The Black Professional Middle Class: Race, Class, and Community in the Post-Civil Rights Era 2013013361, 9780415657846, 9780203076477

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The Black Professional Middle Class

Through an in-depth case study of the black professional middle class in Oakland, this book provides an analysis of the experiences of black professionals in the workplace, community, and local politics. Brown shows how overlapping dynamics of class formation and racial formation have produced historically powerful processes of what he terms "racialized class formation," resulting in a distinct (and internally differentiated) entity, not merely a subset of a larger professional middle class. Eric S. Brown is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Missouri.

Routledge Research in Race and Ethnicity

1 Racial Discrimination Institutional Patterns and Politics Masoud Kamali 2 Black Masculinity and Sexual Politics Anthony J. Lemelle, Jr. 3 Represent Art and Identity Among the Black Upper-Middle Class Patricia A. Banks 4 Blackness and Transatlantic Irish Identity Celtic Soul Brothers Lauren Onkey 5 Music, Difference and the Residue of Race Jo Haynes 6 Black Citizenship and Authenticity in the Civil Rights Movement Randolph Hohle 7 Migrants and Race in the US Territorial Racism and the Alien/Outside Philip Kretsedemas 8 The Black Professional Middle Class Race, Class, and Community in the Post-Civil Rights Era Eric S. Brown

The Black Professional Middle Class Race, Class, and Community in the Post-Civil Rights Era Eric S. Brown

NEW YORK

LONDON

First published 2014 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2014 Taylor & Francis The right of Eric S. Brown to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brown, Eric Semington. The Black professional middle class : race, class, and community in the post-civil rights era / by Eric S. Brown. pages cm. — (Routledge research in race and ethnicity) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Middle class African Americans—Social conditions. 2. Middle class African Americans—California—Oakland—Social conditions. 3. African Americans in the professions. 4. African Americans in the professions—California—Oakland. I. Title. E185.86.B6974 2014 305.5'530896073—dc23 2013013361 ISBN13: 978-0-415-65784-6 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-07647-7 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by IBT Global.

To the memory of my mother and father.

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Contents

List of Tables Preface 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

The Black Middle Class: From the Declining Significance of Race to Racialized Class Formation

ix xi

1

The Growth and Transformation of the Black Community in Oakland: 1852–1965

24

Swimming in the Mainstream: Racialized Class Formation and the Black Professional Middle Class since the Civil Rights Era

41

Black to Black: “Traditional” Professionals and Segregated Clientele

72

The Black Professional Middle Class and the Black Community in Oakland

95

The Black Professional Middle Class and Racialized Class Politics: The Rise and Fall of a Black Urban Regime in Oakland

121

Conclusion: Social Policy and the Black Professional Middle Class

153

Notes Index

165 195

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Tables

2.1

Black Community Development and Changing Urban Form in Oakland, 1852–1965 3.1 Comparative Characteristics of Segmented Labor Markets 3.2 Blacks by Occupational Category in Oakland, 1960–2000 5.1 Population by Race in Oakland, 1940–2000 5.2 Median Household Income and Poverty Rates by Race and Place in 1989 and 1999 5.3 Number of Professionals Living in Select East Bay Cities, Counties, and the Oakland Metropolitan Area and the Percentage of Urban-Dwelling Professionals by Race 6.1 Aggregate Characteristics of Black Mayors Elected between 1967 and 1996 in Cities of 50,000 or More 7.1 Black Professionals and Racialized Class Formation: Structure, Inequality, and Social Policy

26 46 53 100 101

102 124 154

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Preface

In writing this book, I wanted to sociologically explore the problems of racial inequality. Much of the research about racial inequality focuses on the black urban poor, and quite reasonably so. However, I wanted to take a different approach. How do middle class black professionals—a segment of of African Americans who are relatively privileged—fare in their experiences in a racialized society? Old debates about race or class didn’t seem fruitful for examining the contemporary experiences of the black middle class. Rather, how do race and class interact in the stratification system? Racialized class formation is a way of conceptualizing the relationship of racial formation with the dynamics of class formation. An analysis of the collective experiences of members of the black professional middle class as an outcome of “racialized class formation” provides a constructive way to think about questions of racial inequality—not as a proxy for poverty but as a feature of life experienced in different ways by different class segments of the “black community.” That is, at an aggregate level, black capitalists, working-class blacks, and the black jobless poor apparently experience different versions of racialized class formation, which shapes their lives in different ways than those of their white counterparts. For the black professional middle class, the experience of racialization shapes, among other things: what kinds of jobs they get, who their clients are, what kinds of neighborhoods they live in, what kinds of civic activities they are involved with, whether they face discrimination in the workplace, and how and why they become involved in the political system. This book began as a dissertation, which was the culmination of my graduate school experience in the sociology department at the University of California at Berkeley. The project thereafter changed greatly—in terms of its depth and breadth—from its original form. Nevertheless, I am grateful to those who helped me at the inception of my interest in the topic until my dissertation committee fi nally signed on the dotted line. First, I want to thank my dissertation advisors at Berkeley, Troy Duster, Mike Hout, Bob Blauner, and Michael Omi. All of them are brilliant in their own right and also generous as mentors. I learned much from each of them. Other professors who were not on my dissertation committee also offered

xii Preface me valuable—but not always comforting—comments. Most notable in this regard are Tomas Almaguer and David Wellman. I also gained a lot from other grad students in the Berkeley Sociology Department whose friendship and advice was indispensable. I’d like to mention Larry Shinagawa, Tomas Gonzalez, Lois West, the late Tomoji Nishikawa, Chris Rhomberg, and Lorenza Hall in this regard. I also gained a great deal from the Friday afternoon meetings of the grad student “race study group” at the Institute for the Study of Social Change. This provided an opportunity for sociology graduate students of color at Berkeley to do shared readings and present our research to each other in a setting that promoted both constructive criticism and mutual support. Some of the most consistently useful insights came from Bob Yamashita, Kamau Birago, and David Minkus, the institute staff member and an all-around good guy. I am grateful for the funding that made this project possible. I was fortunate to receive a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Later, I was able to complete my dissertation while in residence at the University of North Carolina with support from a Mellon Foundation dissertation fellowship. Thanks to Sandy Darity and the University Center for International Studies for providing office space and an early chance to present my work while I was in Chapel Hill. A postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for African America Urban Studies and the Economy at Carnegie Mellon University provided support and an immersion in historical approaches to the research problem I was pursuing. I offer a special thanks to the distinguished Joe Trotter for his friendship and generosity. The time I was able to spend with postdoctoral support in the Department of Sociology and at the Center for the Study of Inequality at Cornell University was greatly appreciated; it allowed me to develop my ideas further and to begin work on another project that looks at “caste and class” in the experience of the Buraku people in Japan. Thanks to David Grusky for inviting me there. I must offer my deepest thanks to the anonymous and accomplished black professionals in Oakland and the East Bay who allowed me to interview them as “research subjects.” They allowed me into their homes, neighborhoods, offices, churches, and schools and shared important details of their lives. They told me stories that made them laugh, cry, become angry, and express feelings of personal humiliation. Whether they realized it or not, their biographies connected to history. Collectively, their narratives provided a bigger picture—a “case study”—that has informed and enriched my research. I have also developed a great respect for the work of the librarians and archivists who through great effort keep our collective historical record intact. Spending time in archives does provide evidence for George Santayana’s adage that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Several East Bay libraries provided me with both primary and secondary sources in the form of archival materials. Thanks to those who work at the following libraries at the University of California at Berkeley:

Preface xiii the Bancroft Library, the Institute of Governmental Studies Library, the Regional Oral History Office at the Bancroft Library, and the Newspapers and Microforms Room at Doe Library. I also extend thanks to two archives operated by the Oakland Public Library: the African American Museum and Library at Oakland and the Oakland History Room at the Oakland Public Library. As this book was taking form, I was especially appreciative of comments from colleagues on the more recent versions of my work. Troy Duster, Judith Blau, Michael Omi, David Brunsma, Joe Trotter, Kenneth Kusmer, Chris Rhomberg, and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva were kind enough to offer comments on drafts of my evolving work. Thanks to Max Novick at Routledge for his enduring patience as he waited for revised drafts of the manuscript. Thanks to Jennifer Morrow at Routledge for keeping my documents organized and communication open. I also offer my thanks to the anonymous reviewers who kept me on my toes as I worked to revise chapters and improve the text. I want to thank faculty colleagues and staff members of my home department. The Sociology Department at the University of Missouri has been a welcoming and collegial place to teach and carry on with my research. The shared interest in critical and engaging scholarship in a supportive environment has been very valuable to me. Jay Gubrium, Tola Pearce, Victoria Johnson, and Wayne Brekhus have been especially helpful in advising me through the tenure and promotion process. I would also like to add a few brief personal notes. Thanks to my brothers Keith and Kevin for the regular “reality checks.” My gratitude goes to my uncle James for always being there. I also want to express appreciation to my mother-in-law Gigi for the immeasurable help that she provided us when her granddaughter was born. Finally, I want to thank my wife Ema and our daughter Elissa for their love, patience, and understanding while I spent so much time on this book. All my love goes to them.

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1

The Black Middle Class From the Declining Significance of Race to Racialized Class Formation

INTRODUCTION When William Julius Wilson published the first edition of The Declining Significance of Race in 1978, in the twilight of the civil rights era, he did not know that it would ultimately be placed on a list of the most influential books in American sociology.1 He probably did not know that it would set the tenor for analyses and discussions of the status of the black middle class in the aftermath of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Unlike the book that framed discussion of the black middle class at the end of the precivil rights era, E. Franklin Frazier’s vitriolic diatribe The Black Bourgeoisie, Wilson’s work is thoughtful, measured in tone, and scholarly. Declining Significance is a seminal work on the contemporary black middle class—setting the parameters of academic and policy debates—despite the fact that it is only indirectly about the black middle class.2 Rather, Wilson’s real scholarly and policy interests lie with the decidedly difficult conditions faced by the black urban poor.3 In many ways the black middle class is merely a backdrop for the “underclass” debate, in which he became deeply embroiled.4 What Wilson actually did was to expand on the prior work of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Richard Freeman in building a class-based scholarly and policy argument about racial inequality. 5 Moynihan, of course, was on the academic and political front lines battling the race-based arguments of his intellectual nemeses in the 1960s and 1970s. Wilson goes further than his aforementioned predecessors by proposing a powerful thesis about the increasing importance of class, claiming that, since the civil rights era, it had supplanted race in shaping the life chances of African Americans. For this reason, I term the theoretical approach that Wilson champions class-determined racial inequality theory. His work (following Moynihan) begins largely as an argument with 1970s-era scholars and activists, working within black-nationalist and internal colonial frameworks, who gave primacy to race-based factors.6 It is in this context that Wilson came to see class and race as increasingly oppositional constructs. In actuality, he is focusing on groups that are identified and structured by both race and class characteristics: the black middle class and the black urban poor.

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The Black Professional Middle Class

An interesting aspect of Wilson’s non-Marxist “class-determined” approach is that it posits the importance of a kind of “class confl ict.” The class confl ict in question is less concerned with the powerful dynamics of the larger society per se; rather, it is largely focused on the intraracial social context of African Americans. This is particularly seen in the bipolar depiction of inequality between the black middle class and the black underclass (rather than between the capitalist class and the working class in the larger society). Additionally, the intraracial class confl ict is suggested in the apparent policy mismatch between both “race-based” (i.e., affi rmative action) and “targeted” policies (e.g., Aid to Families with Dependent Children [AFDC] or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) on the one hand and preferred but blocked universal policies on the other.7 The class-determined approach argues that the problem of racial inequality since the successful passage of civil rights laws and the implementation of affi rmative action—since the 1960s, that is—is one of “class” rather than “race.”8 The class-determined paradigm had a meteoric rise in the 1980s and sharply shifted discussion of racial inequality to the underclass debate and away from the black middle class.9 Consequently the class-determined approach is not represented by a demonstrable number of empirical studies of the status of the black middle class—particularly the kinds of extensive monograph-length works that extend fi ndings and theory. Nevertheless, that approach remains the sociological benchmark when it comes to analyses of the black middle class. However, researchers examining the status of the black middle class have exposed anomalies in this dominant paradigm. These critical studies illustrate the complex relationship between race and class factors and challenge the basic assumptions of the Moynihan-Wilson paradigm. The fortunes of the black middle class and the black urban poor unquestionably diverged even before the civil rights era. At the same time, middle-class life chances still vary along racial lines for blacks and whites. This can be found in patterns of residential segregation,10 wealth accumulation,11 employment discrimination,12 intergenerational mobility,13 and patterns of white privilege in general.14

REVIEW OF THE RECENT LITERATURE: URBAN CASE STUDIES OF THE BLACK MIDDLE CLASS As mentioned, the Moynihan-Wilson approach has been the main paradigm framing assumptions about the black middle class and the analyses of it. The Wilson theoretical and methodological approach to analyzing the black middle class produced a framework that emphasized the use of aggregate and secondary data, the primacy of “class over race,” and a critique of “targeted policies” (including both affi rmative action and now defunct AFDC policies). By contrast, Wilson’s research on the

The Black Middle Class

3

black underclass mostly emphasizes an urban case-study approach utilizing multiple methods that generate primary data.15 In this sense, there was a need for a new round of social science research that could provide new empirical and theoretical insights specifically into the status of the black middle classes. In response to these anomalies, a new literature has emerged in the last decade or so that has highlighted these theoretical and methodological problems. This new literature is based in the urban case-study approach and utilizes multiple—mostly qualitative—methods, incuding historical and archival research, interview methods, and ethnography. In effect, these more recent studies of the black middle class have increasingly adopted the methods traditionally used to study predominantly poor and working-class racial minorities and white ethnic communities in central cities since the late nineteenth century.16 Qualitative methods are also useful in providing new sources of evidence to answer the new and insightful kinds of questions that are now being asked about the black middle classes. Case studies and qualitative methods can supplement and expand upon aggregate or readily quantifiable kinds of data, including census and survey data. Indeed, we have learned much more about urban poverty using such multiple methods, which have gone beyond what more conventional aggregate data had indicated. Likewise, new urban case studies of the black middle class have shed additional light on a group that has often been discussed but not as frequently researched in the form of book-length monographs. In my view, there are four recent urban case studies on the black middle class that are especially noteworthy. Black Corona is an important study of black middle class life by the anthropologist Steven Gregory. He researches life in a multiclass black neighborhood in Queens in order to understand what constitutes such an urban community and the role of the black middle class within it. Gregory characterizes the basic problem with conventional social science analyses of the black middle classes and, by contrast, the alternative insights offered by empirical urban research: Accounts of black urban identity in the mass media have stressed a radical socioeconomic and moral rupture between an inner-city underclass, typically defi ned in relation to deviant values and behaviors, and the “black middle class,” treated as unproblematically integrated into a shapeless American mainstream. Although ethnographic studies have sketched a more variegated portrait of contemporary black urban life, much of this research has remained fi rmly tied to the problem of explaining or interpreting the deviant-coded behaviors of the innercity poor. As a result, not only have the lives of the nonpoor remained largely obscure, but we also know little about the social processes and power arrangements through which black identities are socially constructed and exercised.17

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The Black Professional Middle Class

As far as the conceptualization of social class is concerned, Gregory argues for a neo-Marxist approach that emphasizes the role of praxis and empirically situates this idea in the lived social relations of Corona. For Gregory, the middle class is not a mere “reflection” of occupational status but is based on the interaction of social, political, and economic forces of daily life. In further elaborating his own praxis-oriented theoretical approach to the black middle class, Gregory highlights the tension between the East Elmhurst section of Corona—which is substantially black middle class— with that of the neighboring North Corona neighborhood, which is also predominantly black but not middle class: The sharpening of class divisions in Corona-East Elmhurst, however, was not an unmediated effect of gains in education and occupational opportunities experienced by middle-income persons relative to lower-income and less educated groups. Rather, the process of class formation was shaped by the state’s structuring of the political arena of neighborhood life in ways that incited the production and exercise of particular forms of black “middle-class” identity and disproportionately empowered middle-income, largely homeowning residents of East Elmhurst. Upward mobility did not translate neatly or mechanically into a black “middle-class” identity with transparent interests, beliefs, and attitudes; instead, black class divisions and identities were constructed and given their meanings through political processes and struggles in which the state played a leading role.18 In the case of this study, middle-class blacks are important members of the community. Gregory’s work—as with many recent studies of the black middle class—employs multiple methods to collect its data. His methods emphasize historical-archival research and ethnography. The attempt to understand power and politics as contested in “everyday life” sheds light on the often forgotten role of “lived history” and praxis in shaping and changing the patterns of local black community life.19 Gregory tries to analyze the construction of political identity of people in a black multiclass community as they confront outside business interests and state power in the form of an unwanted and exclusively airport-bound monorail transit system that would literally hang over their neighborhood. 20 Indeed, he fi nds that race and class inequalities in both the larger and local settings are what make the hegemony of state and corporate power difficult to challenge. He fi nds that, interracial, cross-class, and trans-neighborhood coalitions in New York City are extremely difficult to achieve. When they do occur, they offer a glimpse of potential political transformation. 21 In Black Picket Fences, Mary Patillo-McCoy looks at Groveland, a predominantly lower-middle-class black neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. Like many black urban neighborhoods, this is also a multiclass neighborhood. Part of Patillo-McCoy’s analysis focuses on generational

The Black Middle Class

5

change and residential succession. Many younger people are inheriting homes from parents but are burdened by declining fi nancial prospects or poor personal lifestyle choices.22 This tends to give the neighborhood a sense of transition—not necessarily for the better. This part of the argument illustrates the point that black-middle-class neighborhoods are not really like white-middle-class neighborhoods. Middle class black neighborhoods are much less likely to be inoculated from the urban poverty, crime, and other local disamenities because nearby black neighborhoods frequently possess high concentrations of poverty. This is an effect of residential segregation, which promotes the concentration of poverty and “urban problems” in black neighborhoods. 23 Patillo-McCoy categorizes the black middle class in Groveland based on both “behavioral” and “objective” conceptions of the middle class. In terms of behavior, members of the black middle class in Groveland “mow their lawns, go to church, marry, vote (they really vote), work, own property, and so on and so on.”24 In terms of objective data, Patillo-McCoy also notes the “income-to-needs ratio” used by economists as well as occupational and educational criteria generally summoned by sociologists and demographers to ascertain the black middle class: Studies of the black middle class in particular have used white-collar employment as the marker of middle-class position . . . . In Groveland, 65 percent of the working residents are employed in white-collar jobs, again making it majority middle class. The most strict defi nition of middle class (for both blacks and whites) includes only those with a college degree. Twenty percent of Groveland’s adults have graduated from college. Although not a majority, this is a much larger proportion than the 12 percent (in 1990) of African American adults overall with a college degree. 25 Patillo-McCoy’s ethnographic method helps her to untangle primary and secondary relationships that become centered in the neighborhood. Besides income, homeownership becomes a key barometer of middleclass membership. Indeed, this essential form of property is what makes many feel “invested” in the neighborhood and makes them care about promoting peace and stability in the community. 26 Those who don’t own property or who might be losing the homes that they inherited from parents don’t seem to have the same kind of connection to the neighborhood. Indeed, many of the disgruntled youth belong to local gangs—which provides an additional source of local tension. Much of the regular intervention and mediation by established members of the community is designed to ameliorate these confl icts. The maintenance of neighborhood peace, homeownership, and civic involvement promote a level of social organization that potentially helps everyone in the neighborhood, including those with relatively less wherewithal. 27

