Dual Consciousness, Social Mobility, and the Experiences of Middle-Income African Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era

Abstract

This article examines how African Americans who grew up in middle-income households during the modern post-Civil Rights Era conceptualize their opportunities to get ahead and how they explain downward mobility. Drawing upon 70 in-depth interviews with African American men and women, it identifies a dual consciousness that shapes respondents’ understandings of who gets ahead and why. While the majority of respondents believe that African Americans face persistent structural inequality, they also believe that members of their group are responsible for their own outcomes. They emphasize the importance of employing individualistic mobility strategies for advancement. They also draw upon broad definitions of success to support an understanding that everyone can achieve some level of success if they work hard enough. When assessing their own mobility trajectories and the mobility trajectories of others they know, respondents tend to attribute individual-level factors to movement up and down the socioeconomic ladder.