Black Picket Fences, Second Edition
Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class
Stark, moving, and still timely, the book is updated for this edition with a new epilogue by the author that details how the neighborhood and its residents fared in the recession of 2008, as well as new interviews with many of the same neighborhood residents featured in the original. Also included is a new foreword by acclaimed University of Pennsylvania sociologist Annette Lareau.
“[A] richly textured, thoughtful account of the precarious economic and social positions of young people in these middle-class families. . . . Pattilo knows Groveland, and she knows the literature on poverty and class. She is a careful and insightful observer. . . . Pattillo’s book provides a perceptive analysis of the black middle class in America in the 1990s and will be an integral part of courses on stratification, race, and poverty. But it is also an entertaining book that will appeal to general audiences interested in contemporary social issues. I recommend it.”
“Few studies offer extensions to an existing body of research in a manner that is both paradigm shifting and enriching to the social sciences as a whole. . . . Pattillo has succeeded in doing both. Her analysis of the black middle class revives the tradition of community studies in American sociology while skillfully shifting the dialogue concerning the inner-city from its focus on social pathologies of the poor to a more holistic discussion of stratification and social interaction.”
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