents like Charles, “It’s an opportunity for me to work with kids in their setting, they’re not being pulled away from anything or anyone, creating an academic experience for them that is as rich as the one I had to go hours away, hundreds of miles away, to get.”

Many who employ the homecomer approach have chosen to live in the communities from which they come, or in communities with similar racial and socioeconomic demographics because it is both their desire to do so and because they feel that it is their responsibility. Marlene recounts,

I love Brooklyn. I really want to be a part of my community; I’m not going to complain about gentrification and then go spend my money in Manhattan somewhere and then be upset because someone else is coming to live in my neighborhood. So I’ve always lived very close to the people. I’m in Bed-Stuy. That is why I’ve come back to the neighborhood. I want my dollars here. I’m hard core about it. If I have to buy anything, my first thing is to buy it at a black owned store. If not, I’ll buy at a store that hires black people from the community. If not that, I’ll at least buy it in Brooklyn. We have to go back to the community, especially those of us who have been given so much opportunity.

Others feel that their connection to “home” is a lasting one. Shelly shares,

I still say that I’m from Newark. In my mind, I’m still from Newark, even though I was away for so long. I was always gonna come back to this area, I enjoy living in New Jersey. I live 10 minutes away from my parents and we talk every day.

While those who have taken the homecomer path actively maintain socially and often spatially close ties to their home communities, others, however, have less of an explicit attraction to affinity groups and desire to create community around those groups.

The Individualist Approach

Hasan, along with Ndidi, Carol, Lori, Naima, Jason, and Tracey, best represents the position of the individualist path. He feels no tie to a geographical, racial, or cultural community; he maintains little or no contact with extended family and friends from his school and home neighborhood; and he sees himself as having no active role to play in the neighborhood in which he lives. When asked to describe the demographics of the neighborhood in which he lives, Hasan reported that while it was clearly a middle-class area, according to the property values and reputation, he has no idea what the racial demographics are. He went on to share that he has little contact with his neighbors and rarely sees them due to his work schedule. Like others, Hasan sees himself as not belonging to any community as a result of his boarding school experience. He shared, “I’m a staunch individualist and I’m not a member of any particular community, I guess except as an observer.” Lori echoed his sentiment:

I don’t really have a community. I don’t have a sense of community. Because of that [separation and distance from family and friends when she went away to boarding school], I don’t get attached to people. I wasn’t expecting the separation to be so hard; it was like ripping your heart out. It was like, these are the people that you knew . . . and then you’re like a stranger. Ironically, I’ve moved every year since I graduated college. I move around a lot and I don’t get attached to people because it’s just easier. Going to away to Andover and that initial separation just really keeps me from attachment.

Still others suggested that some of the struggles associated with the alienation they have experienced require considerable work. Jason suggested, “[y]ou get lost . . . sometimes I think too much of this boarding school stuff can be a pretty heady elixir when you can’t find out where you belong after that.” Moving often, choosing not to engage neighbors, coworkers, or classmates, and actively maintaining distance between themselves and the people they regularly encounter all signal a concerted effort on the part of individualists to remain detached from any particular community. This avoidance strategy represents a kind of tension associated with mobility that is articulated, but not necessarily reconciled.

The three approaches I have identified allow for a better understanding of the experience of upward mobility than the overly deterministic acculturation and dissociation models (Bean et al., 1973; Blau, 1956; Blau & Duncan, 1967). While all of the respondents have felt some sense of disruption in the self, resulting from separation from the group of origin, they also have adopted, at least in part, some aspects of their new status and readily identify the benefits of upward mobility. And though they may have had similar experiences and shared sentiments, respondents have employed different strategies and constructed different narratives to address the tensions and conflicts most often associated with upward mobility. The effectiveness of those strategies in helping participants make sense of their lives has in turn led them to residential choices that are consistent with those narratives. It is clear then that upwardly mobile blacks may experience aspects of both dissociation and acculturation, proving that it is possible to retain some of the characteristics and concerns of their former group as well as acquire some of those associated with their new status group, belonging fully to neither. Neither process is all-consuming or complete. The individualists may lie closer on the continuum to dissociation, while the role models may lie closer to acculturation. While neither maps neatly onto these models, the homecoming group is even more difficult to place. The upwardly mobile then have at their disposal a range of options for how they will move between groups and make life choices, drawn from the multiple and disparate social worlds they occupy. Mobility then, and the subsequent change in class status it precipitates, is not as deterministic as it has previously been understood.

