The New Black Middle Class in the Twenty-First Century

Bart Landry

• Editorial: Rutgers University Press
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780813593982
• Categoría: Scienze sociali
• Categoría: Sociologia

Although past research on the African American community has focused primarily on issues of discrimination, segregation, and other forms of deprivation, there has always been some recognition of class diversity within the black population. The New Black Middle Class in the Twenty-First Century is a significant contribution to the continuing study of black middle class life. Sociologist Bart Landry examines the changes that have occurred since the publication of his now-classic The New Black Middle Class in the late 1980s, and conducts a comprehensive examination of black middle class American life in the early decades of the twenty-first century. Landry investigates the educational and occupational attainment, income and wealth, methods of child-rearing, community-building priorities, and residential settlement patterns of this growing yet still-understudied segment of the U.S. population.

 

1

The New Black Middle Class and the Demographics of the Twenty-First Century

Place has always loomed large in African American history, beginning with the forceful removal of Africans from a place of their own to a place of chattel slavery in the United States, the Caribbean, and South America. The search for a place of their own continued in the post-emancipation period and accelerated in the twentieth century with the Great Migration of black individuals and families to urban manufacturing centers of the North and Midwest. In Places of Their Own, Andrew Wiese traces this migration to the suburbs of major metropolitan areas.¹

This movement to suburban communities did not come early. Although new modes of transportation facilitated migration from manufacturing cities to suburban areas in the late nineteenth century (for example, Manhattan to Brooklyn) and early twentieth century, the pace was slow and dominated by whites. Not until the post–World War II period did the American romance with suburban living become part of the American Dream. Suburbs were spacious, clean, and white; a good place to raise children. New federal loan programs (through the Federal Housing Administration and the GI Bill) provided guarantees to banks for home loans and helped lenders introduce the thirty-year mortgage. The cookie-cutter homes of the Levittowns (New York, 1947–1951, and Pennsylvania, 1952–1958) created new communities in wide-open spaces. President Eisenhower’s highway program and Detroit automobiles provided the incentives and means to flee deteriorating city centers. There was, however, one flaw in this scenario: blacks could not participate in this city-to-suburb movement of the 1950s and 1960s. A system of “redlining” shut out black families from bank mortgages in racially mixed or black suburban communities.

Recent changes in the demography of the U.S. population have increased interest in the racial and ethnic composition of communities in both the cities and suburbs of major metropolitan areas. Diversity and segregation dominate this research, and new terminology introduced into these discussions strains to capture the novelty and complexity of recent and contemporary changes. Many cities and suburbs have become “melting pots” because of the diversity of their populations, including Asians, African Americans, Latinos, and whites. While whites dominated the early suburbanization movement, it is Asians, African Americans, and Latinos who now lead the migration to suburbs today, according to demographer William Frey.² There are two ways to look at these suburban population shifts: as a group’s share of the total suburban population in these major metro areas or as the percentage of a group’s own metropolitan population that resides in the suburbs. The first reveals modest increases over the past three decades. Between 1990 and 2010, blacks increased their share of the suburban population from 7 to 10 percent, Asians from 3 to 6 percent, and Latinos from 8 to 17 percent. Although each group’s increase appears modest, nationally their combined shares rose to 35 percent of the suburban population of the one hundred largest metros, as the white percentage shrank from 81 to 65 percent.

Statistics of a group’s city-to-suburb migration yield more interesting findings. Nationwide, the percentage of blacks living in the suburbs of the one hundred largest metropolitan areas increased from 37 percent in 1990 to 51 percent in 2010. Their highest concentrations, according to Frey’s analysis, were in the southern metros of New Orleans, Louisiana; Jackson, Mississippi; Memphis, Tennessee; Atlanta, Georgia; Columbia, South Carolina; Charleston, South Carolina; Richmond, Virginia; and Virginia Beach, Virginia. Collectively, these cities had black suburban populations between 35 and 50 percent in 2010. The Washington, D.C., metro stood out with 51 percent of its black population living in its suburbs. With the exception of Miami, Chicago, New York, and Honolulu, Latinos and Asians, in contrast to African Americans, realized their highest level of suburbanization in the western states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Significant concentrations of suburban minorities are now in southern and western states. Among the southern and border metros, four led the way with the highest percentage of black suburbanites: Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Washington, D.C. These racial and ethnic migrations in the one hundred major metropolitan areas have changed the demography of suburban America, often from places of white residential communities to what Frey calls “melting-pot” suburbs: suburbs where at least 35 percent of residents are nonwhite. Melting-pot suburbs include thirty-six of the one hundred largest metro areas. Among these thirty-six, sixteen were majority-minority suburbs in 2010.³ The high rate of recent black movement to suburbs prompted Frey to write of a “breakthrough black flight” from cities with large black populations. Today a higher percentage of blacks, Asians, and Latinos in large metro areas live in suburbs than in central cities.

