Blue-Chip Black

Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class

Karyn Lacy

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780520251168
• eBook ISBN: 9780520940697
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

As Karyn R. Lacy's innovative work in the suburbs of Washington, DC, reveals, there is a continuum of middle-classness among blacks, ranging from lower-middle class to middle-middle class to upper-middle class. Focusing on the latter two, Lacy explores an increasingly important social and demographic group: middle-class blacks who live in middle-class suburbs where poor blacks are not present. These "blue-chip black" suburbanites earn well over fifty thousand dollars annually and work in predominantly white professional environments. Lacy examines the complicated sense of identity that individuals in these groups craft to manage their interactions with lower-class blacks, middle-class whites, and other middle-class blacks as they seek to reap the benefits of their middle-class status.

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Defining the Post-Integration Black Middle Classes
• 2 Social Organization in Washington’s Suburbia
• 3 Public Identities: Managing Race in Public Spaces
• 4 Status-Based Identities: Protecting and Reproducing Middle-Class Status
• 5 Race- and Class-Based Identities: Strategic Assimilation in Middle-Class Suburbia
• 6 Suburban Identities: Building Alliances with Neighbors
• Conclusion
• Appendix: A Recipe for Studying the Black Middle Class
• Notes
• References
• Index