Black Picket Fences

Description:

"Black Picket Fences is a stark, moving, and candid look at a section of America that is too often ignored by both scholars and the media: the black middle class. After living for three years in "Groveland," a black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, sociologist Mary Pattillo-McCoy writes, "I had seen three groups of eighth-graders graduate to high school, high school kids go on to college, and college graduates start their careers. I also heard too many stories and read too many obituaries of the teenagers who were jailed or killed along the way. The son of a police detective in jail for murder. The grandson of a teacher shot while visiting his girlfriend's house. The daughter of a park supervisor living with a drug dealer who would later be killed at a fast-food restaurant." Both troublesome and hopeful, these are the discontinuities in the daily life of Groveland residents that Pattillo-McCoy seeks to explain."--BOOK JACKET. "Despite arguments that race no longer matters, Pattillo-McCoy shows a different reality: Even the black and white middle classes remain separate and unequal."--BOOK JACKET.

subjects: Race relations,  Economic conditions,  Middle class,  Social conditions,  African Americans,  African American youth,  Chicago (ill.), social conditions,  African americans, economic conditions,  Middle class, united states,  United states, race relations,  African americans, illinois, chicago,  African americans, social conditions,  Social sciences,  Ethnic studies,  Afro-American families,  Middle class families

Places: Illinois,  Chicago,  Chicago (Ill.)