6

The Black Professional Middle Class

Another important book in the recent literature on urban case studies of the black middle class is Bruce Haynes’s Red Lines, Black Spaces. Actually, Haynes’s book qualifies as a suburban case study that looks at the Runyon Heights (or Nepperhan) neighborhood in the Westchester county suburb of Yonkers, New York. This work adds to a growing recognition of the need to research varying aspects of race, class, place, and space when it comes to the status of African Americans. Most blacks living in suburbs reside in “older” suburbs like Yonkers. 28 This book also highlights many of the particular challenges of black-middle-class community life. Haynes’ study of Yonkers provides a historically oriented conception of the changing foundation of the black middle class. For Haynes, membership in the black middle class is arguably double-sided, founded on occupational status but grounded in homeownership. In the pre-World War II era, the black middle class was small but relatively elastic regarding occupation: The limitations placed on occupations open to Negroes restricted the growth of a traditional managerial and professional middle class. Middle-class Negroes included a handful of preachers, ministers, musicians, morticians, and doctors who served the emerging black ghetto. Due to the skewed occupational structure, blue-collar occupations like carpenter, coachman, and railroad porter could carry middle class status, particularly if the individual was a homeowner in a respectable community. Nonetheless, like discrimination in employment, residential discrimination was an assumed part of the local landscape, even for the most stable and prosperous middle class Negroes.29 And in terms of the significance of homeownership: Thus, home ownership took on heightened importance as a symbol of middle-class status and respectability. The quest for home ownership, a tradition in post-Emancipation African American culture, is part of a broader historical search for political autonomy and economic independence. 30 By contrast, in the postwar period, a “new” black middle class arrived in Runyon Heights with a different occupational basis and relatively higher incomes31 but also with a strong commitment to homeownership and promoting a segregated form of gentrification: Prosperity during the postwar years brought changes to Nepperhan. Land was sold in the eastern section, the Hill, and new homes sprang up. Black and white real estate investors built ever more costly homes for sale in an expanding market. The new comers differed from earlier settlers in that many were college-educated, as only a few of the

The Black Middle Class

7

children of the fi rst settlers had been. Together, they constituted the fi rst black workers to be employed in white-collar jobs as clerks, salesmen, teachers, and nurses. Overall, the socioeconomic status of newcomers tended to be higher than that of children of the original settlers, many of whom had only a high school education. The working-class black residential suburb of Nepperhan was beginning to become gentrified by a more traditionally middle class group.32 The gradual development of Yonkers in the nineteenth century as an industrial suburb had a lot to do with the emergence of a local black community. African Americans—like the white ethnics that preceded them—were seeking new opportunities in manufacturing jobs. Yonkers, as part of Westchester County, made a gradual transition from a locale for wealthy country estates to a suburb housing middle- and working-class whites. The prospects for black homeownership in Runyon Heights emerged when the estate of Charles Runyon, after his death in 1903, was sold in parcels. Speculative developers utilizing a form of suburban “blockbusting,” bought some of the land, and made it available to home-seeking African Americans.33 As in other suburban places, there were, previously, relatively few opportunities for blacks to seek homeownership in the suburbs. These development efforts, along with the sentiments of nearby white homeowners, led to an explicitly segregated community for blacks. Indeed, there were various means—generally involving much humiliation, patience, and persistence—whereby blacks pursued their dreams of fi nding a “nice home” in the suburbs.34 In the contemporary era, Haynes highlights the ways in which blacks in the suburb of Yonkers experienced problems much like those of blacks in the central cities. As in Groveland, homeownership is an important value and aspiration in determining the status of middle-class blacks. This helps to distinguish “middle class” areas from “working class” sections of Runyon Heights.35 Local blacks—especially those in the middle class— fought against rigid residential segregation but ultimately realized a suburban version of “ghettoization.” This included racially tinged battles over school integration, the placement of public housing projects, increasing job displacement, and even a recent trend toward gentrification.36 The emphasis on historical method and analysis utilized by Haynes is particularly noteworthy and helps to makes this work an important contribution. Karyn Lacy has also published an important case study of black-middle-class neighborhood life in the suburbs. Her recent book entitled Blue Chip Black raises insightful questions about the variegated experiences of suburban middle-class blacks. She examines the Washington, DC, suburbs of Maryland and Virginia. Her focus is on questions concerning culture and identity among middle-class blacks in different types of suburban settings. Lacy is critical of earlier studies that focused exclusively on middleclass African Americans living in central-city neighborhoods among or in

8

The Black Professional Middle Class

close proximity to poor and working-class blacks. In her research, she finds important kinds of ecological variation: Looking at middle class blacks who live in completely different settings than those typically studied by sociologists, areas where poor and working class blacks are not present, I fi nd strong evidence of variation within the black middle class in terms of how members of this diverse group perceive themselves and others. In short, I agree with established studies asserting that one’s place of residence can have an important effect on identity; however, my comparative data allow me to show something even more theoretically compelling: that living in particular kinds of suburban communities results in different effects on identity.37 Lacy defines the middle class on a gradational basis, determined primarily by an individual income threshold of $50,000. This threshold basically distinguishes the upper and lower middle classes. It represents Lacy’s effort to factor out the “blue-collar aristocracy,” which is apparently overrepresented in analyses of this kind. having once distinguished the lower middle class, Lacy further establishes a distinction between the “core” and “elite” middle classes. The core black middle class consists of individuals who earn between $50,000 and $100,000 annually, whereas the elite are those who earn more than $100,000.38 This concept of a black-middleclass “structure” corresponds to the explicit gradational conception of W. Lloyd Warner’s Yankee City studies, which refer to the “upper middle,” “middle middle,” and “lower middle” classes.39 Lacy further ties these gradations of the black middle class to the varying suburban communities in the Washington metropolitan area. Fairfax County, in Virginia, and Prince George’s County, in Maryland, comprise three neighborhoods for Lacy’s analysis of black suburban ideal types. Riverton and Sherwood Park in Maryland are segregated black “core” middle-class neighborhoods that respectively promote or limit contact with working-class or poor blacks. On the other hand, Lakeview in Virginia is an “exclusive” and predominantly white suburb housing “elite” middleclass blacks who have limited interaction with other blacks—especially working-class blacks.40 These residential dynamics produce a number of questions about identity formation, interaction, and cultural values that, according to Lacy, vary from one community to another.

PROBLEM AND METHOD The four monographs discussed above make significant contributions to the growing research literature on the black middle class. In addition, the authors have helped to push scholarly debates on this subject much further

The Black Middle Class

9

along by providing an empirically grounded addendum to the MoynihanWilson thesis on the black middle class. Collectively, the fi ndings of these scholars demonstrate that the black middle class comprises an internally varied group embedded in complex institutional and interactive relations that are not always as easily glimpsed through more conventional secondary or aggregate evidentiary sources. The application of new questions, multiple methods, and primary research have made it possible to analyze the problem of the black middle classes in a more fruitful manner. Additional recent research suggests important ways in which race and class interact to shape the life chances of middle-class blacks. These elements include (1) residential segregation and (2) problems of “economic access” for African Americans in general. These problems of access involve the securing and maintenance of middle-class employment, the accumulation of assets, and access to mortgages and other forms of credit. These contemporary issues were crystallized in the aftermath of the fi nancial crash in 2008, in which disproportionately black “subprime” mortgage holders faced the loss of their homes and billions of dollars in wealth.41 Residential segregation plays an important role in generally situating middle-class blacks in neighborhoods with other blacks. It also positions them in proximity to poorer (black) neighbors, where they face an increased likelihood of experiencing crime, diminished property values, and other neighborhood disamenities. Research also suggests that the black middle class is a relatively distinct and marginal grouping with a more tenuous economic hold on middle-class status than is characteristic of middleclass whites. This is indicated by high rates of downward mobility for blacks raised in middle-class families.42 Other research fi ndings indicate apparently greater black-middle-class exposure to employment instability and disparities in wealth.43 In this book, I make use of qualitative methods—traditionally used to study poor and working-class urban neighborhoods—and apply them to the study of the black professional middle class. This effort emphasizes a multiple method approach, which includes: field research, interview research, historical-archival research, and the collection of secondary data from the census and other sources. Moreover, these collective methodologies have been embedded in an urban case study. A case study helps to highlight important similarities and differences that can be found in different kinds of local communities or neighborhoods where the black middle classes reside.44 My work benefits from recent urban case study research about the black middle class (as acknowledged in the literature review). However, theoretically and empirically my work departs from both the MoynihanWilson thesis and the recent case studies of the black middle class. The research in this book deviates from the assumptions of the Moynihan-Wilson thesis on the black middle class in at least four ways: (1) most generally it focuses specifically on the status and circumstances of members of the black middle class as such, rather than on an ancillary relationship to

10

The Black Professional Middle Class

the black urban poor; (2) it identifies different kinds of black neighborhoods where the black middle classes live; (3) it places a greater focus on differentiation within the black middle class, particularly in terms of whether black professionals work for mainstream institutions or primarily serve the black community; and (4) it emphasizes identity and the experience of “everyday life” among the black middle class. Additionally, my work is certainly informed by and benefits from the important recent work on the black middle classes. However, I seek to move the analysis of the African American middle class into new directions. There are four factors that distinguish my book from recent studies. The fi rst distinction involves the region and locality. This study is the only contemporary book-length urban case study specifically analyzing the experiences of the black middle class on the West Coast. That region has its own unique history, migration patterns, and social dynamics that make it a necessary piece of the larger geographic puzzle for this topic. Second, this book focuses on the black professional middle class. Indeed, professionals are an important and distinguishable segment of the middle class. Studies of the middle class often provide defi nitions or conceptions of the black middle class that do not clearly distinguish them from the “lower” middle classes or the working class.45 However, professionals are “indisputably” middle class because they fulfi ll all of the criteria of gradational defi nitions of middle class (income, educational attainment, and occupational status). In addition, professionals also have a relatively unique position in the class structure considering the relational aspects of the middle class debate. As Erik Olin Wright suggests, professionals control key “assets,” in terms of knowledge and credentials, that correspond with relatively great amounts of independence and decision making in their work. This helps to construct the “class boundary” that separates them from the lower middle classes.46 A third contribution is that although this book is an urban case study of Oakland, it focuses on multiple sites of the black professional middle class. It provides an analysis of black professionals in three separate but interrelated social arenas. These sites include: the workplace, community, and local politics. In terms of the workplace, African American professionals are divided into two segments. One segment is a traditional group that primarily delivers services to a segregated black clientele within segregated local institutions and small private practices. The other segment consists of black professionals who have entered positions in the mainstream (i.e., predominantly white) workplace of corporations, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies since the onset of the civil rights era. A second site for analyzing the experiences of black professionals is that of the community. Black professionals live in different neighborhood types that feature varying kinds of race and class composition and degrees of proximity to poorer black neighborhoods. A third site involves the participation of the black professional middle class in local politics. On this

The Black Middle Class

11

topic, I particularly focus on the roles and interests of the African American professional middle class in the rise and fall of black mayoral regimes in Oakland. Finally, this book seeks to further problematize basic concepts of “class” and “race.” I will focus my analysis on one social class—the professional middle class. As Charles Derber indicates, professionals form a social class based on their ability to produce and distribute of a key social resource: professional knowledge. This shapes their intermediate position within the class structure of postindustrial society because they primarily contribute neither capital nor mass labor power as such.47 Furthermore, the development of the professional middle class is one of historical class formation, which can be traced through preindustrial, industrial, and postindustrial society. This approach to class promotes the construction of a relational (rather than a gradational) conception of the middle classes. “Race,” like class is an important feature of inequality in the United States. Whereas class is arguably the more “basic” feature of stratification, race (like gender) has always been intertwined.48 Indeed, the dynamic effect of race is not simply “superstructural.” Several theoretical approaches to racial inequality have suggested material bases for race in the stratification system, including split labor market theory, dual and segmented labor market theories, internal colonial theory, racial formation theory, and intersectionality. Indeed, I would argue that like many other structural processes in U.S. society, class formation is itself racialized. Professional middle-class formation is “racialized” in large part because of formal and informal patterns of segregation—or “dual society”—that have long been part of the African American experience.49 This is found not only in terms of residential segregation but also in local political life and occupational segregation. In terms of the basic problem of occupational segregation, black employees are generally pushed into particular niches in the labor market.50 Black mainstream managers and professionals fi ll niches concerned with mediating relations between private fi rms or government and the black community.51 “Traditional” black professionals fi ll niches in which they are involved in providing professional services directly to the black community.52 The black professional middle class is a distinct (yet internally differentiated) entity, not merely a subset of a larger, abstract professional middle class. Before the civil rights era, black professionals were far fewer in number and were mostly excluded from mainstream job opportunities appropriate to their qualifications.53 Black professionals have historically served racially segregated communities, institutions, clients, patients, students, and parishioners.54 The process of class formation for black professionals during the earlier period of formal segregation (pre-civil rights era) was distinctive and based on racialized exclusion from mainstream opportunities. As a result, black professionals tended to provide their services almost exclusively to segregated black communities. Policies aimed at desegregating mainstream

12

The Black Professional Middle Class

professional opportunities within mainstream institutions emerged in the 1960s, and this is an ongoing project. Whereas each of the empirically focused chapters in this book poses specific research questions, there are some basic themes and questions that frame and guide this project. Given the literature on the black middle class that has emerged in response to the class-determined paradigm, what might be further learned from studying the black professional middle class in particular? What kinds of work do black professionals do? In Oakland, what kinds of neighborhoods do black professionals live in? What kinds of relationships do black professionals have to the black community? What kinds of roles have members of the black professional middle class played in local politics? Can we learn something that is sociologically useful about changes in racial inequality since the civil rights period by observing the African American professional middle class? While I am, of course, concerned with the substantial quantitative growth of African American professionals in recent decades, I am particularly interested in the immense qualitative changes that have resulted for the black professional middle class and the larger society. My data comes from three basic sources. First, I conducted historical-archival research concerning the black middle classes and the development of the black community. Some of the historical research includes an overview analysis of the development of black urban communities in Oakland since the nineteenth century. These data also look at the changing class dynamics and institutional patterns of black neighborhoods in Oakland since the 1960s, which correspond with the local growth of the black middle classes. Second, I have also collected aggregate secondary data from the census. I have made use of these data to analyze national and local (Oakland metropolitan area) trends regarding occupational and residential changes. Most of this aggregate census data is concerned with social and demographic changes in Oakland between 1940 and the present. They provide a useful backdrop for basic trend analysis, which serves as a reference point for the fi ndings of the qualitative data. This data helps to provide a link between relevant national and local demographic changes. Finally, a key source of evidence for this book is derived from the thirty in-depth interviews conducted with local African American professionals. These interviews included professionals from Oakland and the East Bay metropolitan area as part of the case study. The interviewees are treated as both subjects and local key actors in the black professional middle class. I asked them about their social backgrounds (family status, education, etc.), their employment history, community life and social networks, and political attitudes and practices as they related to their experiences as African American professionals. The interviews are important for bridging the relationship between personal experience and institutional structures. The selection of local interview subjects for this study was based on a snowball sample of black professionals from the Oakland metropolitan

The Black Middle Class

13

area who entered their professional careers between the mid-1960s and the end of the 1970s. This was the fi rst generational cohort to enter such positions after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The thirty years of the experience of this “new” black middle class is readily contrasted with that of the “old” black middle class that was created, nurtured, and confounded by formal segregation. 55 A snowball sample is not a random sample but is consistent with the methods of conducting a local case study. 56 The snowball sample in this book was developed after initial African American professional subjects in the Oakland and East Bay metropolitan area were identified. Other subjects were identified at the suggestion of those already interviewed. Although “network analysis” is not part of this study, I was able to note overlapping connections among different groups of black professionals. Not surprisingly, they overlapped primarily along lines of profession itself and on the basis of whether or not one could be coded as a “mainstream” or “traditional” member of the black professional middle class. Furthermore, those subjects most frequently recommended for interviews by multiple others could be coded as key actors among the interview subjects. Key actors are black professionals in the sample who—formally and informally—served in positions of leadership in professional, civic, or political organizations. Key actors are those who frequently play “nodal” roles in connecting members of the black professional middle class in formal and informal networks. This is important because a lot of what professionals do in terms of work, political, and civic activity is done through interaction and cooperation. In addition to the use of multiple methods for data collection and the types of interview subjects, another important methodological consideration in an urban case study is the choice of place. I chose to carry out my research in Oakland for at least two reasons. First is the dearth of primary research on members of the black middle class residing in West Coast cities. A second reason is the relatively high standard of living in the Bay Area. Despite the relatively higher standard of living of African Americans in the Bay Area, racial inequalities in income and poverty rates between blacks and whites remain locally manifest, as in other regions. Both blacks and whites in California, in the Bay area as a whole, and the East Bay in particular have higher incomes than blacks and whites, respectively, in other parts of the country (see Table 5.2). Poverty rates are also relatively lower in the Bay Area. Relatively greater incomes reflect the higher cost of living (i.e., housing, services, etc.) in the Bay Area. Higher incomes in the Bay Area also reflect strong demand for labor in the service industries— including demand for professionals of various sorts. The higher standard of living of African Americans locally makes it a region that is worth studying in the effort to understand the varied local conditions faced by members of the black middle class.57 As noted previously, aggregate research is important, but in researching a subject like the black middle class, case studies provide vital sources

14

The Black Professional Middle Class

of new and original data. On the other hand, it should be noted that no single urban case—whether in the boroughs of New York or on the famous South Side scoured by numerous scholars of the Chicago School—captures all of the complexities of urban life and the racial inequalities that qualitative research seeks to investigate. As such, varied local case studies are still important (and complementary to aggregate research) for capturing the broader context of the experiences of the black middle classes since the civil rights era. This study makes a contribution to this larger research agenda by analyzing the case of black professionals in Oakland and the East Bay.58

