Black picket fences
Subtitle: privilege and peril among the Black middle class
By: Mary Pattillo-McCoy.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 276
Subjects: African Americans -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Social conditions; African American youth -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Social conditions; African Americans -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Economic conditions; Middle class -- Illinois -- Chicago; Chicago (Ill.) -- Social conditions; Chicago (Ill.) -- Race relations
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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 247-260) and index.