The increasing diversity of suburbs in the major metropolitan areas forecasts significant social, economic, and political changes. Suburban living has brought the American Dream closer to many minority groups and has become preferable to the inner-city spaces that nonwhites have historically occupied. Yet not all suburban residents have gained equally. We have only to think of Ferguson, Missouri, to realize that poverty has taken root in many of these suburbs. At times it is the result of “spillover” suburbanization: the migration of poor individuals and families from contiguous poverty areas in metropolitan cities. The reason for this migration may be a search for perceived safer and more organized communities or the push factor of rising rents.

Several scholars have researched rates of segregation and poverty in the suburbs of major metropolitan areas. Myron Orfield and Thomas Luce identify four types of suburbs among the 50 fifty largest metropolitan areas: (1) diverse, (2) mainly nonwhite, (3) mostly white, and (4) exurbs.⁴ Diverse suburbs are those with 20 to 60 percent nonwhite residents; mainly nonwhite suburbs have over 60 percent nonwhite residents; mostly white suburbs are more than 80 percent white; and exurbs, sometimes referred to as “outer suburbs” or “exurbia,” are less than 10 percent urban and predominantly white. Economic well-being, education, and governmental services vary across these four types of suburbs.

White suburbs have the best educational systems, the lowest poverty rates, and the best community services. Diverse suburbs rank second in these areas, while nonwhite suburbs often suffer from poor-performing schools, poor services, and high levels of poverty. With 44 percent of the total suburban population (53 million people) in 1,376 suburbs (up from 42 million in 1,006 suburbs in 2000), diverse suburbs represented the largest category of suburbs in the fifty largest metro areas in 2010, according to Orfield and Luce. Second in number of inhabitants were the largely white suburbs with 47 million residents, or 28 percent of suburban dwellers—down from 35 percent (54 million)—in 2000. Nonwhite suburbs ranked third, with 17 percent (20 million) of suburbanites in 478 suburbs. This was an increase of 12 percent from 2000.

Diverse, integrated suburbs are viewed by some scholars as the ideal type and the country’s best hope for progress beyond inequality and our segregated past. Orfield and Luce argue, “Integrated [diverse] communities have the greatest success eliminating racial disparities in education and economic opportunity.”⁵ Yet they note the vulnerability of these communities; diverse, integrated suburban communities are difficult to maintain over long periods. They found that suburban neighborhoods with over 23 percent nonwhite residents in 1980 “were more likely to be predominantly nonwhite (over 60%) by 2005 than to remain integrated.”⁶

John Logan, a sociologist at Brown University, points to another troubling characteristic of black suburban neighborhoods in 2010: higher poverty rates than those with mostly white residents. His research found that although exposure to poverty declines as black incomes rise, those with incomes above $75,000 lived in suburban communities with a higher poverty rate (9 percent) than whites with incomes below $40,000 (8.2 percent).⁷ Logan also found that “suburban residents are divided by racial/ethnic boundaries” and that “blacks and Hispanics live in the least desirable neighborhoods, even when they can afford better.”⁸

Research on the one hundred or fifty largest metropolitan areas of the United States has revealed major population shifts since the 1960s and 1970s. Suburbs are no longer synonymous with white residency and central cities with black residency. Increased Latino immigration and significant African American and Asian migration to the suburbs of the largest metropolitan areas have created a new, unfolding reality that has brought both new opportunities and challenges. For African Americans, this suburbanization process has progressed fastest in southern and border metropolitan areas, with four cities—Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Washington, D.C.—leading the trend. Among these four, the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area ranks highest, with 51 percent of its black residents living in suburbs.

When I published The New Black Middle Class in 1987, I did not address this issue since the level of black suburbanization was still minuscule. Today there is a need to assess these changes as they affect the lives of the new black middle class in these suburbs. To accomplish this, I conducted in-depth, face-to-face interviews with thirty-one couples in Prince George’s County, Maryland, the county with the highest concentration of middle-class black suburbanites in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Understanding black middle-class suburbanization in Prince George’s County not only provides insights into new black middle-class suburban life in the Washington, D.C., metro but also a better understanding of the growing black middle-class suburbanization in other major metros.