THEORIZING RACIALIZED CLASS FORMATION Much of what operates as “race” in American society—in both historic and contemporary circumstances regarding African Americans—is segregation. The black-white boundary—or color line—has been somewhat more stringently compelled than it has been for other racialized minorities, such as Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. 59 At the time of this writing, however, the increased racialization of Latino and Arab American statuses, based on racist stereotypes of “illegal immigrants” and “Islamic terrorism,” respectively, is apparent. For blacks, however, racial segregation has remained a relative constant throughout the pre-civil rights, civil rights, and post-civil rights eras. This general pattern has continued despite the legislative and judicial eradication of formal segregation during the 1950s and 1960s. Compared with the experience of other racial minorities, racial segregation of blacks shows up in primary group settings such as marriage patterns.60 It also shows up in settings where primary and secondary group relations intersect: in neighborhoods,61 schools,62 political constituencies,63 and occupational and workplace settings.64 The interplay of primary and secondary group relations helps to produce segregated biographies for African Americans. These racialized patterns seem to affect both strong and weak ties and can come to affect both “what you know” and “who you know” for African Americans pursuing middle-class life chances. The problem of the formal and informal (and past and present) segregation of African Americans is central to processes of racialized class formation because blacks still remain largely separate from whites (and other racial minorities). This case study will examine, in part, how racialization in the form of “segregation” shapes the local experiences of the black professional middle class locally as well as in the workplace, the neighborhood, and politics. Ultimately, much more research focusing on these kinds of questions will be needed. Whereas class-determined theory sees “racial inequality” as largely reducible to class inequality, an alternative approach analyzes the interactive

The Black Middle Class

15

relationship between race and class more closely.65 That is, race and class not race or class. Race and class both “cast shadows” on each other and both affect the life chances of blacks of differing class backgrounds.66 Omi and Winant are highly instructive in this regard by offering their conceptions of racial formation and “racialization.”67 These concepts can be applied to the particular processes of “class formation” experienced by black professionals. I will term this alternative approach racialized class formation. This approach argues that whereas class formation is a fundamental and ongoing process in capitalist societies, it is shaped or sometimes superseded by other material and ideological sources of confl ict, including race. Other sources of confl ict that tend to confound straightforward class analysis in various societies include nationality, ethnicity, religion, language, sexual orientation, and, of course, gender.68 In the United States, race has been an enduring aspect of inequality not reducible to class but interfacing with it in social structure and social interaction. Another way to put it is that, historically, class formation for African Americans has never been a race-neutral process. Class formation in the United States is tempered by racial formation. While this book is focused on the experiences of African Americans in the professional middle class, more analysis is needed concerning the processes of racialized class formation experienced by other racial minority groups and also dominant white racialized class formations.69 The racial formation theory produced by Omi and Winant has been an important contribution to the literature. As with other sociological approaches, race is a social (not biological) construction. Moreover, like social class, race “is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social confl icts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies.”70 For those drawing on the insights of racial formation theory, race is neither an essentialism nor an illusion. That is, like social class, race is a “sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed.”71 Furthermore, race operates at both macro (social structure) and micro (identity and interaction) levels of society. Race is both a structural and cultural (ideological) phenomenon. Many aspects of social relations become racialized because of both the ideological and structural significances of race in the United States (and in other societies). For example, national social problems in the United States, such as crime or welfare dependency, are often characterized as “black” or racial minority problems. Another useful concept presented by Omi and Winant is that of racial projects. Such projects illustrate the reflexive relationship of race in social structure to cultural or ideological formulations of race. Racial projects are ongoing in societies that feature racial formation. These projects are generally proposed and implemented by core institutions and organizations in the society.72 The state would, of course, be such a key institution in generating racial projects in the United States. One example of a racial

16

The Black Professional Middle Class

project that is relevant for this book concerns the state and the events surrounding, and the responses to, the civil rights movement. Other key organizations involved in civil rights policy dynamics include civil rights organizations, civic and nonprofit groups, corporations, and unions. This important racial project was a result of the federal government’s response to civil rights movement in the 1960s. It led to new “political processes” and the institutionalization of some of the civil rights movement’s goals.73 As far as this book is concerned, the racial project of civil rights policy—or seeing that the state provides a formal delineation and recognition of basic citizenship rights for groups historically denied them—played a central role in promoting expanded black integration into mainstream middle class occupations. Racialized class formation has been a constant in U.S. history. Indeed, racialized class formation is a process that is not exclusive to the black middle class but is a generalized process for African Americans.74 Racialization shapes class formation among different social classes in the United States owing to consistent patterns of segregation, as discussed earlier. African Americans in the working class, the “underclass,” the capitalist class, and the middle classes can all be seen as affected by processes of racialization that affect the class structure.75

HISTORICIZING RACIALIZED CLASS FORMATION: FROM THE PRE-CIVIL RIGHTS ERA TO THE POST-CIVIL RIGHTS ERA Racialized class formation as it has affected African Americans in the professional middle class can be seen taking fundamentally different forms before and after the civil rights era—but not disappearing. It is useful to elaborate three periods of citizenship status for African Americans. These three periods are the pre-civil rights era (until 1964), the civil rights era (1964–1980), and the post-civil rights era (from 1980 to the present). The civil rights movement reached its apex with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. The post-civil rights era emerged with the rise of conservative political forces in the Reagan administration effectively challenging and curtailing (but not yet eradicating) institutionalized “liberal” civil rights policies. The tension between liberal and conservative political ideologies has helped to shape the context and debate about racialized class formation in the post-civil rights era. Initial racialized class formation of the African American professional middle class took place under conditions of formal and semiformal segregation in the pre-civil rights era. This produced a petite bourgeois black middle class that provided direct and indirect professional (and business) services to segregated black communities in the northern and southern cities.76 While black-owned businesses provided business services (e.g.,

The Black Middle Class

17

barbershops, beauty salons, corner stores, bars, restaurants, etc.) to virtually exclusive black customers, black professionals did the same regarding professional services.77 Lawyers, physicians, dentists, clergy, journalists, teachers, social workers, and college faculty, among others, provided professional services almost exclusively to black clients, patients, students, and parishioners under a regime of formalized and semiformalized segregation in the South and North respectively. These pre-civil rights era professional services were provided through black-owned professional practices, segregated black-owned fi rms and institutions (e.g., historically black colleges and universities and black-owned newspapers), and the state itself (e.g., public schools and social services). Racialized class formation of the black professional middle class came into play mostly after the turn of the last century and especially since the Great Migration. This pattern expanded with the increased ghettoization of northern and southern cities. These events produced the conditions for the slowly expanding numbers of black professionals throughout the pre-civil rights era.78 This group of black professionals, operating under formalized and semi-formalized segregation, was a relatively small grouping with relatively small numbers of clients. Many had to have second “working class” jobs.79 They were fi nancially strapped, and socially and politically marginal in the context of the larger society.80 Despite the significant political constraints that this segregated black professional middle class faced, they were also a politically mobilized group— especially in the South. There the black middle class formed the leadership of the civil rights movement that effectively challenged the overt injustices of formalized segregation and compelled the federal government to enact civil rights laws—with new enforcement mechanisms—that changed the social and political terrain for African Americans as a whole.81 Key pieces of legislation in this regard included: the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the 1968 Fair Housing Act. These pieces of legislation helped to constitute the construction of a civil rights policy regime that coincided with the civil rights era and promoted formal equality of citizenship for blacks, particularly in the realms of employment, education, accommodations, voting, political representation, housing, etc. The emergence of the civil rights policy regime codified a federal government shift from exclusionary policy (formally prosegregation) to inclusionary policy (formally prointegration) that corresponds with a transition from the pre-civil rights era to the civil rights era. Worth considering is that in the postcivil rights era there are increasing voices among policy advocates and the general public arguing for seclusionary policies—that is, policies (thus far only partly successful) that advocate the withdrawal of the state from the formal promotion of civil rights laws and policies (including affirmative action). Under seclusionary policies, the problems of discrimination and racial inequality are concealed or “secluded” under the rubric of “color blindness.”82

18 The Black Professional Middle Class As far as black access to mainstream (i.e., predominantly white) occupations in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, new rights under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and affi rmative action policies were key. The civil rights policy regime—including both civil rights laws and affi rmative action policies—provided a new opportunity structure for African Americans who were able to move up and into professional jobs in mainstream institutions. Thus, during the civil rights and post-civil rights eras, respectively, an alternative type of racialized class formation has taken place. This involves discernible “integration” of black professionals into mainstream job opportunities for the fi rst time during the period of the mid-1960s and 1970s.

WHY THE PROFESSIONAL MIDDLE CLASS? CLASS FORMATION AND PROFESSIONALIZATION Historically, one of the most dynamic social changes in postwar American society has been the growth of a significant black professional middle class. This continuing process of racialized class formation entails, on the one hand, the quantitative growth in the overall number of blacks who are members of professional occupations and also increasingly integrated into “mainstream” (i.e., predominantly white) fi rms, nonprofit agencies, and government employment. Nevertheless, African American members of the professional middle class frequently find themselves facing tangible barriers and “ceilings” in the labor market, and within the institutions that employ them. That is, they often fi nd themselves excluded or diverted from the conventional opportunity structures of recruitment, hiring and promotion despite their greatly increased representation in mainstream institutions since the 1960s. On the other hand, these African American professionals are conscious social actors, aware of their relatively privileged positions; as well as their particularly racialized status and identity as black professionals. They experience this at work, as well as in the other aspects of their public and private lives.83 In the contemporary period, blacks in the professional middle class can be divided into two substantial groupings: (1) professional employees and (2) self-employed professionals. The former group is most representative of the entrance of African American professionals into the mainstream of the public and private sectors of the economy. By contrast, self-employed black professionals and other professional employees retain many similarities with the old black middle class from the era of formal segregation. This includes the direct provision of many basic professional and social services that are often otherwise unavailable to the black poor. Nevertheless, self-employed black professionals (e.g., lawyers and doctors) continue to play a vital role within the larger black community.

The Black Middle Class

19

In terms of understanding the status of the black middle class as such, this book focuses on the professional middle class for pragmatic theoretical and methodological reasons. First, as Erik Olin Wright and other scholars have found, the operationalization of the concept middle class is very difficult to specify.84 Defi nitions of the middle classes are often inconsistent and are based variously on “gradational” constructions related to educational attainment, occupational status, or income. In self-report surveys about class background, the majority of Americans defi ne themselves as middle class.85 Clearly not everyone, or nearly everyone, is in the middle class. A number of studies of the black middle class include broad segments of the workforce, many of whom might be considered members of the working class.86 The size of the black middle class in particular might be overstated. This study chooses a simpler route: to look at professionals because they are (for the most part) unambiguously middle class. Professionals tend to correspond with both gradational and relational aspects of defi ning the middle class.87 Additionally, secondary data from the census concerning this group is readily available. Second, professionals play a central role in the expanding service sector of the United States—the world’s most advanced postindustrial economy. Professional work is one of the more prestigious examples of the way in which services have replaced manufacturing as the mainstay of employment in the U.S. economy. Professionals require significant personal investments in higher education and social capital. They are purveyors of specialized knowledge that is demonstrated by the possession of university degrees, licenses, and other credentials that are difficult to obtain. Indeed, professionals provide many of the vital services that are utilized by the public in the course of contemporary social life (e.g., law, medicine, and the sciences). They are a relatively autonomous and self-directed occupational grouping. Furthermore, professionals utilize a significant contemporary employee “organizing strategy” to improve their relative conditions in the servicesbased postindustrial labor market: the strategy of professionalization. This effort is geared toward increasing the share of the social surplus available to professionals relative to other kinds of workers. It is distinct from the earlier (and now declining) efforts at mass unionization that dominated the earlier periods of industrialization. Assessing whether or not black entrance into the ranks of the professional middle class has been equitable is one important indicator of the degree of integration of African Americans as a group into one of the most basic U.S. social institutions: the labor market. The net growth of U.S. employment since the 1970s has been virtually 100 percent in the service sector.88 As part of this process of “postindustrialization,” the absolute and relative growth in the postwar period of professional and jobs has been tremendous (see Table 3.1). Thus, the access of blacks to such positions is an important barometer of the genuine national pursuit and achievement of equal opportunity in the larger society.

20 The Black Professional Middle Class PROBLEM ONE IN THE RACIALIZED FORMATION OF THE BLACK PROFESSIONAL MIDDLE CLASS: FROM OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION TO “INTEGRATION” OF THE PRIMARY LABOR MARKET One problem regarding the black professional middle class to be analyzed is the problem of occupational segregation and access to primary labor market positions. This is something that has changed in the transition from the pre-civil rights to the post-civil rights era. During the pre-civil rights era, split labor markets frequently stratified black and white workers by race. There was explicit—and often legally sanctioned—occupational segregation. Labor unions, when they existed, were also formally and informally segregated.89 Black professionals were a very small grouping found primarily in either racially isolated practices or employment delivering professional services through racially segregated public and private community-based institutions related to public and higher education, social services, the church, and the like.90 During the civil rights era, the civil rights movement pushed the federal government to acknowledge and confront the problem of—among other things—“desegregating” independent primary labor markets.91 Getting low-wage jobs via the secondary labor market has been less of a problem for blacks—until recently.92 Independent primary labor markets feature high status professional and managerial jobs found primarily in the “internal” labor markets and job ladders of the relatively well-paid core sector of the economy dominated by large corporations, nonprofit institutions, and government.93 This has been a task for the civil rights policy regime that connects large public and private organizations to key federal legislation and policy rooted in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and subsequent affi rmative action policies. These efforts have helped to open mainstream professional jobs to African Americans.94 Since the 1980s, the post-civil rights era has developed amid significant organizational change and economic turmoil. The relative decline of product competitiveness in global markets coupled with deindustrialization began to change the employment landscape in the United States. These changes have produced challenges for both blue- and white-collar workers—including middle-class professionals and managers.95 This has included the decline of internal labor markets and the job ladders associated with them inside of the large corporations.96 As U.S. employment becomes increasingly part-time, temporary, contracted out, and sent offshore, primary labor markets—and the middle class jobs they encompass—are shrinking. This was a trend that began with blue-collar workers, but increasingly affects those involved in service and information-related jobs as well.97 The transition to “globalization” has made it increasingly difficult to improve incomes, working conditions, and social policies that provide for middle-class standards of living not only in the United States, but elsewhere as well.98

The Black Middle Class

21

Additionally, the legal protections of the civil rights policy regime face increasing opposition from those who allege “reverse discrimination.”99 Efforts to contract the civil rights policy regime have been eagerly pursued by conservative politicians and activists in both the Democratic and Republican parties as well as richly funded private foundations promoting allegedly “color blind” policies. Indeed, conservative political efforts at the state level in California, Florida, and Texas, and Washington State have been successful in abolishing affirmative action.100 This outcome at the national level would likely have significant effects on black recruitment, hiring, and promotion, and greatly impact the social reproduction of the African American professional middle class.

PROBLEM TWO IN THE RACIALIZED FORMATION OF THE BLACK PROFESSIONAL MIDDLE CLASS: ORGANIZATION OF URBAN COMMUNITY LIFE Residential segregation is the major organizing principle of African American neighborhoods. Nevertheless, community life for the black professional middle class has also changed over time with the dynamics of racialized class formation. In the pre-civil rights era, African American urban neighborhoods in cities like Oakland were shaped by the semiformal segregation found in northern cities.101 I characterize this as the period of concentrated ghettoization. This is the pattern that developed with mass urbanization during the period of the Great Migration. Southern cities exhibited lower rates of segregation in that era but featured strong patterns of “social separation,” which outweighed demographic measurements. Only later did southern cities “catch up” to the high segregation indexes found in northern cities.102 In Oakland the neighborhood of West Oakland was the place where initial black ghettoization occurred. Large numbers of black urban migrants moved into Oakland during World War II and throughout the early postwar period.103 By the 1960s, overcrowding in West Oakland pushed blacks into historically white flatland neighborhoods in Northwest and East Oakland. Middle-class blacks were generally the fi rst ones to push outward from West Oakland into North Oakland and the East Oakland flatlands. As this process unfolded, new “secondary” ghettoes were spawned. Working-class blacks eventually followed. These demographic changes occurred during the civil rights era and can be categorized as dispersed ghettoization. This pattern played a major role in the development of “white fl ight” in Oakland as white residents headed to East Bay suburbs such as San Leandro and San Lorenzo.104 During the post-civil rights era dispersed ghettoization took on different forms as the black middle class grew in size. As the proportion of blacks living in Oakland rapidly increased, the opportunities for middleclass blacks to live in different kinds of neighborhoods increased as well.

22

The Black Professional Middle Class

Among African Americans, it has been the black middle class that has had the fi nancial and social wherewithal to push neighborhood boundaries. At the same time they are still pulled by the orbit of segregation. Black professionals can now be found dwelling in three different neighborhood types in Oakland. These neighborhood types are discussed later in the book; they include (1) predominantly black middle class neighborhoods, (2) black multiclass neighborhoods, and (3) predominantly white middleclass neighborhoods.

