Abstract
This book is a hugely useful resource for anyone interested in the (largely under-researched) formation of the black professional middle class in the US. Brown combines detailed historical accounts with keen empirical insights to flesh out the interplay of race, class and power in Oakland, California. Each chapter makes a clear historical comparison between the pre- and post-civil rights era, mapping the development of the black middle classes from formal through to informal segregation.
Brown primarily seeks to challenge the Moynihan–Wilson class-determined racial inequality paradigm (p. 2) (Wilson, 1990), arguing that the fortunes of the black middle class and the black urban poor diverged before the civil rights era and thus the contemporary problem of racial inequality in the US is one of ‘race’ as much as ‘class’. His adoption of the racial formation approach (Omi and Winant, 1994), premised on the analysis of ‘race and class’ as opposed to ‘race or class’, continues the tradition of a number of past-Marxist/post-Gramscian scholars in the US and UK who emphasize the need to accord the two relative analytical autonomy. Although his theoretical framework may not be entirely unique, therefore, his work can lay its claim to originality on a number of other counts.
Brown applies the types of methods most commonly harnessed to study the working class or the urban poor – field research, archival research and in-depth interviews – to the black professional middle classes. His choice of methodology is not only functionally significant in bringing to light the qualitative nature of the changes that their development have brought in recent decades, but symbolically by challenging pre-conceived notions that the black middle classes are less research-worthy than other fractions of black society. His choice of region – the US West Coast – is also distinctive in terms of its unique patterns of racial exclusion and ghetto formation largely owing to lagged waves of migration from the Southern states in comparison to the Northeast and Midwest. It serves to highlight the pervasiveness of racial inequality in localities which, disproportionately to their surrounding areas, experience considerable prosperity and economic growth, and also sets the work apart from other studies which may have adopted similar critical stances but have diverged in their empirical focus.
The introductory chapters thus set out a clear theoretical focus and strong methodological approach before going on to map the development of the black professional middle class.
Brown contextualizes the nature of the black professional middle class with reference to residential segregation, racialized social policy and the efforts of white professional interests to maintain their privilege, before describing the transformation of the professions and the integration of African-Americans within them in precise descriptive detail. He marks the development of the civil rights policy ‘regime’ as the watershed period in promoting their mainstream institutional inclusion, but is duly careful not to overstate the gains made during this time. He qualifies the above with reference to the continuing problematic distribution of black individuals across different occupational sectors, such as their segregation in qualitatively different jobs to their white counterparts. In line with his theoretical approach, Brown focuses not solely on their racial profile or class-based status but on the position of marginality (p. 113) they hold in their respective social locations, one of many useful interpretive concepts he uses to describe the experiences of this unique fraction.
In order to emphasize the differentiated role of black people within these middle-class occupations, Brown goes on to make a number of useful demarcations between types of professional. He has a deft ability to identify in ethnographic detail the contrasting nature of these different sub-groups and communicate lucidly the complexity of their formation. He highlights the particular experiences of the ‘traditional’ middle class as a group with a strong sense of obligation to the black community and how, in providing professional services to a primarily black clientele, some have in fact benefited from (informal) segregation practices. In contrast are those in the mainstream public and private sectors of the economy, particularly those with ‘racialized’ jobs consisting of community relations or ‘urban affairs’ portfolios who are often isolated from the mainstream networks necessary to facilitate their mobility within the firm.
The final chapters, in contrast to the former, comprise a dense discussion of black civic and political mobilization in California. They draw heavily on key historical political events and leadership struggles in the region to assess the interplay of mainstream and marginal political interests in the post-civil rights era battle for institutionalized racial equality. Where these chapters may illuminate the complexities of ground-level racialized political struggles taking place in the country with factual richness, they lack both the theoretical reflection and clarity of the introductory chapters.
Brown sees the attention he gives to multiple sites – local politics, the community and the workplace – as a boon in terms of the breadth of his analyses, but it does split the focus of what could otherwise have been an in-depth and hugely insightful study on one of these thematic areas.
Despite the said shortcomings, this book – by virtue of its breadth – holds value for those not only interested in the field of racialized class formation but in racial and class politics, civil rights policy, social mobility and much more. As a piece of academic writing in its own right, it proves as passionate as knowledgeable about its subject matter.