There are differences among black middle-class suburbanites across metropolitan areas, but all share to some extent in a black culture with deep roots in the South. A high percentage of blacks in the D.C. metropolitan area migrated from southern states or are the children of southern migrants. As we will see, many of Prince George’s middle-class blacks attended historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the South before returning to the Washington, D.C., metro. The four leading metropolitan areas (Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Washington, D.C.) all provide fertile ground for developing large black middle-class suburban communities. Three (D.C., Atlanta, and Houston) already had large metropolitan populations of over four million in 1990, with Dallas close behind with 3.5 million. Each also had a large base of African Americans, ranging from almost one million to nearly two million in 2010. The education levels of their black populations were, with a few exceptions, also far higher than in smaller metros like Memphis and Charleston. As we will see later, this is important for the growth of black middle-class suburbs since over half of black college graduates live in suburbs. In 2000, Washington, D.C.’s black suburbanites led with 30.8 percent college graduates, followed closely by Atlanta (25.6 percent), Dallas (25.3 percent), and Houston (23 percent). Large metros and black populations with high levels of education appear to provide fertile ground for the growth of the largest black middle-class suburbs. There are, however, large metropolitan areas like Chicago and Philadelphia with large black populations that have not developed middle-class black suburbs as large as the four above. Lower levels of black college graduates in their suburbs (21.7 percent and 21.9 percent in the Chicago and Philadelphia metro areas) seem to be an important factor.

Beyond the important similarities shared by the four metros with the largest black middle-class suburbs, there are differences that might explain why Washington, D.C., and Atlanta are the leaders among the four. Blacks and whites in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area have the highest education level among major metro areas, in part because of the large number of excellent universities in the area and in part because its service economy and federal bureaucracy draw college graduates. The federal government has had a very strong economic impact through its direct and indirect contributions to a knowledge economy. Because of the historically black Howard University and early access to government employment through civil service exams, a large black middle class developed earlier here than in other major metropolitan areas. The Atlanta metro comes closest to the experience of blacks in the Washington, D.C., metro because of a cluster of HBCUs there and a large African American population. Dallas and Houston follow closely in the sizes of both their overall metropolitan and their black populations, but until recently they have lacked similar educational resources to grow large black middle classes. Of the smaller metropolitan areas that Frey cites, Columbia (24 percent), Memphis (20.8 percent), and Richmond (19.6 percent) come closest to the percentages of black suburbanites with college degrees found in the four leading metros in 2000. The overall and black populations in these three metros are much smaller than in the largest metros. In 2010, Memphis had 1.3 million overall metro population and 601,043 blacks, Richmond 1.2 million metro population and 375,427 blacks, and Columbia 767,598 overall population and 255,102 blacks. Although individually small, together these southern middle-class suburbs also contribute to the growth in the number of black middle-class suburbanites.

Middle-class blacks in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Prince George’s County represent middle-class blacks in the other large and small metropolitan area suburbs. In the following chapters, I explore various aspects of their lives in the county, beginning with their settlement there, continuing with social and economic aspects of their lives, and ending with their efforts to prepare the next generation of middle-class African Americans.

2

Suburbanization of the New Black Middle Class

Each of the eleven metropolitan areas with the highest concentrations of black suburbanites (Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Jackson, Memphis, Columbia, Charleston, Richmond, and Virginia Beach) is part of the recent trend of minority migration from city to suburb. They form a new chapter in the lives of nonwhites who were shut out of the earlier city-to-suburb migration of the post–World War II era. For African Americans, who have the longest history of residence in the United States after Native Americans and white immigrants, this has been an especially important development. It represents a significant victory in the long struggle to exercise the important right to choose one’s residential location. While there are still barriers in the migration of minority groups, some of the most difficult ones have been either weakened or eliminated. This is especially true of dismantled discriminatory housing laws and illegal restrictive covenants against the sale of homes to African Americans and Jews.

Of the eleven metropolitan areas with the highest black middle-class suburban concentration, Washington, D.C., is located the farthest north. Like the other ten areas, black suburbanization has been facilitated by population size and college attainment. Washington, D.C., had the additional factor of a large federal bureaucracy with a civil service hiring system that blacks were able to access. Still, Washington, D.C., and the surrounding counties have been part of the residential segregated system of the South that barred even upper-middle-class blacks from mig...

Índice

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. The New Black Middle Class and the Demographics of the Twenty-First Century
• 2. Suburbanization of the New Black Middle Class
• 3. Changing Neighborhoods
• 4. Pick Up the Newspaper; We’re Out of Town
• 5. Catch-22
• 6. Educating the New Black Middle Class
• 7. From School to Work
• 8. Income and Wealth
• 9. The Next Generation
• Afterword: 2007 to the Present
• Conclusion: The Twenty-First Century
• Appendix
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author