PROBLEM THREE IN THE RACIALIZED FORMATION OF THE BLACK PROFESSIONAL MIDDLE CLASS: ORGANIZATION OF LOCAL POLITICAL PRACTICE In the pre-civil rights era, blacks (particularly in the South) were largely not able to vote. In the North they did have the formal right to vote but were effectively excluded from access to local political power. This was readily noticeable regarding the holding of the mayoral office.105 It was also indicative of the problem of political segregation faced by African Americans. Political segregation combines at least three basic problems of political inequality for African Americans. First, residential segregation racially encapsulates “black spaces” locally and helps to separate black voters spatially from whites and others. In many cities, black candidates have difficulty winning at-large elections, and rely on disproportionately black districts to form a “base” in order to gain election to city councils, the mayor’s office, or Congress. The importance (or lack thereof) of having black political representatives is a contentious topic.106 Indeed, successful black political representatives must ultimately be able to appeal to a wide cross section of voters and interests at the local level. Second, segregation affects the political mobilization of blacks as voters or nonvoters (e.g., “activists”).107 Third, political segregation promotes black “bloc voting” despite class differences because of real and perceived interests that revolve around shared experiences of race.108 Class differences among African Americans in post-civil rights era politics is an increasingly important topic. It was into this void that a relatively small and disproportionately professional and middle-class cadre of black politicians, operatives, and activists stepped; in order to represent the black community. Black urban regimes make claims to meet such constituent needs as well as those of business—a difficult political marriage. Despite increasing their share of the population in Oakland in the aftermath of the Great Migration—or perhaps because of it—blacks were largely denied local political office until the 1970s. However, this period also coincided with the development of significant black mobilization in Oakland. As in other cities, the white political establishment and white voting constituencies used various methods to “circle the wagons” in order to oppose

The Black Middle Class

23

the threat of black political advancement.109 The efforts of white political machines in some northern cities to resist black political opportunity into the 1970s and later, constituted quite an institutional undertaking. This occurred with white ethnic Democratic machines in many northeastern and midwestern cities.110 There were also cases of business-led Republican machines, as in the cases of the California cities of Oakland and Los Angeles.111 Indeed, Oakland was dominated by the remnants of the Republican “Knowland machine” into the 1970s.112 By the emergence of the civil rights era, black political mobilization in northern cities was on the rise. In Oakland as elsewhere, there were efforts that predated the 1960s, and they were, accordingly, mostly unsuccessful. For example, West Oakland was the birthplace of the Black Panthers. Despite the innumerable flaws in the organization, leadership, ideology, and tactics of the Black Panthers,113 they were often effective—in tandem with other local black organizations—in mobilizing the local African American community for organized political efforts. One significant achievement of the Black Panther Party was its near success in the effort to elect Bobby Seale mayor of Oakland in 1973. Seale’s ultimate defeat would lay the groundwork for the election of the more moderate Lionel Wilson as the first black mayor of Oakland in 1977. Mirroring local political transitions in other cities, the election of Wilson represented the rise of a black urban regime in Oakland led by politically active members of the black professional middle class.114 The post-civil rights era has seen the fall of the black urban regime in Oakland. Since the 1970s, significant social and economic problems—including deindustrialization and disinvestment, rising urban poverty, and reductions in federal funding—have shifted the fortunes of many black mayors.115 In the current era, the cities they have governed have faced new challenges, such as black “reverse migration” to the South, the new immigration from Asia and Latin America, and increasing white-middle-class gentrification in larger cities.116 These trends have generally reduced or undermined black majorities or near majorities in many cities. Furthermore, white business and political elites have lost confidence in, or a “need” for, black (middleclass) politicians to run the disproportionately black inner cities, which are often faced with new demographics and new investment prospects. The weak power base of these black-middle-class politicians (in contrast with the white ethnic political machines of the twentieth century) leaves them with frequently soft support from a shrinking black working class and poor urban electoral base, which may question their “legitimacy” and their ability to effect progressive change for black residents.117

2

The Growth and Transformation of the Black Community in Oakland 1852–1965

INTRODUCTION During the twentieth century, urban life in the United States was greatly shaped by the development of black ghettoes1 in U.S. cities. The unwillingness of both larger institutions and the residents of cities and broad metropolitan areas to accept and incorporate blacks into the opportunity structures and mainstream institutions has been well documented. 2 These patterns of institutionalized residential segregation and social exclusion have led to the development of severe social problems within the black community: extremely high rates of poverty, high levels of unemployment and crime, a large proportion of single-parent households, and common problems of drug abuse.3 Since World War II, these racially segregated and impoverished communities have become a symbol of the American “race problem.” The primary response of the larger society to these troubled neighborhoods has been to fear, ignore, and further isolate them. Most of the research on black ghettoes in the United States has focused on cities on the East Coast (e.g., Harlem) or the industrial Midwest (e.g., Chicago).4 Few studies have looked at the development of ghetto communities on the West Coast. There are some important qualitative differences in the historical development of black urban communities in the western United States. These differences, although noteworthy, have not altered the fundamental patterns of racial exclusion and ghetto formation visited upon African Americans in those cities. First is the smaller absolute numbers of blacks who migrated west of the Mississippi River to seek new opportunities in the emerging industrial economy. Most of the blacks who were able to move northward went to the industrial Midwest and the East Coast. Second, when cities in the Northeast and Midwest were facing their “second wave” of mass black migration and ghettoization5 during and after World War II, West Coast cities were facing their fi rst such experience. Third, the greater historic diversity of racial minority groups in California (e.g., Native Americans, Asian Americans, Mexican

The Growth and Transformation of the Black Community in Oakland

25

Americans) led to multiple racial “threats” to white racial hegemony in jobs, housing, and local political representation in that state.6 As a result, race relations on the West Coast came to be patterned differently than they were in the eastern portions of the country. For the most part, cities such as Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Oakland have not experienced the same level of overt black-white racial confl ict as northeastern, Midwestern, and more recently southeastern cities (especially Miami). Nevertheless, patterns of racial inequality and confl ict are apparent in the West. In northern California, Oakland is an instructive case of West Coast ghettoization. Its population comprises a larger percentage of blacks than any other large West Coast city (43.9 percent in 1990).7 Clear patterns of segregation exist in Oakland, although the San Francisco-Oakland metropolitan area generally ranks lower than other northern cities on aggregate segregation index data.8 The ghettoized neighborhoods of Oakland, although later in their initial arrival, are nonetheless clear examples of this American urban phenomena of black ghetto formation. The development of the black community in Oakland was not a singular or monolithic event. It is one that has been shaped historically. As with cities east of the Mississippi River, the formation of black ghettoes and the experience of African American urban life has been qualitatively different at particular points in the historical development of those cities. Urbanization and especially its industrial period occurred later in Oakland and other western cities. The stages of urban development were essentially the same in Oakland as those that occurred in other American cities. The historical changes in economic development, industrial change, and urban form all shaped the social and spatial contours of the black ghetto in Oakland. These changes can be glimpsed in Table 2.1. The black residents of Oakland did their best to respond to a world that was not of their making or liking. This chapter focuses on the role of racialized social closure and the institutional and community bases of black ghetto formation in Oakland between 1852 and 1965. This chapter focuses on the period from initial settlement in Oakland— that is, 1852—to 1965. The period since 1965 in Oakland and elsewhere has presented a different turn in the development of black urban community life that needs separate consideration. The post-1965 era has seen the growth of a significant black middle class. The formation of the black professional middle class and changes in community life are looked at in more detail in Chapter 5. However, the formation of that segment of the black community can best be understood with an analysis of the historic development of the black community. The understanding of what constituted the most “privileged” segments of the black community has changed drastically during that history. The relationship of those relatively privileged groupings to both the larger society and the poorer members of the black community has been difficult, and that continues to be the case.

26

The Black Professional Middle Class

Table 2.1 Years

Black Community Development and Changing Urban Form in Oakland, 1852–1965 Stage of Stage of Industrial- capitalism ization

Urban Form of Black Economic Community Form Organization Settlement

Status of the Black Middle Classes

1852– 1910

PreCommercial Commerindustrial capitalism cial city

Virtually non-existent

1910– 1940

Early Early Early Small urban industrial industrial industrial enclaves capitalism city

Negligible

1940– 1965

Late Late Late Concentrated industrial industrial industrial ghettoization capitalism city (heavy black migration)

Small; caters to segregated institutions & clientele

Rapid growth; 1965– PostAdvanced Corporate Dispersed some black ghettoization present industrial capitalism city & entry into suburban- and increased mainstream black interization class inequality jobs Source: Eric S. Brown. “Black Ghetto Formation in Oakland, 1852-1965: Social Closure and African American Community Development,” Research in Community Sociology. Vol. 8, p. 259. Emerald Group Publishing.

THE “PREHISTORY” OF THE BLACK GHETTO IN OAKLAND AND THE EAST BAY: 1852–1940

Black Urban Settlement in a Preindustrial City The City of Oakland was incorporated in 1852, two years after the state of California was brought into the union. Like San Francisco across the bay, Oakland’s population was swelled by the Gold Rush, which originated in 1848. The oak trees for which the city was named were seen as offering a respite from the “gold, whisky, fights and fandangos of San Francisco.”9 Oakland’s early economic base was in the extractive industries, especially in lumbering.10 The establishment of the terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad in Oakland in 1869 provided the essential infrastructural basis for Oakland’s urban development.11 Oakland’s location on the waterfront of San Francisco Bay provided a logical meeting point for westward bound rail traffic and shipping from the Pacific Ocean. Oakland became a major land and sea transportation hub of the western United States. Oakland’s status as both a rail and a shipping transportation hub with proximity—and access by ferry—to San Francisco brought rapid population growth. This also attracted an accessible labor force and investment for new industries and businesses.

The Growth and Transformation of the Black Community in Oakland

27

Between the mid-1870s and the early 1900s there was significant growth of a manufacturing-based economy—one that emerged fi fty years or so after the industrial revolution on the East Coast: With all sorts of goods passing through, either coming or going, it was not long before factories multiplied in Oakland and in surrounding East Bay towns to process raw commodities and manufacturing merchandise. Hides went to tanneries; lumber went to planing mills and carriage makers; hops and grain went to breweries; fruits and vegetables went to canneries.12 The fi rst blacks to arrive in Northern California were lured by a search for new economic opportunities (especially the Gold Rush) and arrived in the mid-nineteenth century. The census of 1860 showed only 31 black adults and 10 black children living in Oakland.13 Most of the people who were attracted to Northern California by the Gold Rush were not actually prospectors. Most black men were forced into the lower tier of a split labor market and worked in a variety of service jobs (e.g., as cooks, barbers, stewards, painters, laborers, wagon drivers, etc.). By the 1860s, some blacks managed to forge space in a separate enclave economy that, for the most part didn’t compete directly with white businesses. These businesses included “several black-owned restaurants and catering businesses, at least one barbershop, and a produce and poultry shop.”14 As in other sections of the country, blacks were largely excluded from employment opportunities in the manufacturing sector of the Bay Area economy (until World War I). The “economic takeoff” of manufacturing industries in Oakland and San Francisco left out blacks, Chinese, and other racial minorities. Whereas Chinese immigrants in Northern California largely employed each other in Chinatown-based “ethnic enclave” economies built around laundries and a few other services,15 blacks were more likely to work for whites. The mid-nineteenth-century trend of employment in service-oriented jobs continued well into the twentieth century. One area of service work that was very important for blacks in Oakland (and elsewhere) was the occupation of Pullman porter. As a matter of company policy, Pullman porters were black. “Naturally enough, many chose Oakland as the place to live when they were not traveling, attracted by nearness to the railroad, the pleasant climate, and California’s relative social freedom.”16 The job of Pullman porter was, for several decades, considered by blacks to be a relatively high-status occupation: To many blacks, a job as a Pullman porter was a godsend. In the years just following the Civil War, it was one of the few jobs open to blacks that gave them a chance for any security or pride, judged by the standards of the time. It was in a way an extension of domestic service, but

28 The Black Professional Middle Class it was at the highest level of such service, and the opportunity for travel and observation of conditions in various parts of the country gave them valuable knowledge and made them respected by other blacks.17 Later, Southern Pacific and other companies hired blacks as cooks, waiters in dining cars, railyard laborers, and baggage handlers in the passenger and freight depots. The expansion of opportunities for blacks on the railroads acted as an economic magnet for blacks, and the heart of the black community was in West Oakland, in part because Railroad workers were required to live west of Adeline Street in order to be on call for unscheduled duty, and they became the center of a significant black presence in West Oakland. Many of them lived in company-owned rooming houses, but others boarded with black homeowners in the area, and eventually a number of them bought their own homes.18 The Pullman porters also organized the fi rst major union that was open to blacks, The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. This had the effect of giving blacks a voice, for the fi rst time, in the racially exclusionary labor movement. The black community in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was relatively dispersed. It did not experience substantial ghettoization until the period of World War II. The successful struggle to integrate the public schools in Oakland in 1872 (only seven years after the end of the Civil War) was a notable triumph for black civil rights in the West and in the Bay Area specifically.19 As in northern cities on the East Coast, early black migrants, given their relatively small numbers, were not necessarily subjected to extreme segregation.20 The later mass migration of blacks led to greater white efforts to exclude and isolate them in the schools and in other institutional settings. However, this period did signal a relative freedom for blacks in Oakland from the kinds of open and often violent racial violence that characterized cities in the East and Midwest (not to mention southern lynchings). The fact that blacks at this point were a relatively small and thus less “threatening” group in Oakland was probably responsible for this lack of open conflict. As Lieberson has demonstrated, the “queuing” of larger and more “competitive” racial minority populations (that is, groups in direct competition for jobs with whites) leads to more open confl ict over scarce social resources (e.g. employment, housing) than for smaller or less directly competitive racial minority groupings. 21 Large numbers of blacks in East Coast cities were more likely to be seeking—but not getting—the same jobs in the larger eastern manufacturing sectors that whites were seeking. The fi rst black professionals came to Oakland in the 1890s. The fi rst black doctor arrived in Oakland in 1894. He was a graduate of Harvard

The Growth and Transformation of the Black Community in Oakland

29

University and a former gold prospector. A second black doctor arrived in 1902. This man was a former army doctor who had served in the SpanishAmerican War. In 1896, the fi rst African American passed the California state bar exam. However, the California Supreme Court refused to admit him to practice law. He therefore opened an office on Broadway and practiced law without a license. The court later reversed its decision and had him admitted to the bar. He practiced law—with a mostly white clientele— until his death in 1902. 22 A viable black business district formed along 7th Street in West Oakland. In addition, blacks in West Oakland developed many important community institutions. These included fraternal lodges and their women’s auxiliaries, newspapers, aid societies, churches, and the Literary and Aid Society, which was “established in 1876 to provide a forum for black intellectual and cultural life and to offer assistance to needy members of the community.”23 These organizations provided places where people could gather to collectively solve the problems—social, economic, and spiritual—of the black community. The fi rst black church in Oakland, the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, was established in 1858. 24 It was based in the heart of the black community of West Oakland. Over the years, as the congregation grew in size, it moved to progressively larger buildings, until it settled in at 15th and Market Streets in 1884. From small beginnings, this church grew to be one of the largest black congregations in the East Bay with its educational, recreational and social programs drawing members from all parts of Oakland. As the black populations grew, many other black congregations arose and continued to serve as important centers of life in the black community. 25 Black women played a significant role in establishing and maintaining the civic and self-help institutions of the black community. In addition to the women’s auxiliaries of fraternal lodges, black women formed their own community organizations in Oakland. One important example was the Fanny Jackson Coppin Club, which was founded in 1899 by a group of black Oakland churchwomen. The organization established an orphanage, a nursery, and the Home for Aged and Infi rm Colored People. 26

BLACK URBAN ENCLAVES IN EARLY INDUSTRIAL OAKLAND A steady rate of population and economic growth continued in Oakland during the early twentieth century. World War I, however, brought more intense levels of industrialization to the East Bay. One example of this industrial growth was the Moore Shipbuilding Company, which had moved across the bay from San Francisco to Oakland after the 1906 earthquake.

30

The Black Professional Middle Class

Previously it had been primarily a ship repairing company. It was also involved in some manufacturing of ship engines and boilers. As a result of the rising demand generated by the war and orders from the federal government, the company became more involved in full-scale ship manufacturing. Between 1906 and 1920 the fi rm expanded its number of employees from 250 to more than 13,000.27 In a relatively small-scale preview of the changes that would occur later during World War II, blacks began to experience new opportunities in the burgeoning manufacturing sector of Oakland’s economy. The increased demand for labor and the mobilization of military personnel being sent to Europe expanded the opportunities available to blacks. Shipbuilders, iron works, vehicle manufacturers and other industrial enterprises found themselves forced to hire black workers, whom they had previously rejected on racial grounds. Although most black industrial workers were kept in unskilled positions, a few were able to secure employment as artisans, and even for laborers the pay was higher than they could get elsewhere.28 After World War I ended, steady economic growth continued in Oakland. The improvements received by the Port of Oakland before and during World War I increased the city’sshipping capacity. These improvements included deeper dredging and a system of municipal docks, quays, wharves, and belt-line railways. The Oakland Port Commission was created in 1928, coinciding with continued improvement of the port facilities, including a dredging of San Francisco Bay sponsored by the federal government. Also in 1928, the Port of Oakland became an official port of entry to the United States. Ships under foreign registry no longer had to dock at San Francisco, thus increasing Oakland’s share of foreign trade opportunities. The improvement of the port expanded Oakland’s economic development and viability. 29 The increased viability of Oakland port facilities made the city a more desirable locale for manufacturing plants after the war. “As the hub of the West’s transportation network, at the connecting point between rail, truck and ocean shipping, Oakland continued to offer the same advantages it had had since 1869.”30 The most important manufacturing industry to congregate in Oakland in this period was the automobile industry and related businesses. During this time Oakland became known as the “Detroit of the West.” Automobile plants were established in Oakland by the Durant Motor Company (a General Motors subsidiary), Chevrolet, Willys, Fageol (buses and trucks), and Caterpillar Tractor. Automobilerelated business included diesel engines, batteries, valves, tires, upholstery, glass, and other parts. 31 For blacks, the expansion of the manufacturing sector of the economy continued to provide opportunities after the war. The automobile factories

The Growth and Transformation of the Black Community in Oakland

31

and the Moore Shipbuilding plant persisted in hiring black workers, “albeit for the most part in the least skilled and lowest paid jobs in the plants.”32 The incorporation of blacks into the manufacturing sector—in relatively small numbers, at lower-status jobs and for less pay—was accomplished with less overt conflict than in many of the industrializing cities of the East and the Midwest. The relatively small numbers of blacks seeking these jobs meant less direct competition and was perceived as less of a racial threat by white workers. This does not mean that there was no active white racial opposition to black workers in these industries, but Oakland never experienced a “red summer” in the aftermath of World War I, as did cities like Chicago and Detroit. Whereas the small number of black professionals mostly worked as selfemployed deliverers of services to a predominantly black clientele, a small black foothold in civil service jobs was developing at this time. This occurred in part because the black electorate was now large enough to have some leverage with politicians and could gain access to a share of city patronage jobs. Oakland hired its first black policeman (who did not have the authority to arrest white suspects) in 1918 and during this time hired its fi rst black firefighters (who worked in a segregated all-black fi rehouse). Blacks in Oakland, as elsewhere, also began to gain access to federal civil service jobs, including the U.S. Post Office. Both the local and federal civil service jobs offered good incomes, pensions, and a certain amount of prestige.33 As the black population increased during the early twentieth century, there was also an increase in the kinds of restrictive racial barriers against blacks. The black community that was concentrated in West Oakland began to “spill over” into North Oakland. The North Oakland “flatlands” are contiguous with West Oakland’s neighborhoods. The bungalows and apartments of North Oakland combined a mix of ethnic distinctiveness and diversity. For example, the Temescal neighborhood of North Oakland was widely identified at the time as an Italian neighborhood but contained varied ethnic populations. Many European immigrants (especially Irish, Italians, and Portuguese) who often fi rst settled in the eastern United States found their way to California in search of newer opportunities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most of these immigrants held working-class jobs that included fishery and cannery work.34 As in other California cities, the geographic and geological dividing line between the hills and flatlands took on a socially constructed meaning as well. Racial and class inequalities became synonymous with the spatial distinction between the hills and flatlands. In many California cities (including San Francisco and Los Angeles), these same social and spatial patterns have been historically replicated. This represented an Anglo-inspired contrast to the patterns of many Latin American cities, where the poor live in the hills and the wealthy live in the flatlands. By the 1920s expansion of home building in the hills of Oakland was made possible, in part by the increasing affordability and availability of

