A Different Shade of Gray: Midlife and Beyond in the Inner City

Abstract

A Different Shade of Gray: Midlife and Beyond in Inner City. Katherine S. Newman. New York: The New Press. 2003. 306 pp. ISBN 1-56584-615-X. $29.95 (cloth). Katherine Newman's book examines a long-neglected group within inner city: minorities who are middle aged and older. African American, Puerto Rican, and Dominican respondents in New York City participated in life history interviews. Newman discusses these data against a backdrop of both a larger New York city survey and national data derived from middle-aged and older persons. Her resultant ability to compare her respondents to their neighbors and to minorities and Whites nationally strengthens her conclusions about her respondents' situations and how they might be ameliorated. These older inner-city residents, who have worked hard against many odds, are beset by health, income, family, and safety problems that are unthinkable for most middle-class Americans, and contradictory to dominant conceptions concerning how middle age and retirement should unfold. Their stories convey a sense of strength and resilience, but Newman makes it clear that, without policy intervention, they will often struggle in vain. Her book is informed by a life course approach and consequent attention to both local history-such as neighborhood changes, cycles in response to economic changes, and crack wars-and related national landscape. Together, these help explain how their lives have been shaped by both opportunities, such as economic upswings and public sector jobs opened by affirmative action, and constraints, such as intersecting class, race, and gender discrimination in labor markets that single mothers face. The most engagingly written chapters, such as Chapters 1 (which provides an overview of book) and 3, begin with stories of different persons who serve as exemplars to flesh out main points. Chapter 2 provides what Newman refers to as the big picture: a statistical comparison of Whites and minorities in relation to childhood poverty, education, employment, income, marriage patterns, and health. Chapters 3 through 5 look at different dimensions that shape aging experiences of her inner-city residents: and neighborhood locations, men's and women's relationships in middle and later years, and effects of economic hardship on physical and mental health. The emerging picture is that and family/kin obligations intersect for both men and women to influence their later lives through such things as health, family structure, and pension availability. Chapter 6, longest and perhaps most interesting chapter, explores racial and ethnic relations among different groups in inner-city New York. Readers must bear in mind, however, that chapter is about perceptions and is not necessarily meant to assert, for instance, whether one group really has more of a work ethic than another. One significant finding is that each group understands that minority group membership provides structural barriers, but they also hold individuals accountable for their choices. …