Classed Out: The Challenges of Social Class in Black Community Change

Abstract

The growth in the black middle class since the Civil Rights movement has spawned an interest in the relationships between the black middle class and the black poor. Scholars are interested in understanding how social and cultural capital among the black middle class both ameliorate and/or sustain the conditions of the black working poor. While this literature provides us with an understanding about the role of social and cultural capital in the lives of poor and middle class blacks, it says little about how ideology functions in intra-racial, multiclass coalitions. Through materialist and culturalist frames of community problems confronting the black working poor, I argue that culturalist frames of community problems fail to address black working class issues. Drawing on a case study of a community's effort to use Afrocentric ideology to improve an urban school, I demonstrate how black middle class community members misdiagnosed the problem at the school through culturalist framing. Findings indicate that social class plays a significant role in how problems are defined, interpreted and addressed.