32

The Black Professional Middle Class

automobile transportation. This increased the demand for new homes for those who desired more prosperous surroundings in an idyllic neighborhood surrounded by a semblance of the natural environment among the unnaturalness of urban life. These new hill neighborhoods included Montclair, Trestle Glen, Lakeshore, and the independent town of Piedmont (which voted to refuse merger with Oakland in 1907). 35 The movement of blacks and white ethnics (especially Italian Americans) into North Oakland increased the desire of middle-class white Protestants to protect their neighborhoods from these “undesirable” ethnic groups. By the 1920s the geographic dividing line of hills and flatlands was blended with two types of restrictions that were underwritten by law. First, the newer tracts were protected by zoning restrictions intended to protect the aesthetic and real estate value of these homes. These zoning restrictions included “no intrusion of business, no apartment houses, no double houses or flats, no spite fences, no freak houses, no shacks, no private garages allowed to be placed where they will spoil his outlook, no unsightly feature of any sort.”36 The second type of legal restriction placed on such housing was what is known as the racial covenant. These racist agreements were specifically designed to keep out blacks and other “undesirable” racial groups. They existed not only in the hills but also in certain flatland neighborhoods like Rockridge. Because of the proximity of a “nice” North Oakland flatland neighborhood like Rockridge to the increasingly black working-class districts of North Oakland, such a “restriction” was considered appropriate. An example of these kinds of racial covenants was that issued by the Lakeshore Highlands Company and sanctioned by the Oakland City Council was “Clause XIV—Limitation of Ownership”: “No person of African, Japanese, Chinese or of any Mongolian descent, shall be allowed to purchase, own or lease said property or any part thereof or to live upon said property or any part thereof except in the capacity of domestic servants of the occupant thereof.”37 Increasing racial intolerance led many black leaders to intensify the call for blacks to own their homes. Many felt this would give blacks more economic independence from whites. One black newspaper, The Oakland Sunshine, commented in 1907 that “It is almost necessary for you to own your own home. Rents are high and real estate agents do not care to rent to Negroes.”38 More than 700 blacks owned their homes in Oakland in 1930.39 Increased success in home ownership led some of the relatively well off members of the black community to seek more desirable neighborhoods, like those of their white counterparts. Because racial covenants were keeping blacks out of “nicer” areas of the North Oakland flatlands (e.g., Rockridge) and out of the hill neighborhoods altogether, many blacks were seeking new homes in Berkeley. The increasing population density of working-class North and West Oakland was probably also a factor in the desire of members of the small black

The Growth and Transformation of the Black Community in Oakland 33 middle class to seek new neighborhoods. Their motivations were essentially the same as those of whites in this regard. Many blacks, thus, began to look further northward—toward Berkeley—for new housing opportunities. However, the city of Berkeley began to develop its own overt and covert methods of racial restriction to keep blacks out. The one area where blacks were able to get a residential foothold was in the neighborhoods of South Berkeley. In fact, by the mid-1930s, a larger proportion of blacks owned their homes in Berkeley than did whites. This indicates both the elevated middle-class position of black Berkeley citizens and the practice of stringent segregation that limited this group to one small section of Berkeley: In the 1920s South Berkeley became the prestige address for successful middle class blacks. Attracted by the city’s college town gentility, successful businessmen and professionals bought homes in the one part of Berkeley where they were tolerated, raising the black population from 507 in 1920 to 2,177 in 1930, despite sporadic attempts to keep them out.40 The expansion of racial covenants in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as other informal methods of restriction throughout Oakland and Berkeley, laid the foundations for the emerging black ghettoes of the East Bay. Blacks were mostly restricted to the flatlands of North and West Oakland and South Berkeley. For the most part, blacks lived in small urban enclaves in these restricted neighborhoods. Only West Oakland—the oldest black community—had the beginnings of a discernible pattern of black ghettoization. The truly rigid contours of ghettoization would not appear in the East Bay until World War II. During the Depression, California suffered its share of the national economic collapse. In 1932, “28 percent of the state’s workers were unemployed.”41 Oakland’s vital automobile industry was hard hit by the Depression. The inability of consumers to buy cars led to large-scale layoffs at the Chevrolet plant in Oakland and the Ford plant in Richmond, among others. The “multiplier effect” of job losses in the auto industry “affected shippers, brokers, packers and all other ‘middleman’ operators back to the originator of the raw product.”42 For the black communities of the East Bay, the Depression was even more devastating: The number of black male wage earners in Oakland dropped from 2,600 in 1930 to 1,564 in 1940, although the total black population increased by about a thousand in the same period. For all of California, black families were forced to seek public assistance at a rate more than four times that of whites and double that of other non-whites. By 1940, when the United States was pulling out of the depression, the percentage of blacks among Oakland’s unemployed was six times their proportion of the population.43

34

The Black Professional Middle Class

The network of churches and self-help institutions in the black community made every effort to meet the exponentially greater needs of destitute blacks during the Depression. These black organizations, alone, were simply not able to provide enough resources to the needy members of the black community. Two other sources of help became necessary, if inconsistent, partners in the effort to meet the needs of the black community in Oakland. First, more of the “relief work” in the black community proceeded as a result of interracial efforts. Predominantly white private organizations— like the Oakland Community Chest, the YMCA, and YWCA—provided fi nancial resources, as well as food and clothing, which were dispensed through various black community organizations and churches. In addition, the YMCA and YWCA dispensed aid to the black community through the segregated black branches of their own organizations.44 Second, the New Deal programs instituted by the federal government had some impact on blacks. Blacks received public assistance and participated in some of the work programs, such as those dedicated to the repair of Oakland’s roads. The federal government also initiated or fi nancially backed several large Bay Area construction projects during the Depression, including the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Oakland Airport, Treasure Island, the Oakland Naval Supply Depot, and the Naval Air Station at Alameda. These projects “reinvigorated the regional economy, but provided disproportionately few jobs for blacks. Without NAACP challenges to discriminatory hiring practices, blacks would not have benefited directly from these projects at all.”45

THE PROCESS OF THE GHETTOIZATION OF THE BLACK COMMUNITY IN OAKLAND AND THE EAST BAY: 1940–1965 That the distribution of resources and opportunities to blacks through the New Deal welfare state was unequal was evident in Oakland and also demonstrated at the national level.46 The formal end of the Depression did not come until 1941, which marked, not coincidentally, the beginning of World War II. During the period of World War II (and beyond), blacks did not receive their share of the “warfare” state either. It took a threatened march on Washington, to be led by A. Philip Randolph, to pressure President Roosevelt to formally outlaw job discrimination in the war industries. Nevertheless, World War II was to play a major role in changing both the size and opportunity structure for the black community in Oakland and the East Bay. Whereas the “civilian” economy had nearly collapsed between 1929 and 1941, the federal government’s success at generating a “war” economy was extremely effective in bringing an end to the Great Depression. The war greatly stimulated the production of ships, planes, and vehicles of all types.

The Growth and Transformation of the Black Community in Oakland 35 The demand for new materials like iron, oil, and rubber was tremendous. The war in the Pacific generated tremendous growth through war-related production in California and in the Bay Area specifically. Indeed, federal government spending generated 45 percent of personal income in California during the war years.47 One industry that generated ample employment opportunity in the East Bay during the war was the shipbuilding industry. The demand for various kinds of warships and support ships to carry on the war effort in the Pacific Theater generated a level of war production never before seen. For example, the mass production of the merchant marine “Liberty Ships” at Kaiser Industries produced a total of 821 of those vessels and 219 of the improved “Victory Ships.”48 It ultimately took only twenty-seven days to produce one of these 10,000-ton vessels.49 Kaiser Industries eventually produced a total of 1,490 ships during the war. Government auditors concluded that through its efficient means of ship production, Kaiser “saved the U.S. more than 266 million over the average cost of the same type [of Liberty Ships] built in other yards, and on all ships combined, built them in two-thirds the time at 25 percent less cost than the average of all other shipyards.”50 The demand for labor in the war industries produced much new employment. Indeed, shipbuilding was the only war industry—and the only major industry other than the railroads—that employed blacks at a significant level in the Bay Area. 51 At its peak of employment, the Kaiser shipyards (including Oakland, Richmond, and Portland) employed 197,000 workers.52 The massive Kaiser corporate bureaucracy was administered from its headquarters in Oakland. The employment opportunities generated by the war industries—especially shipbuilding—played the most significant role in the unprecedented migration of blacks to the West. “In 1940 the black population west of the Mississippi River was insignificant—only 171,000, less than 1 percent of the population. By 1945 it was about 620,000.”53 Even though President Roosevelt signed Executive Order Number 8802 to prevent discrimination in the defense industries, racial discrimination was widespread. In his research on the conditions facing black shipyard workers, Charles S. Johnson found the conventional stereotypes of blacks (as lazy, undereducated, and not intelligent enough) by employers and managers. Furthermore, these companies sought to avoid problems with the unions representing white workers.54 The implications of this employment discrimination targeting black workers was provided even during the prewar mobilization by the noted black economist Robert C. Weaver, who had served in Roosevelt’s “black cabinet.” In May of 1941, he was made the chief of the Negro Employment Branch of the Labor Division in the Office of Production Management. In a report to Vice President Truman, he wrote: Restrictive employment patterns operate against Negro workers in practically all defense industries . . . . Many factors contribute to this

36

The Black Professional Middle Class widespread exclusion of Negro workers . . . One important factor is the attitude of management—both top and supervisory . . . . Another is the attitude of organized labor . . . a third factor . . . is the general attitude of white employers toward the introduction of Negro workers . . . I do not believe that I can stress too much the economic waste, and the dangers of our national unity which result from the widespread discrimination against Negroes.55

The blacks who moved to Oakland and the East Bay in large numbers before and during World War II were mostly a population of sharecroppers, farmers, and domestic workers (and their children) from southern states (especially Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas). Most came to the East Bay cities of Oakland and Richmond looking for jobs in the expanding defense industries.56 Shipbuilding—especially at the Kaiser plants—was a major draw for migrant workers looking for jobs. Most of these workers (both black and white) were from the South.57 Blacks who migrated to the East Bay had the added incentive of escaping the formalized racial segregation of the South as well as fi nding new employment opportunities in the manufacturing and government service sectors. This new mass migration of blacks brought significant changes in the quality of urban life in cities like Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond. There was increased confl ict between blacks and whites and even substantive confl ict within the black community. The latter became manifest between those blacks who had long inhabited the East Bay and the southern newcomers. Within the black community, region-based cultural differences (North versus South and urban versus rural) and stark class differences became readily apparent. Many established blacks saw the black migrants from the South as crude and backward, and black difficulties were exacerbated by increasing competition for the limited number of jobs available to blacks. 58 The East Bay black population grew at an unprecedented rate between 1940 and 1950: Oakland’s black population grew from 8,462 in 1940 to 37,327 in 1945 and 47,562 in 1950; Berkeley’s from 3,395 in 1940 to 13,289 in 1950; and Richmond’s from a mere 270 in 1940 to 14,000 in 1950. 59 For whites, the rapid growth of the black community was a very unsettling phenomenon. Whites came increasingly to associate the black community with crime, poverty, and cultural backwardness. Not that these beliefs didn’t already exist, but they became even more intensified. Some of these feelings were made more viable by the increase in the number of southern white migrants who, along with established white businessmen, promoted efforts to segregate blacks in Oakland more rigidly.60 The ultimate outcome was to create the conditions of discernible ghettoization and increased racial segregation in Oakland and other East Bay cities. The racialized spatial dynamics of ghettoization and segregation had existed in eastern and midwestern cities for some time.61 Oakland now had

The Growth and Transformation of the Black Community in Oakland 37 them as well. East Bay ghettoization from the 1940s onward was consistent with increased black residential segregation and concentrated urban poverty in Oakland, South Berkeley, and Richmond. This same pattern of ghettoization was repeated across the bay in the Hunter’s Point neighborhood of San Francisco.62 Blacks faced increased incidents of discrimination in employment, housing, and public places. Whites who felt threatened by the increase in black population responded by seeking to isolate blacks under conditions of racial segregation in labor markets, housing markets, and access to public space. At a meeting of the Santa Fe Improvement Association of Berkeley, one white property owner who advocated the extension of racial covenants said, “We’re not bothered about the Japs now, Uncle Sam has taken care of that; our chief concern now is the Negro, Filipino, and Chinese.”63 Aside from the demographic imperative of black migration and social pressure on various resources, the southernness of black migrants had a powerful and transformative effect on the relatively small established black community of Oakland and the East Bay. Whites felt their effect as well: As they transplanted their southernness and built institutions that reproduced it, migrants transformed the East Bay’s existing white and black communities. Southern migrant culture simply swallowed the tiny prewar East Bay black population, ultimately erasing its favored and distinct position with the white community. As “unassimilable” and “aggressive” migrants replaced the “good” black citizens who knew their place, whites attempted to preserve their political, economic and social privilege by limiting migrants’ access to decent housing, medical care, jobs and education. Migrants fought back, and the resulting struggles shaped East Bay politics from World War II to the present.64 One important example of the cultural and demographic transformation of black institutions was in the black church. Most black migrants tended to join existing black churches and in the process changed the form and content of church services. Through numerical dominance, black migrants were able, over time, to take over institutional dominance of the churches as well. The resultant increase in the membership of the congregations promoted greater fi nancial stability for black churches. Black women generally faced restrictions from black men in their opportunities to play a role in the public life of the community. They had been historically able to transform their “traditional” role in family life into participation in voluntary organizations and the life of the church. In turn, migrant black women were especially important in the changes in the black churches of the East Bay and in the community generally: Churches that once served the East Bay’s established black communities, many of them small and fi nancially unstable, grew prosperous from

38 The Black Professional Middle Class the influx of migrant worshippers. But in exchange for their support, migrants demanded and obtained positions of power and responsibility in their adopted institutions. In churches and elsewhere in East Bay black communities, newcomers simply outnumbered existing residents, forcing old-timers to assimilate into migrant culture. Taylor Memorial M. E. Church in Oakland, for example, grew from 150 members in 1940 to 1,008 in 1954. During that same period, the church was rebuilt and completely fi nanced; its membership burned the mortgage on November 28, 1954.65 If the demand for labor generated by the war mobilization was the primary factor in the development of the black ghettoes in Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond, then the postwar elimination of black workers from the war industries was an important historic factor in the increased poverty of those communities. Many whites lost their jobs in the shipyards after the war. However, virtually all of the 10,000 blacks who had been employed in East Bay shipyards in 1943 had lost their jobs by mid-1945. The effect on the black communities of the East Bay was an economic disaster. War industry recruiters and local officials had expected a “reverse migration” of blacks after the war.66 This was not forthcoming. Blacks had no desire to return to the semifeudal agricultural labor and the Jim Crow segregation of the South. The postwar phenomenon of black displacement from shipyard employment was a harbinger of the trend toward increased black joblessness. A similar pattern was being repeated in other cities across the country. In addition, the increase in black population—as blacks continued to move to northern cities in search of decreasing manufacturing employment opportunities—led to the demographic and spatial expansion of the black ghetto. The black community continued to grow in North Oakland and to increase in large numbers in the East Oakland flatlands. The movement of blacks into East Oakland intensified the process of “white fl ight” from those neighborhoods into the East Bay suburbs of San Leandro, Hayward, and Fremont. In 1949 the Oakland City Council declared the neighborhood of West Oakland to be a “blighted area.” This represented the city’s official stamp of “ghetto” on West Oakland, which was 85 percent black at the time. The official declaration of ghetto status made West Oakland the target of widespread demolition and several urban renewal projects. The proximity of this black neighborhood to downtown Oakland led city officials to give high priority to “revitalizing” West Oakland.67 The city sanctioned the development of the Acorn public housing project in 1954, which led to the demolition of 333 buildings, and more than 9,000 people were forced to move. The project led to confl ict between more financially stable black homeowners who lost their homes and the new, poorer black inhabitants of the public housing project.68 Further implementation of urban renewal projects followed, with destructive effects on the residents

The Growth and Transformation of the Black Community in Oakland

39

of West Oakland. The Nimitz Freeway was completed in 1958 and caused massive displacement of residents and the destruction of residential and business property in the neighborhood. In addition, the building of a huge federal postal processing plant on Seventh Street also caused significant displacement. “By the end of the 1950s, the West Oakland center of black community, commerce, and culture had been replaced by a truly blighted district.”69 In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the construction of a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station in West Oakland on Seventh Street led to the further destruction of that business district.70 As in other cities, the postwar changes in Oakland were dramatic. The process of suburbanization had a significant affect on the economic viability of the urban core. The suburbanization of businesses, jobs, real estate development, and population (especially white middle-class taxpayers) left the city of Oakland in economic decline. In its wake, the black community expanded both demographically and spatially. A declining economic base left more problems for the remaining citizens of Oakland and its increasingly poor and racial minority-dominated population. By the 1960s the problems of job and business loss from Oakland, white flight to the East Bay suburbs, and concentrated inner-city poverty and ghettoization were widespread. At the same time social policies instituted by the federal government, caused by pressure from the black civil rights movement, were beginning to have an effect on the development of a larger black middle class. The growth of the black professional middle class at the same time as the increase in joblessness and related social problems (e.g., crime, substance abuse, single-parent families) in the black community as a whole is an enduring paradox of the post-civil rights era.

