Black Middle Class

The Black community has 3 basic tiers. Tier one is the upper class, elite African Americans. This group consists of CEO's, business owners, and other executives who have broken through the glass ceiling to become a success in Corporate America. The second tier is the working class African Americans. This tier encompasses your average African American family, with a working mother and father, or perhaps a single mother, going out working and raising children. These families may have a good income but the majority live from paycheck to pay check. The working class tier is where the majority of African Americans lie. The last sector is the poor. This section contains families, who live on or below the poverty line, and barely make it from day to day. The one tier that the Black community does not seem to have like other races have is the middle class. Due to stereotyping have African Americans and ranges in income between African Americans in this country and the higher range in salary of the majority group, the African Americans seem to have no middle class in comparison. Although the Black community does not seem to have a middle class, many are convinced that there is a Black middle class; however it just lies unacknowledged because of its differences.

The Black middle class is not necessarily a myth but is a construct that is under much scrutiny. Certainly, with the comparison of the annual GDP of a Black family compared to a white family it is apparent that the Black "middle class" is on a lower standard that the white middle class is. The annual income of Black households is about 33,700 dollars while the average White household income is about 35,000 (Census, 2004)

It has been acknowledged by sociologists that there are quite a few nice Black middle class neighborhoods in the United States. The adults in the area own their homes, the children go to a decent public school, and the neighborhood is surrounded with things to do such as a local YMCA, studios that offer dance classes, and nice parks. However, the Black middle class still goes through challenges and face problems that are not as prominent in the White middle class. Sociologist Mary Pattillo-McCoy studies the inner workings of the Black middle class in her work The Black Picket Fences: Peril amongst the Black Middle Class. Pattillo observes the neighborhood of Groveland Park, a Black middle class district for in work. In reference to the problems of Black middle class Patillo states, "I had seen three groups of eighth graders graduate high school...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". (Patillo-McCoy, 138) White students living in middle class areas are less likely to experience their peers going to jail or getting killed, as Black students are. Looking at these differences, it would be easy to associate race with the problems that Black middle class persons, further proving the point that the Black middle class does not exist. Black middle class does exist, however, and the stark differences can be attributed to historical events and life skills that one must learn growing up in a Black middle class environment.

Black middle class peoples, have been taught survival techniques and words of wisdom from their ancestors that are different that the historical beliefs of Whites. Blacks were taught to work hard every day of their life and raise a good family. The ideals that some in the Black middle class have today, such as working each day in a profession that may not be considered lucrative, and having children may not be considered a smart middle class move by Whites, but it is the thought process that a lot of Blacks in the middle class sector grew up with. Life, in this context, is more complex for Black families, and each day African Americans struggle with the lessons they were taught by their ancestors and the direction in which the world is moving in today. Today it seems that everyone is in the struggle of trying to get rich and move into the upper class.

The Black upper class, or first tier, is made of the few Black professionals who have high profile jobs and have accumulated a large amount of wealth. The Black upper class includes, Oprah Winfrey, a talk show host and television producer, Richard D. Parsons, the CEO and Chairperson of Time Warner Inc., and Bob Johnson the founder of Black Entertainment Television. Other people in this arena are professional athletes like Michael Jordan and entertainers such as Will Smith and Halle Berry. (Forbes, 2006) The characteristics of the Black upper class are the same characteristics of the White upper class. One of the sayings in the U.S. is that money trumps color. Because of this Black and White upper class are blended together this way, unlike the Black and White middle classes.

The Black middle is a new construct 20^th century and is floating on the border like of the working class and the upper class. The boundaries are not clearly defined for this middle group and the characteristics change over time. However, the Black middle class has sprung up and despite its problems has shown resilience and promise. The future of this class is cloudy but ray of sunshine above it are bright.

Works Cited

Pattillo-McCoy, Mary, Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)

United States Census, March 2004.