Conclusion

The data in this study yield a more comprehensive understanding of how upward mobility is experienced. The centering of residential choice and the narratives respondents construct around it offer us insights into the ways in which mobility experiences, and the tensions and the often conflicting interests associated with it, shape life decisions. Specifically, blacks who have the resources to out-migrate from relatively disadvantaged black neighborhoods into large urban centers, may in fact choose to live in those areas, for a number of reasons (Pattillo, 2007; Quillian, 1999; Wilson, 1978) and, despite what some research might suggest (Frazier, 1957; Hare, 1965; Lacy, 2007; Wilson, 1978, 1987), maintain strong ties to blacks, both elite and non-elite alike.

For both the homecomer and role model approaches, the conception of black interests reflects what individuals believe is at the root of the issues plaguing blacks and is refracted through the lens of their educational attainment and class and professional status. These graduates of educational opportunity programs and members of the black middle class, while encouraged to see themselves as culturally and socially distinct from other blacks, remain part of the black collective and continue to concern themselves with collective advancement. Contrary to Frazier and others’ suppositions, upward mobility does not lead to a lack of consideration for black interests, but differing experiences of and responses to mobility lead to differing conceptions of black interests (Brown & Shaw, 2002; Hare, 1965; Lacy, 2007; Pattillo, 2007). And while the recognition of this different black social reality may not necessarily advance the achievement of consensus on collective political interests, it does bode well for the prospects for the black political community that those who are members of a more privileged class consider themselves a part of this community. It may seem a small point that members of the “black bourgeoisie” still very much consider themselves black; nevertheless, it is a crucial starting point in current investigations into the possibility of a black collective. To be sure, divergent positions abound among this group, but they are equally aligned with black political interests by the individuals who hold them. Some would even argue that this divergence bodes well for the collective, for it is in these kinds of debates that community is created (Pattillo, 2007).

Having established that upward mobility is not deterministic and can yield varied ways of making residential choices among those who experience it, it would be valuable to look at other social behaviors and life decisions to gage the impact of a change in class status on individuals and the various groups to which they belong. In my estimation, further studies should examine political behavior (party participation, candidate support/investment, voting, policy support, ideology, etc.) and the extent to which it represents the interests (collective or individual) of this group (cohered around this particular educational intervention) and the intersections at which they sit (race and class). And while this research is concerned with the experience of mobility and its impact on the individual, further studies should examine the impact programs like these, and desegregation policies and programs more generally, might have on the populations from which participants are drawn.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Mary Pattillo, Monica Prasad, and Wendy Griswold for their support and insights, and Marcus Hunter, Charles Camic (Northwestern University Department of Sociology), and the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on earlier versions. Special thanks go to Joyce White-Johnson, Hamidah Ahmad, Jean-Luc Grandchamp, Niambi Carter, and Amada Armenta.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Nina A. Johnson is currently a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Program in BlackStudies at Swarthmore College. Consistent with her previous graduate study in culture and criticism (MA, New York University), her research interests lie in the areas of race, class, culture, mobility, and politics. She recently completed a paper on issues of community and residential choice relative to the experience of upward mobility (“A Long Way From Home: Race, Community, and Educational Opportunity”) and a documentary (“Turning A Corner,” Beyondmedia Productions) on the legal, economic, and social barriers to exiting prostitution. She is currently at work on a community video project on the impact of Islam on black religious, social, and political life in Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley. Based on her dissertation research (PhD, Sociology, Northwestern University, 2011), her current book project revisits Du Bois’s and Frazier’s classic works and considers issues of identity and meaning-making processes among the black elite, their relationship with the larger black population, and their role in any projects of collective racial advancement.

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