CONCLUSION The development of the black middle class is greatly shaped by the dynamics of the ghetto—racial segregation, social exclusion, and poverty—which have formed the foundation of black urban industrial life in the twentieth century. The black middle class continues to live in the shadow of the ghetto from which it originated. For example, even though the members of the black middle class live increasingly outside of the original ghetto areas, new patterns of segregation and social exclusion continue to shape their collective experience. This can be glimpsed in the fact that most black professionals, whether selfemployed or employees in the mainstream public and private sectors, tend to provide services disproportionately to other blacks. This will be discussed further in chapters 3 and 4. In addition, the experience of black professional middle-class community life is shaped by the inescapable spatial and symbolic contours of the black ghetto, as illustrated in chapter 5. The dispersion of the black community within modern metropolitan areas—an inevitable outcome in the aftermath of civil rights

40 The Black Professional Middle Class legislation—continues to follow patterns that are very different from those of whites. Much like whites, blacks with the fi nancial wherewithal chose to move out of declining inner-city neighborhoods. More specifically, middleclass blacks moved in order to reduce significant ghetto overcrowding, to seek “better” neighborhoods (e.g., with less crime and better schools), and to find homes with appreciating market value. On the other hand, middleclass blacks are much more likely than their white counterparts of the same social class to live in the inner city. The experience of the black professional middle class in terms of their community life is thus complex and multifaceted. The social and economic dynamics of life in modern urban society remain distinctly different for the black professional middle class relative to their white counterparts. As a result, the new black middle class is one that is marginal to both the ghetto and the larger (i.e., white) middle-class society. The spatial effects of racial inequality for the black professional middle class in the postindustrial metropolis can be illuminated by a discussion, in the next two chapters, of the interaction of race, class, and the state vis-à-vis the market for landed property and the resultant effect on community life. The institutions of the market and the state reflect back to the black-middle-class a society that exhibits neither a genuine “free market” nor color blindness.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This chapter is based on Eric S. Brown, “Black Ghetto Formation in Oakland, 1852–1965: Social Closure and African American Community Development.” Research in Community Sociology. Vol. 9, 1998. Emerald Group Publishing.

3

Swimming in the Mainstream Racialized Class Formation and the Black Professional Middle Class since the Civil Rights Era

INTRODUCTION This chapter highlights both the background and foreground story of the growth of black professionals employed in the “mainstream” of U.S. private and public workplaces. The background focuses on the historical development of professions and the contemporary labor market for professional labor in postindustrial society. The foreground includes a case study of black professionals and their experiences in navigating the mainstream structures of professional occupations in the post–civil rights era. One problem is the vagueness of what—or who—is comprised by the black middle class. Many studies have overstated the parameters and size of the African American middle class.1 This chapter does not seek to provide a holistic defi nition or analysis of the black middle classes. That is a task beyond the scope of this project. Rather, I focus on a segment of the black middle classes which is clearly middle class; and provide an empirical and theoretical analysis of the status of that group. In this book I term the processes that shape aggregate class formation for African Americans—historically and presently—racialized class formation. As discussed in Chapter 1, dynamics of racialized class formation have been present in U.S. history during the pre–civil rights, civil rights, and post–civil rights eras. In none of the aforementioned historical periods has class formation for African Americans ever been a “race neutral” process. Institutional and interpersonal practices such as formal (legal) exclusion, overt discrimination, and blatant racism were prevalent in the pre–civil rights era. Such overtly discriminatory practices have been superseded in the post–civil rights era by practices such as informal exclusion, 2 covert discrimination, 3 and color-blind racism,4 as well as continuities of traditional employment discrimination based on employer “preference” or “taste,” as evidenced in audit studies. 5 On the other side of the racial ledger, white racial privilege has been built into the U.S. legal system6 and employment preferences7 historically. One outcome is that discernible patterns of occupational segregation based on intersecting patterns of race and gender have continued to shape the opportunity structures and outcomes for

42

The Black Professional Middle Class

African American men and women in the larger class structure—including the professional middle class.8

PROBLEM AND METHOD As previously stated, studies of the black middle class generally focus more on the broad and more numerous segments of the “lower middle” class rather than on professionals (or managers).9 What can we learn about the black middle classes from examining the experiences of members of the relatively privileged black professional middle class specifi cally? Much has been written about the role of civil rights policy and changing opportunities for the new black middle class. What can a case study help us to understand about the eff ect of these “macro” policies at the “micro” level? What happens to African Americans during recruitment, hiring, and promotion into professional positions? Does “race” affect the experiences of black professionals in their relationships with clients? Does it matter whether black professionals deliver professional services? The central source of evidence for this chapter is derived from the thirty interviews that were conducted with African American professionals. These interviews were conducted with professionals from Oakland and the East Bay metropolitan area as part of the case study. The interviewees are treated as both subjects and local key actors in the black professional middle class. I asked them about their social backgrounds (family status, education, etc.), their employment history, community life and social networks, and their political attitudes and practices as they related to their experiences as African American professionals. Interviewees were coded as either “mainstream” or “traditional” members of the black professional middle class. Mainstream black professionals—the subject of this chapter—are those who work in predominantly white institutional settings (for-profit fi rms, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies) and directly or indirectly serve the interests of those institutions. Traditional black professionals are those that serve black clientele in individual (e.g., private practice attorneys or physicians) or institutional (e.g., teachers or clergy in mostly segregated school and church) settings. Traditional black professionals in Oakland are discussed at length in Chapter 4. The selection of local interview subjects for this study was based on a snowball sample of black professionals from the Oakland metropolitan area who entered their professional careers between the mid-1960s and the end of the 1970s. This was the fi rst cohort to enter such positions after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The thirty years of the experience of this “new” black middle class is readily contrasted with that of the “old” black middle class that was created, nurtured, and confounded by formal

Swimming in the Mainstream

43

segregation.10 A snowball sample is consistent with the methodology of conducting a local case study.11 This study may be seen, along with the other case studies, as part of “multiple observations” of research on the black middle classes. Analysis of the interviews and the other data (i.e., historical and observational) in my study, allows for qualitative analysis of dimensions of the “racialized class formation” process experienced by these Oakland-area black professionals since the civil rights era. This is captured in the confl ict over their presence in once nearly all-white occupational preserves and the civil rights policies that have shaped the opportunity structure and processes of recruitment, hiring, and promotion, and the relationship of black professionals to their clients in the post–civil rights era. Both blacks and whites in California, in the Bay Area as a whole, and the East Bay in particular have higher incomes than members of the same groups in other parts of the country (see Table 5.2). Poverty rates are also relatively lower. The relatively higher standard of living experienced by blacks in the East Bay makes it an important area to investigate. Relatively greater incomes refl ect the higher cost of living (i.e., greater demand for housing, food and services, etc.) in the Bay Area. Additionally, the San Francisco Bay Area was second only to the Washington, DC, metropolitan area in the proportion of the labor force employed in professional occupations among the larger metropolitan areas.12 Thus, the higher standard of living experienced by blacks in Oakland and the East Bay makes it an important and instructive area to investigate. This is the case given the apparent racial inequalities that remain locally manifest despite the relatively greater growth and prosperity of this region.13 As seen above, basic disparities between blacks and whites in median income and poverty rates remain evident at both the national and local levels. Therefore local historical and interview data collected from Oakland are appropriate for augmenting available aggregate census and survey data on race and class inequalities. It should be noted that no single urban or metropolitan area captures all of the complexities of qualitative changes in urbanized race and class inequalities. In this sense I have also chosen Oakland as a research site because it is a West Coast city—and there is a dearth of research on the black middle class on the West Coast. In addition, the city of Oakland (and the East Bay metropolitan area) has the greatest proportion of black population of any of the large West Coast cities, and the relative political influence of the local black middle class is partly reflected in this fact.14 Nevertheless, local and qualitative studies are still needed (in addition to aggregate and quantitative research) to capture the broader context of changes in race and class inequalities since the civil rights period. This study makes a contribution to this larger research agenda by analyzing the case of black professionals in Oakland and the East Bay.15

44

The Black Professional Middle Class

RISE OF THE PROFESSIONALS: FROM GUILDS TO LABOR MARKETS Professional work has its origins in western European societies in the “learned” professions of the clergy, law, and medicine in medieval Europe.16 These early forms of professional organization existed as privileged, closed societies sponsored by elite institutions and clientele. The church and wealthy and aristocratic segments of these societies could afford the services of these professionals who were organized on a “guildlike” basis, while receiving a status similar to that of the gentry.17 As capitalism developed in the nineteenth century, professions became organized more on the basis of the petty bourgeoisie. University training became more central to the core of professional identity and legitimacy. While retaining a closed and exclusionary basis of organizational structure, the professions became subjected to emerging labor market conditions.18 Access to university education became more closely tied to the emerging professional labor markets. The closed and exclusive organizations of the professions served to limit market competition and keep earning capacities high by limiting access to both university-based training and the professions themselves.19 We can develop a contemporary defi nition of professions that is derived from the dynamic of the labor market. Professionals occupy a distinct class position in the social structure based on the control of knowledge as a key social resource. The relatively closed access to the official sources of knowledge, and the accompanying credentials give professionals a special niche in the labor market. As Charles Derber and his colleagues put it: Viewing professionals as a class helps us to understand what really makes a professional a professional, a subject that has long bedeviled sociologists. Professionals are simply occupations—including medicine, law, natural sciences, social sciences, engineering, architecture, psychiatry, accounting, nursing, teaching, and social work—that seek to restrict practice to those with specialized university credentials, usually postgraduate degrees. Professionals rely mainly on claims to knowledge rather than to labor or capital as the basis of their quest for wealth and power. This distinguishes them from those in working-class or business-class occupations. And professionals, unlike other knowledge groups such as craft workers, wrap themselves in knowledge certified by the university. 20 The professions began to expand under capitalism for two primary reasons. First, the expansion of the provision of services to a more general population was important. Professionals such as doctors and lawyers sought to reach a wider range of consumers than just the affluent clientele who would “retain” their services. Thus medical and legal services became more available to the general public. However, in the case of medicine,

Swimming in the Mainstream

45

the “universal need for medical services represents a tremendous asset for a category of professional producers only after they have succeeded in establishing a monopolistic hold on their market [italics in original].”21 Second, the expansive growth of capitalism in the nineteenth century led to a demand for providers of relatively newer services. New professional services included engineering, new academic disciplines including the social sciences, and the benefits of applied science results appropriated by new manufacturing industries. 22 Many of these services were not “new” in a strict sense, but their application to new technical and social problems caused by industrialization were. 23 In 1890 there were less than a million professionals in the labor force. 24 By 2000, there were more than 26 million professionals in the United States, and they accounted for 24.1 percent of the labor force. 25 Professionalization has been a very successful strategy for organizing and promoting “collective mobility.”26 The ability of professional organizations to create and maintain labor market shelters that provide higher salaries, benefits, and occupational privileges is related to their ability to control entrance into those professions through credentialization and related methods.27 As professional and related managerial jobs become more tied to bureaucratic institutions—such as large fi rms, the state, universities, and so on—they grow in number and demand. 28 Professionalization is synonymous with the expansion of postindustrial society, just as the decline of unionization is synonymous with the passing of manufacturingbased industrial society.

ADVANCED CAPITALISM, POSTINDUSTRIALIZATION, AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE PROFESSIONS: FROM INTERNAL TO EXTERNAL LABOR MARKETS In the late 1960s and early 1970s, some analysts emphasized the structuration of internal labor markets and the historical development of dual labor processes. 29 The model of dual labor markets was developed by several economists to posit explanations of pervasive racial inequality. These researchers found patterns of racial concentrations of white males in primary labor market jobs and concentrations of women and minorities in the secondary labor market. 30 Subsequent work in this tradition contended that this pattern held when the primary labor market was divided into “independent” and “subordinate” segments.31 Further research in the “segmentation” tradition elaborated and extended the work in the dual labor market tradition. The long debated segmented labor market model consists of three tiers.32 The fi rst segment is the independent primary labor market, dominated by professionals. These include attorneys, doctors, and college professors. Examples of jobs in the subordinate primary labor market include many clerical and administrative

46

The Black Professional Middle Class

jobs, unionized industrial jobs, and government service jobs. Finally, the secondary labor market includes such jobs as low-paid service work and unskilled industrial and agricultural jobs, such as operatives, laborers, and farm workers. Segmented labor market research had its origins in the work of leftliberal economists who have been interested in the divergent experiences of employees in the U.S. workforce. Their research also became of interest to sociologists interested in processes and patterns of social stratification. The fundamental characteristic differences among the labor market segments are illustrated in Table 3.1 below. Table 3.1

Comparative Characteristics of Segmented Labor Markets

Nature of employment

Secondary Labor Market

Subordinate Primary Independent Primary Labor Market Labor Market

Casual nature of employment

Relatively stable Very stable yet mobile form of employment form of employment

Education Requires Requires training and training little education and education requirements beyond literacy

High levels of education that correspond to job autonomy Skills are difficult and very marketable if person changes jobs

Job skills

Few skills required or learned on the job

Skills are learned which can be taken back to labor market

Payment

Wages/low paying

Wages or salaries/ Salaries/high paying relatively higher pay

Job security

Little or no job security little unionization

Basic job security available through unions

High amounts of job security through unions, professional organizations, partnership, tenure

Promotion prospects

Little or no advancement

Some opportunities for advancement, promotion

Many opportunities for advancement, promotion

Turnover

High turnover rate

Relatively low turnover rate

Turnover rate can be high but is usually based on employee choice

Examples of jobs

Examples: fastfood worker, retail cashier

Examples: unionized Examples: attorneys, auto worker, union- physicians, engineers ized public employee

Source: Adapted from Richard Edwards, Contested Terrain: The Workplace in the Twentieth Century. New York: Basic Books, 1979.

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The earlier model described above tends to focus on internal labor markets that facilitate training and mobility patterns within fi rms. That approach was used to analyze increased inequality between the black middle class and black “underclass” as civil rights protections have improved the lot of blacks entering professional and other middle-class occupations. The labor market segmentation concept remains a relatively useful analytic perspective for considering patterns the particular growth of professional occupations in the context of racial inequality, but the approach has been necessarily retooled and refocused. Key constructs such as “dual economy” and “internal labor markets” have fallen into disuse. The faltering explanatory power of the internal labor market segmentation model was anticipated by some of the scholars working within the paradigm.33 David Gordon and colleagues noted in the early 1980s that “the structure of segmentation has begun to decay and . . . explorations are underway that will significantly alter existing institutions in each of the three principal labor segments.”34 Indeed there has been a crumbling or erosion of internal labor market structures due to the increased international economic competition that has diminished the marked differences between monopoly and competitive sector fi rms.35 In turn, these fi rms have increasingly transferred their training costs to institutions of higher education by emphasizing college education for a wide range of white-collar, professional, and managerial positions in the expanding service sector. This process, transcending both large and small fi rms, has led to the development of new external labor market processes that must be taken into account since the late 1960s. Thus, the fundamental features and differences between the labor market segments continue to hold. However, these differences are not based simply on “core versus periphery” fi rm locations. Additionally, the relative size of the primary segments appears to be shrinking, and along with them the relative volume of middle class jobs. 36 The overall rate of growth of service sector employment has been phenomenal. As of 1984, nearly 70 percent of jobs were in the service sector. Defi ned by occupation, between 1970 and 1984 there were 27.2 million net new jobs; 95 percent of these jobs were in the service sector. Net employment growth since 1981 has been nearly 100 percent in service related employment. 37 These trends lend credence to Daniel Bell’s argument that the United States became the fi rst and most fully developed postindustrial society. 38 However, the contemporary social, political, and economic implications of this transformation seem to be at variance with the optimistic claims of Bell, and other early identifiers of this trend regarding the potential for continued economic growth, declining rates of both full-time employment and labor force participation, and the role of social policy in promoting family stability and reducing social inequality. 39

48 The Black Professional Middle Class The growth of service industries has corresponded with the rapid decline in manufacturing jobs. The disappearance of such jobs is related to wholesale export of manufacturing employment to less developed countries in order to lower labor cost. Many of these transnational changes in labor conditions are associated with the broad rubric of “globalization.”40 In addition, new high-tech labor process innovations (robotics, cybernetics, computerization, etc.) are further eliminating the need for much of the remaining blue-collar work.41 By contrast, “symbolic analysts” (professors, managers, engineers, computer scientists, systems analysts, etc.) benefit from these shifts in technology.42 Indeed, new systems of “flexible production” have altered the mix of white- and blue-collar workers in the manufacturing process itself.43 As fi rms have built new, externally constructed labor market processes, patterns of segmentation have been maintained and perhaps strengthened. Employees are no longer necessarily rewarded for “loyalty” to the same fi rm and are less likely to remain with the same employer throughout their careers. Workers face different opportunity structures, consisting of “multiple entry points” in both the public and private sectors. Increasingly, they are as likely to seek mobility across firms as within them.44 In the present, educational credentials largely determine what opportunities will be available for workers in the labor market. This is a trend that benefits professionals disproportionately. Changes in industrial organization and patterns of labor market segmentation are related to new strategies of labor market closure and organizing strategies among workers. This new phase of “labor organization” is based on the relative shift in worker organizing strategy away from unionization and toward professionalization by large segments of the workforce. The decline of manufacturing has brought a corresponding decline in the strategy of unionization to close labor markets and raise wages. With the exception of the public sector, the union strategy has been unsuccessful in the service industries among white-collar workers.45 Rates of unionization in the labor force have dropped from highs of 35 percent in the 1950s to 11.9 percent in 2010.46 Indeed, professionalization is unique to the service sector of the economy. Blue-collar work is not readily subject to the strategies of professionalization (including semiprofessionals and paraprofessionals). Unionized craftwork probably comes closest, in the provision of blue-collar services, such as plumbing. However, these services are not based on a body of applied academic knowledge, as in the professions. Professionalization as a conscious, collective organizing strategy has—for better or worse—increasingly supplanted unionization as a basic means of raising wages (or, rather, salaries), providing methods of job security, and in general producing the segments and shelters in the labor market that separate the relatively better off workers from others. It is an elitist strategy that is unable to provide the themes

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49

of worker solidarity that have been sought by many progressive activists in earlier periods of labor history and in the present.

INTEGRATING THE PRIMARY LABOR MARKET IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA: THE FALL OF “PERNICIOUS OPENNESS” AND THE RISE OF THE NEW BLACK MIDDLE CLASS African Americans lacked initial access, for the most part, to the professional opportunities provided by mainstream primary labor markets. A black mathematics professor provides an example from the 1940s. In 1941 David Blackwell, a black graduate student, completed his doctorate in mathematics at the University of Illinois. He then accepted an appointment at historically black Howard University. Like many young professors, he decided to try his luck in the job market again a year later. When he applied for the position of assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics at Berkeley in 1942, he was, as he expected, not offered the position. However, it wasn’t until 1954 that he discovered why he had not been offered it. As he describes it: I had been the department’s choice, but the wife of the man who was then head of the mathematics department objected to that. . . . It was the custom of [this couple] to have all the math professors over to their house for dinner from time to time. Well, she was not going to have a—I believe the word she used was “darkie”—she was not going to have a darkie. . . . So the department changed its mind.47 The experience of Professor Blackwell48 with such arbitrary instances of racial discrimination was not an unusual one for black professionals in the pre–civil rights era. In fact, few major university departments at the time would even have considered hiring a black professor. In addition to predominantly white colleges and universities, this practice of virtual racial exclusion was also true of most corporations, law fi rms, government agencies, hospitals, and nonprofit agencies when it came to consideration for most white-collar or professional positions.49 Such institutions would generally not consider the idea of blacks serving in high-status occupational positions of expertise or authority. Moreover, the racial exclusion of blacks was not limited to professional or white-collar jobs. The same racial dynamic was duplicated in the patterned exclusion of blacks from workingclass jobs connected to the “labor aristocracy” of craft and trade unions as well. This was part of the social and economic process that Steinberg has termed “occupational apartheid”: The essence of racial oppression is not the distorted and malicious stereotypes that whites have of blacks. These constitute the culture of

50 The Black Professional Middle Class oppression, not to be confused with the thing itself. Nor is the essence of racism epitomized by sitting in the back of a bus. In South Africa this was called “petty apartheid” as opposed to “grand apartheid,” the latter referring to political disfranchisement and the banishment of millions of blacks to isolated and impoverished “homelands.” In the United States the essence of racial oppression—our grand apartheid—is a racial division of labor, a system of occupational segregation that relegates most blacks to work in the least desirable job sectors or that excludes them from job markets altogether.50 The civil rights movement fought a constant battle against employment discrimination that has provided new opportunities for black entry into middle-class occupations.51 The civil rights movement, and the social policies that were instituted as a response to it by the federal government, led to efforts to partially undermine “occupational apartheid” and to bring many African Americans into the mainstream of the labor market and other social institutions of the society. This collection of overt efforts to dismantle legal and formalized bases of segregation in American society has culminated in the growth of what can be termed the “new” black middle class. The rise of the “new” black professional middle class is a complicated racial project that has involved historical changes in civil rights and affirmative action policies. Such changes in federal government policy have reshaped the African American relationship to the independent primary labor market and access to mainstream professional occupations. The corresponding growth of the black middle classes is a phenomenon demonstrated by empirical research and heralded (at one time) by politicians of both the left and the right.52 The same expansion of African Americans in middle-class positions has been increasingly criticized in several political, policy, and scholarly counternarratives about “reverse discrimination,” “affirmative action babies,” and self-serving “victims.” 53 The unprecedented rate of growth in the black professional middle class in the 1960s and 1970s has been due to the passage of civil rights laws and the implementation of affi rmative action policies. The civil rights era development of “outreach” efforts in higher education and employment led to what Richard Freeman has termed, the “new market for highly educated” blacks: Black Americans have historically been concentrated in low-level occupations as a result of little and poor quality education, unfavorable family backgrounds, and job market discrimination. The highly educated were found in teaching and segregated professional services, but rarely in managerial or professional jobs in major corporations. From the period of slavery until the 1950s and 1960s, the occupational standing of blacks relative to that of whites improved little, if at all, save during World Wars I and II, and may even have deteriorated somewhat over the long run. In the new market of the 1960s, the historic pattern of

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51

little or no occupational progress was finally broken. Blacks moved up the occupational hierarchy rapidly, with the highly educated breaking into previously “closed” managerial and professional occupations. 54 Indeed, when Blau and Duncan published their landmark study, using survey data from their 1962 research on “Occupational Changes in a Generation,” they found that race was an independent variable, and a key one, in determining the life chances of black males. In terms of transgenerational “origins” and “destinations black professional fathers had little success in passing on class advantages to their sons. That is, black males were found predominantly in low-status occupations. They were likely to inhabit low-status occupations regardless of whether their fathers had held lowor high-status occupations. Blau and Duncan termed this the “pernicious openness” of the occupational structure. 55 By contrast, white men were much more likely to be able to pass on socially inheritable occupational status advantages to their sons. Later status attainment research replicating Blau and Duncan’s methods found that (despite lower incomes and returns to education when compared with whites) in the post–civil rights era, blacks have more closely resembled the intergenerational occupational patterns of whites.56 Thus, relative to race, class background became an increasingly important factor in determining the life chances of black males in the 1970s. 57 Whites have remained relatively overrepresented in the professional workforce, but blacks made significant progress during the postwar period, and especially since the 1960s. The traditional enclaves of teaching and the clergy remain the most representative fields for black professionals to the present day.58 Nevertheless, a combination of postwar economic growth, black migration to the North, galvanizing civil rights protests, and federal legislative response via the civil rights policy regime led to unprecedented opportunities for black social mobility and the racialized class formation of the black professional middle class during the civil rights era.

RACIALIZED CLASS MOBILITY IN OAKLAND: ORIGINS OF MAINSTREAM BLACK PROFESSIONALS IN THE POSTWAR PERIOD When African Americans from the South migrated to Oakland and the East Bay in large numbers before and during World War II, they were mostly a population of recent sharecroppers, farmers, and domestic workers (and their children) from southern states (especially Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas). As across the bay in San Francisco, most black migrants came to the East Bay cities of Oakland and Richmond looking for jobs in the expanding arms-producing industries.59 Shipbuilding—especially in the Kaiser plants—was a major draw for migrant workers looking for work.60 Most of these workers (black and white) were from the South. Blacks who migrated

52 The Black Professional Middle Class to the East Bay had the added incentive of escaping the formalized racial segregation of the South as well as fi nding new employment opportunities in the manufacturing and government sectors of the economy. One African American attorney described the process that brought him to leave his Arkansas home as a teenager to live with his sister in Oakland: My parents are still in Arkansas. I came to live with my sister—who had come out here, as had my older brother. When they were—I guess my sister came out here immediately after she graduated from high school. My brother, who’s next to me, came out during his senior year to live with relatives out here. Primarily to escape the cotton patches of Arkansas. And that’s definitely the reason I came too, was to escape the cotton patches. It’s hot out there picking 300 pounds of cotton. Oh, it’s quite different. You had to pick cotton. It wasn’t a matter of choice. You had no option. And that was good. It taught the work ethic [laugh]! The process of migration of blacks from the South produced, for the first time, the prospect of substantive aggregate intergenerational upward mobility. Moving from castelike conditions in the Jim Crow South introduced many African Americans to the manufacturing sector of the modern capitalist economy for the first time. These linked factors—geographic mobility and cross-generational social mobility—were both key elements of tremendous social changes during the unfolding of the civil rights era. Many of the children of these WWII-era black southern migrants would have opportunities for further mobility into professional and other white-collar occupations. Nevertheless, racial exclusion was a constant in the collective social experience of black migrants. As with earlier black ghettoes that formed in the World War I era in northeastern and midwestern cities, black migrants to the East Bay were also forced into crowded ghettoes in the neighborhoods of West Oakland, South Berkeley, and Richmond during World War II.61 A similar process took place across the bay in the Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco.62 As with northeastern and midwestern cities, these segregated Bay Area black ghettoes became a contradictory source of both black hopes for opportunity and social mobility, and entrenched urban poverty. Not all blacks worked in the shipyards, of course. Domestic and other service jobs remained a significant area of employment for many fi rst-generation blacks.63 Other blacks were able to move into government-related and other civilian jobs that sprang up in relation to local military bases and defenserelated production. As a general rule, government employment has been more readily accessible to blacks than work in the private sector.64 One African American woman—who later became a teacher, school administrator holding a doctorate—started out as a clerk at the Oakland Naval Supply Center. After obtaining her bachelor’s degree in English in 1965, she found it difficult to fi nd a “suitable” job. Married and with a newborn baby, she needed a job nonetheless, and a friend suggested she apply for “something” at the Naval Supply Center:

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53

Well my fi rst full time job was working for the government for the Naval Supply Center in Oakland for two years. I had just had my baby in April and then I graduated that June. And so the care that she needed at the beginning—but I found that—and I don’t know if it was because I didn’t know how to look for a job—but I found it difficult to fi nd a job. And I’m sure it’s not just my ability to look for one, but the fact that there was still a good deal of overt racism which would prevent a [black] person with a degree from still getting a job. So anyway I worked for the Naval Supply Center for two years [before] I left there. In addition to the children of migrants, younger black adults who moved to Oakland during the 1960s and 1970s also benefited from the expanding local opportunity structure that was shaped by the civil rights policy regime. Their opportunities for membership in the growing black professional middle class would result in part from fortunate historical timing. They would be coming of age during the civil rights movement and its aftermath. They would, thus, be in a position to experience educational and career opportunities that were largely closed to the previous generation. The changing access to the upper tiers of the occupational structure for blacks in Oakland can be glimpsed in Table 3.2. Between 1960 and 1990, the number of both black professionals and managers in Oakland increased approximately sixfold.

Table 3.2

Blacks by Occupational Category in Oakland, 1960–2000

Occupation

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

Professional

1,583

3,406

4,959

6,732

9,691

Managers

1,029

1,034

4,518

7,197

6,548

Clerical

3,209

8,438

15,534

14,391

12,888

917

1,346

3,890

5,934

4,473

Craftsmen

2,314

4,212

5,219

4,439

4,165

Operatives

5,146

7,441

4,225

2,167

5,112

Private household

2,920

1,934

846

464

Service work

4,983

8,415

10,740

10,542

10,272

Laborers

4,330

4,249

3,457

2,607

1,697

Others

4,564

114

NA

NA

NA

Totals

30,995

40,589

53,388

54,473

54,846

Sales

NA

Sources: Eric S. Brown, “Racialized Class Formation: Blacks in the Professional Middle Class in the Post–Civil Rights Era,” Political Power and Social Theory. Vol. 23, 2012, p. 241. Emerald Group Publishing; U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1960–2000. Census of Population Housing. Population and Housing Characteristics for Census Tracts and Block Numbering Areas. Oakland, CA: Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area.

54

The Black Professional Middle Class

The transformation of the black middle class in the 1960s and 1970s was, unquestionably, one of unprecedented structural class mobility.65 More specifically, it represented a new process of racialized class formation. The black professional middle class was greatly expanded and restructured from a smaller grouping trapped in segregated institutions and suddenly given access to mainstream labor markets. Bart Landry found in his 1976 data that more than 70 percent of middle class blacks in his survey came from working-class or poor backgrounds.66 My own interview fi ndings correspond with Landry’s aggregate data. Despite negligible amounts of wealth67 and because of civil rights policies, affi rmative action in higher education, and increased fi nancial aid, many black families were able to send more than one of their children to college. Landry found that, “almost half of [the] black middle class males had at least one brother who had also gone to college. Nearly as many had sisters with some college education— quite an achievement for families with limited income.”68

RACIALIZED RECRUITMENT AND HIRING: CIVIL RIGHTS POLICIES AND THE “INTEGRATION” OF THE PRIMARY LABOR MARKET One of the most important new opportunities for blacks in the 1960s was expanded access to higher education—especially admission to predominantly white mainstream colleges and universities. This dramatic change corresponds with what I would term the development of the civil rights policy regime.69 This “regime” contained two basic features: the formal guarantee and enforcement of basic citizenship rights and proactive policies. Citizenship rights70 were promoted by enforcement of new (and old) civil rights laws that were derived from legislation (particularly at the federal level), executive orders, and court decisions. These laws include the trinity of 1960s-era legislative acts: the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the 1968 Fair Housing Act. As such, new civil rights law provided a new legal infrastructure to promote a “rights revolution” especially for racial minorities and women.71 The other dimension of the civil rights policy regime included proactive policies in the form of affirmative action (i.e., higher education, government contracts, and employment) and other interventionist policies such as school busing, minority voting districts, and some limited local efforts at promoting integrated housing. Proactive policies are designed to enforce equal opportunity by promoting equal opportunity through oversight in the form of specific legal remedies such as goals and timetables. As such they are arguably the most effective, and thus most controversial, legal policies for promoting equal opportunity. These policies have been important for promoting African American integration into primary labor market jobs, black business access to government contracts, generating the election

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55

and appointment of black political officials, integrating some public schools and institutions of higher education. Indeed, the development of these policies during the 1960s—in response to the civil rights movement—represent s the defi ning characteristic of the civil rights era as such. They represent the development of inclusionary policies designed to promote access to mainstream institutions and opportunity structures for racial minorities and women. These changes can be readily contrasted with the entrenchment of exclusionary policies during the pre–civil rights era. These policy changes ultimately affected higher education admissions, employment hiring and promotion, and business contracts. In the case of higher education, the weight of federal government sanction under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (i.e., the threatened loss of substantial federal research funds and federal student financial aid) led both public and private institutions of higher education to open their doors to prospective black students. Increased access to higher education for blacks has been both a key outcome, and an essential underpinning, of the civil rights policy regime. With increased undergraduate admission of historically underrepresented groups came programs designed to meet the needs of these new students. The new programs included federal and state policies including: the Educational Opportunity Program, retention programs, grants, scholarships, fellowships and other such financial aid targeted to underrepresented minorities. The implementation of these programs (with federal government support) have been central to the process of promoting greater inclusion of racial minority groups and students from low-income backgrounds into institutions of higher education since the civil rights era of the 1960s and 1970s.72 By contrast, the GI Bill tended to expand opportunity in higher education as a kind of affi rmative action for (disproportionately) white male military veterans of working class backgrounds in the early postwar period.73 Alternatively, affi rmative action in undergraduate college admissions opened the doors even further to women and racial minorities in the late 1960s. Rather than be limited to the smaller, lower-status educational enclaves of women’s colleges and historically black colleges, members of these historically excluded groups would have access to higher-status private and public universities and colleges. The doors of the academy were also opened, to varying degrees, for Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. With greater access to these mainstream institutions came greater opportunities for women and racial minorities for access to core sector employment, higher incomes, occupational mobility, and civic participation.74 However, the expansion of the black professional middle class during the civil rights era has also been mediated by the implementation of affirmative action in higher education at the graduate and professional level. Increased access to mainstream higher education institutions at the graduate level made opportunities for access to mainstream jobs and upward mobility possible for many more women and minorities. For example, in

56

The Black Professional Middle Class

1965 the percentage of all law students that were black was only 1 percent, for medical school the figure was only 2 percent. By 1975, these figures had climbed to 4.5 percent and 6.3 percent, respectively.75 However, despite the rapid upward trend in graduate school matriculation during the 1960s and 1970s, “significantly fewer blacks than whites are likely to be found in most graduate-level fields for several decades.”76 Correspondingly, the particular role of outreach and opportunity for admission to graduate and professional schools cannot be underestimated. This is the case regarding not only the structural foundation of affirmative action that has brought blacks into these programs in the fi rst place, but also for providing the evidence that African Americans could be a part of these historically exclusionary institutions and have bona fide professional careers when they graduated. One interview subject described the opportunity for social mobility that was provided by his affi rmative action-based admission to the (Boalt Hall) Law School at Berkeley. He placed his experience in the social and political context of the times: As a result of being a probation officer I got exposed to the legal system. And certainly that helped to shape my interests in law. And then, of course, opportunity presented itself. 1968 was when Martin Luther King was killed, and there was a great awakening on the part of some institutions in that they wanted to get a more diverse student body. And Boalt Hall did some affirmative outreach. And they were fortunate enough to get me [laugh]. So I started school there in 1969, August of 1969. Similarly, an African American woman describes the experience that led her transition from “settling” for a bachelor of science degree in nursing to the realization that she could pursue a medical degree. Working with selfemployed black doctors in a community clinic setting was a transformative experience. Having a supportive, informal professional social network complements formally inclusive recruitment policies: I think that, looking back, I must have had some reservations as to whether or not I really had the brains to be a physician. I think I had always admired or secretly wanted to be a physician. But there was no one in my family who was a physician. I didn’t have the role models. And it really wasn’t until my last year of nursing school. And in my last year of nursing school, just before I got my bachelors, I found myself with physicians because the last year is mostly [spent in the clinic]. When you’re in the hospital actually taking care of patients, you’re no longer in the classroom. You’re spending most of your time actually doing nursing, on site. I started working around physicians and it was really the first time I’ve had close contact with physicians. And I was lucky to also be very close to some black physicians who were very supportive of me. . . . So I started to take some premed courses, to see how I would do. And I did very well in

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57

them. And the nurses, who were black, had always been supportive. And I had talked with them about maybe going on. And again I think it was those role models, the black nurses, as well as the black physicians that I had talked with, that really encouraged me. In addition to recruitment to higher education, recruitment by employers is itself an interrelated step in the process of the development of the black professional middle class. Reversing the patterns of the historic exclusion of blacks from access to primary labor markets, and correspondingly from incorporation into the mainstream of the professional middle class, has been no small matter. It has entailed federal government oversight and enforcement, as well as demonstrable efforts by companies to break down exclusionary barriers in order to bring blacks, and other underrepresented groups, into the professional and managerial opportunity structures of their fi rms. This development illustrates the integration of federal policy with the internal bureaucratic and legal dynamics of private companies that is at the core of the civil rights policy regime. The layers of management found within corporations and government agencies are key arenas of employment for professionals. Indeed, most professionals can also be classified as managers.77 Providing access for black professionals to these sources of professional employment is key to implementing civil rights policies. Human resource managers and executives carry out the bureaucratic details of this process within private companies concerning responsibility for civil rights regulations and legal oversight for microlevel implementation of affi rmative action policies. One such example was a “director of corporate equal employment opportunity” at a California-based corporation. She was hired in 1964 specifically to oversee the conformity of the company with federal civil rights law. She described the general changes over a period of nearly thirty years as follows: When I got to [the company] in 1964, there were no blacks in management. And at that time they made an effort of going out and recruiting blacks. They went back to all [of the historically] black colleges. Recruiting engineers—there was a big push at that time. They brought in about 20 or 30 [black engineers] at that time. In some other areas like customer service, human resources, there [were] only one or two black [employees] within that area. Hardly any other minorities—almost known as totally white male throughout that company. I saw lots of changes with the [proportion] going from less than one percent to maybe up to about 20 percent were minorities [in 1993]. The management groups that you report to the EEOC, there was a huge increase. California is the first state in which racial minorities outnumber whites.78 Nevertheless, the growth from 1 percent to about 20 percent nonwhite representation in the management fields in this firm over a thirty-year period is a

58

The Black Professional Middle Class

noteworthy transformation. This is particularly the case since corporate management is a less hospitable area of employment for black professionals than similar positions in government employment.79 Regardless, large core sector corporations, nonprofits, and government—the institutions most directly covered by civil rights laws—are the major source of employment growth for black professionals since the civil rights era.80 This would be expected if civil rights policies (including affirmative action) had been effective in creating the new employment opportunity structure for African Americans.81 In the fi rm mentioned above, most of the senior management positions are drawn from the professional ranks of engineers, and to a lesser degree, attorneys. It should also be noted that this particular company has won awards from the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and has been known as one of the best companies in the country at “promoting diversity” and has presumably been more successful than most fi rms in doing so. Recruitment prospects for black professionals vary depending on industrial sector (e.g., public vs. private), by type of fi rm, and over time. Nevertheless, multiple studies utilizing both aggregate-level data82 and qualitative case study data83 demonstrate continued patterns of racial discrimination and disparity in labor market outcomes. A combination of “legal ambiguity” in the original writing of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and institutional pressures to reduce compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity/Affi rmative Action (EEO/ AA) mandates dating back at least to changes made during the Reagan administration may explain part of the continuing income gap facing black workers.84 Indeed, there are a couple of general qualifying points to be made here. Research indicates that blacks fare better in the public sector than in the private sector.85 On the one hand, black professionals are represented in greater proportions in the public sector relative to their employment in the private sector (where the bulk of overall employment exists). Additionally, black professionals working for government are also relatively better paid than are blacks in the private sector.86 On the other hand, black professionals are also concentrated—or occupationally “segregated”—in qualitatively different (less mobile) kinds of jobs than their white counterparts.87 In her research on black managers, Sharon Collins found two basic routes to the jobs held by those employees. Racialized jobs are those that “indicated an actual and/or symbolic connection to black communities, to black issues, or to civil rights agencies at any level of government.” Mainstream jobs are those that “relate to total constituencies, and neither explicit nor implicit connections to blacks could be found in the job description.”88 Racialized jobs correspond to the microlevel or intrafi rm structure of civil rights and affi rmative laws and regulations that protect black job opportunity. In other words, racialized jobs are associated with the workings of what I have termed the civil rights policy regime. Blacks in corporate and government sector managerial and professional jobs tend to act as mediators between the company and a broader public of black

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59

communities, institutions, organizations, and fellow employees. The positions are primarily affi rmative action or community relations and urban affairs portfolios. These jobs, while often providing good salaries and benefits, are generally occupational dead ends in the organizational bureaucracies of private fi rms and public agencies. However, these are often the only types of higher-level positions most open to blacks.89 Within this institutional framework, blacks tend to be favored for racialized professional and managerial jobs. These jobs tend to have short promotional ladders because they don’t connect racialized employees to the mainstream social networks and internal labor markets that generate mobility within the fi rm. By contrast, job opportunity and mobility for black professionals and managers is greater in the public sector, where formal or meritocratic criteria are used more stringently. In the private sector, employers are more likely to rely on informal methods of evaluation to hire and promote employees.90 As a result, these patterns correspond to evidence of greater representation and mobility opportunities for black professionals and managers in the public sector.91 In general, blacks, as the racialized, low-status “other,” are judged more on the basis of formal (objective) criteria, including educational credentials, tenure of employment, and experience. By contrast, white males are more likely to be evaluated on the basis of informal (subjective) criteria. That is, white male professionals are presumed to have greater amounts of “loyalty, good character, sound judgment and leadership potential.”92 On the whole, the evaluative process for prospective professional employees tends to produce a “racial (and gender) preference” for white males. This was clearly illustrated in the case of an interview subject. He is a full professor in the social sciences at a public university in Northern California. Indeed, he is a dignified and straightforward man of rural southern black origin. His blunt style of personal expression, and his unapologetic views on issues of race, apparently rubbed many colleagues the wrong way. In his fi rst search for an academic position in the 1970s, he landed a position at an elite Ivy League institution. He had been there briefly when he received the unofficial verdict regarding tenure delivered by the provost at the time (also black). As he put it: “I didn’t fit into Yale. I got a job at Yale, but I didn’t fit into Yale. I was told by the provost [that I wouldn’t be tenured]. I liked him—but . . . I was told by him that I didn’t have the ’social graces’ to be there at Yale.” Those judged more on the basis of “informal” criteria (those deemed to be more like those doing the judging) are always at an advantage over those judged primarily on the basis of “formal” criteria. Perhaps, a white male exhibiting the same blunt personal qualities would have been considered “refreshingly honest.” However, neither formal, nor informal evaluative criteria are ironclad. For prospective professional employees, these criteria are often shifting, variable, and inscrutable. Racial minorities and women (who generally operate as the other) are more likely to be excluded from professional-level hiring and promotion opportunities due to the unequal application or indetermination

60

The Black Professional Middle Class

of fair evaluative criteria. The result is that employers can find justification, as needed, to get rid of “undesirable” employees. This becomes more apparent as we look at the process of promotion.

RACIALIZED PROMOTION AND THE PARAMETERS OF BLACK PROFESSIONAL OPPORTUNITY In contrast to working-class jobs (i.e., jobs in the secondary labor market), the concept of “promotion” is central to middle-class occupations, and to the process of professional middle-class formation. The ability to advance over time is a key indication of whether or not one is truly experiencing professional opportunities. On the other hand, African Americans who are promoted into mainstream institutional positions of expertise and authority may fi nd themselves as “fish out of water,” with little support from the company management or respect from the employees he or she is supposed to supervise. One of my interview subjects—a banker from Oakland— provides a clear example. He previously worked for a major bank based in the Midwest but did not receive the promotion opportunities accorded to white colleagues of the same initial rank. Many of the bank managers at this company were allowed to go overseas to study European banking, an opportunity that would greatly enhance their global banking knowledge and increased their future prospects for promotion. Being selected for this program was an indication that one was on the “fast track” at the company. As the interviewee elaborated: I felt that there was a fair amount of racism at [the bank] and it was at the top as well as at the bottom. Part of the routine was that a lot of the guys got a chance to go to Europe [to study European banking]. I remember being flat out told that blacks couldn’t be successful in Europe. Which I thought was a way projecting their racism on a whole continent. He fi nally left the bank in the late 1970s because he concluded that he had no future there. He had an offer from a bank in Northern California, but his wife was reluctant to move and leave family and friends behind. Ironically, he subsequently took a job at a branch of a European (i.e., French) bank located in the large midwestern city where he lived. He was hired to oversee the day-to-day operations of the bank. He had the infuriating experience of being offered the position and then having it retracted because his future employees refused to work for a black bank manager: I interviewed with [that bank] for about six months. After six months they made me an offer, it was a super offer. A lot of money, mortgage subsidy, trips. They made me an offer that morning and they wanted me to meet the people who were going to work for me. And I was taken

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to my office and . . . later I got a call from them, and they told me there was a problem. The people that met you . . . are rebelling. They’re saying that they won’t work for you, that you’re not qualified to be their boss. This means that we need to extend the process a little longer. We want to rescind the offer and extend this process and we’d like to get samples of your writing. And I said, let’s have a meeting and talk about that. And at the meeting I said, “What you’ve done is wrong. You know it’s wrong. You’ve probably violated some laws here.” I said, “but I’m not going to sue you, it’s over. I’m really qualified to be manager of this office.” And I went home and told my wife “we’re going to California.” The case of an African American corporate attorney from Oakland provides further illustration of this “racialized mobility” phenomenon. He started out in the legal department of a large California-based company in the early 1970s and worked there for seventeen years. Most of his work was in the area of the legal relations between corporations and state and local governments. He also became involved in the legal issues of “corporate free speech.” These legal issues concerned efforts by California consumer groups to force disclosure of sensitive company information deemed relevant to the public. He eventually argued, successfully, for the company in a landmark Supreme Court case concerning that issue. It was virtually unprecedented for an in-house lawyer to argue such an important case. Usually these types of cases are farmed out to major law fi rms kept on retainer by such companies. His tremendous success in this case put him on the immediate fast track in the company. Like some others on the rise, he was sent to Harvard for advanced management training. Upon his return to the Bay Area, he was named a division manager of East Bay operations based in Oakland, where he lived. My interview with him revealed the racial dynamics of his increased corporate responsibilities as a division manager in terms of the locality: The East Bay division is the most diverse division in our territory. And by all measurements it’s one of the toughest divisions. It’s right in the middle of an urban center that is noted for its many challenges that you have in the East Bay. The same challenges that you have in the streets of East Oakland you have in the workforce. And you’re confronted with all of the urban issues that you can think of, right there in the East Bay. Even today the East Bay still presents a major challenge for anybody, no matter what the situation is. And in terms of the racialization of the local workforce and managing its diversity: You look at the diversity of the workforce. You have more minorities in that division than in any other division. No matter how you may

62 The Black Professional Middle Class want it or not, the challenge is different in an “inner city” than in some remote suburb. It’s just a different challenge, you’ve just got to have different skills. He was then named an executive assistant to the president of the company. This meant that he was being groomed for a top position in the fi rm. A year later he was promoted to executive vice president for community relations. The irony is that the great success that got him promoted was based on involvement in important and precedent-setting mainstream legal issues. His success before the Supreme Court probably saved the company tens of millions of dollars in potential lawsuits and consumer-related compliance costs. Yet, when he was promoted it was into a “community relations” position. That is, he was promoted to the conventional type of “racialized” position reserved for black professionals at the top levels of the corporate hierarchy. Presumably these are worthwhile positions, but unfortunately these jobs are not truly valued by the companies as compared with positions that are more directly related to bottom-line profit concerns.93 Alternatively, there are the outcomes in which mobility for black professionals is blocked. There are only so many such positions at the top of the hierarchy. Too many blacks in high-level positions might send a “negative message” to white male professional employees and undermine the perceived status of many such professional positions. This is similar to the case of “too many” blacks moving into a neighborhood and leading to its “decline.” As another corporate attorney described it: Promotions. What I’ve noticed about promotions with the company was one thing and with me it was something else. For the most part, I saw that they allowed blacks to get to a certain level and then you had a glass ceiling. Not with everyone, but for the most part. Some were able to make higher ranks. The same attorney described the manner in which his opportunity for mobility and that of a white female colleague were curtailed by the informal workings of the “old boys’ network” of middle management in the legal department of his fi rm: There was another white woman who trained with me around that same time in 1980 and the [man] that we worked under . . . he treated her just as bad as he did me, meaning that they did not try to show you anything to help you out—which was the purpose of us working under them. So they could help train us. They did their best to show us . . . as little as possible and then when any inquiry was made as to how we were performing they could report it as basic. But then others, you’d note that they’d take them under their wing and provide them as much assistance as they can even though some of those [white

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male] individuals may have less ability to learn and to grasp. They take them under their wing and assist them and I saw that even more in the department in which I worked. . . . They found ways to give them higher salaries than me, and a few others who were working as attorneys. So it boiled down, quite often, to favoritism and economic gain—not gain but more economic benefit to those who I don’t think deserved it any more than myself. Ultimately, this African American attorney left the fi rm in order to start a small joint law practice (with another black attorney). His future in the corporate legal department was basically null and void. He described the process by which “undesirables” were pushed out of their positions at the company. These companies may generally prefer to not fi re women and racial minority professionals because of federal civil rights oversight. Rather, creating an increasingly inhospitable working environment was a very effective method for encouraging them to resign: One of the means of letting you know that they don’t want you, is by affecting the performance evaluations. They began to do things on performance evaluations that were unjustified. They make your performance much poorer, refuse to give you pay increases, increase the workload, and there’s only so much of that that you can take. You fi nd that either you’re going to accept it, and you can only accept so much, and then fi nd other means. That was their way of doing it, not just for me, but for several of the attorneys that were there that they were determined that they wanted to replace. Chief executive officers (who represent the financial and legal interests) of large companies may come under the scrutiny of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. Representing the company, they tend to take affirmative action laws fairly seriously. They are concerned about the unpleasant possibilities of legal sanction, bad publicity, demonstrations, or boycotts led by civil rights or other protest groups. These can hurt the bottom-line financial interests of the company. Consequently corporate leadership is often motivated to express some concern about issues of discrimination and to officially promote “diversity.” If not motivated by true concern, they are at least worried about the legal, financial, and publicity ramifications of civil suits. In either case, top corporate leadership can make some degree of difference in the relative volume of employment opportunities offered to underrepresented racial minorities and women (when compared to companies not covered by the EEOC or Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs).94 Within private companies and government agencies there is more employee-generated conflict over affi rmative action policy regarding promotions than regarding hiring. Some white males looking to move from middle

64 The Black Professional Middle Class management to upper management apparently feel that they are victims of “reverse discrimination,” even though as a group they are clearly collectively advantaged in the aggregate promotion process. The EEO director at a large company described the confl ict over affi rmative action-based management training programs for women and minorities this way: We started the officer and management training program where we would take minorities and women [who] had excellent potential and did not have the seniority, and put them through an accelerated training program. Give them so long to be a manager, give them so long as to be an officer. Send them to the accelerated schools like UC Berkeley’s MBA program and things like that so they would be ready at a faster rate. Were there people upset over it? Yes. A lot of white males were upset about the accelerated training program. But it had the support of the chairman of the board, vice chairman of the board, the president, and all the officers. It had their support. They were going to make it work, because they wanted those numbers changed. That is, there is more overt conflict in the workplace regarding promotions than hiring per se, because of the narrowing of the management pyramid. There are simply fewer jobs as one moves up the bureaucratic hierarchy of a fi rm or government agency: “Yes. If you got above a level 10, then people became concerned, especially white males because the number of jobs decreases. . . . They saw the training programs as taking away some of their opportunities.” Black population and political presence plays an important role in cities like Oakland (as compared with cities with little black political presence) in providing a larger pool of potential black professional candidates for professional jobs in the public sector. Black political presence also provides a pressure point to employ blacks in local government, although the days of the old ethnic urban political machines died before the emergence of black city administrations since the 1970s. In the contemporary period in Oakland there is also the added issue of broadening both actual and rhetorical diversity, as Latinos and Asian Americans increasingly populate the city and demand public services, political representation, and jobs. One black urban planner described the effects of this on his department: This being a “majority minority” city—I hate the [phrase]—but [with Oakland having] a majority [of] African American, and other non-white communities . . . made the department try to create some semblance of balance. There’s still a lot of discrimination here in this situation, there’s still a lot of racism and problems even within the city government. However, certainly the demands of the public in the African American community here and through some of the council

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people, and [former] mayor and so forth that they put in place, have made it necessary that they have some black involvement. As in the private sector, problems of promotion for black professionals occur in the public sector as well. The limited number of higher-level professional positions available in public bureaucracies plays havoc with the prospects of black professional mobility. Even in local government services where blacks are very well represented (as compared with the corporate world), promotions can be as strongly contested along racial lines as they are in the private sector. The same urban planner described his experience with blocked mobility in both the former seniority system and the more contemporary civil service testing system. Whites have been able to maintain a privileged status under both systems: Well it has to do with promotions. You’re not judged by your experience or your capabilities, but you’re judged by how it makes the demographics look. For example, just recently promotions came up here for a person to be a Planner III, to head major projects. And now here we’ve got—I’ve been here the longest. When I came here, seniority was a major issue. In other words, many whites for whom I tested against—where I did better than them—were given promotions over me because they had more seniority and that was the rule. But now— when I became—when the African Americans became the majority in seniority—seniority no longer plays a role. So new whites come— which has happened right here in this department—they’re promoted over us because all of a sudden seniority doesn’t matter. Thus, in both the private and public sectors, promotion of professional employees is a racially contested terrain. Indeed, the gulf in perception between blacks and whites about the degree of racial inequality and the prevalence of discrimination in American society is generally quite large.95 “Institutional discrimination” can become widespread within organizations, with or without sanction from the executive leadership. The response by those experiencing discrimination in situations where executive leadership is indifferent or hostile, is sometimes a class action civil suit. An engineer at a large company based in Northern California described an unsuccessful class action suit in the 1970s that alleged widespread discrimination in promotions among other things: [The suit concerned] promotions, different things, racial epithets, I forget all they based it on. But we fought it, we called the NAACP and we got documentation of instances where people had been affected in hiring, promotion, training, fi ring. So we documented this. There were about 160 of us who were involved in this lawsuit. We put up a

66 The Black Professional Middle Class very good fight. We lost. Well, [the company] had an army of lawyers. There was no way we could we could win. But at least we did prove to the company that there was in fact discrimination at all levels. Even though we didn’t win the case I think we opened their eyes and let [the company] know that things were not as they should be. And so [some blacks] were suddenly reclassified and given promotions and some were even given management positions. In fact we even had a—and still have—a vice president of the company who is black. We fared much better after the lawsuit than we did before. So it’s kind of strange that four people who initiated something that involved all of us, and we in turn by our efforts improved things for ourselves, and I think for others who came along later. Indeed, recent cases of employee class action race and sex discrimination lawsuits against major corporations give insight into the institutionalized patterning of employment discrimination. One report disclosed that more than 100,000 employees were covered in recent class action lawsuits under the 1991 Civil Rights Act. The defendants included large employers such as Texaco, State Farm, Shoney’s Inc., Lucky Stores, Motel 6, Smith Barney, and Dun and Bradstreet, among others.96 The issues of recruitment, hiring, and promotion are very contentious, and much is at stake for blacks seeking professional opportunities. Despite prestigious credentials and accomplishments, black professionals are often treated as though they were not adequately qualified for such opportunities. Indeed, most of my interview subjects participated in the civil rights or black power movements as students or young adults in the 1960s and 1970s. This seems to have played a role in their willingness to actively contest what they perceive as discriminatory behavior in the workplace and other settings.

PROFESSIONAL WHILE BLACK: CLIENTELE ISSUES The traditional work of professionals involves the delivery of services directly to clients, patients, patrons, parishioners, and students. These clients are the consumers of services produced by professionals. The delivery of professional services by black professionals is “complicated” by the factor of race. Black professionals face two particular issues, revolving around race and class, for their would be clients. First, black professionals are far less likely (than white professionals) to deliver professional services to white clients. Even in the post–civil rights era, African American professionals are much more likely to deliver professional services to other blacks, including the black poor. Thus, racialized class formation is exhibited in the professional service delivery process as well. In this regard, what the neoclassical economist Gary Becker has casually referred to as “discriminatory taste” is largely beyond the scope of

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antidiscrimination law.97 Research has suggested that the “preference” of white consumers is that those who deliver professional or business services to them not be black.98 As a result, corporate fi rms are usually reluctant to assign black professionals such as lawyers and brokers to deal with white clients. This is also why self-employed black professionals (e.g., lawyers and doctors) have difficulty fi nding white clients. The preference of white consumers of professional services to receive those services from white professionals still occurs because those consumers prefer not to relate to blacks possessing a relatively superordinate occupational status: In all these cases, consumption of the service is connected with personal characteristics of the suppliers of the service. In the words of one West Coast personnel officer, the problem with respect to some kinds of jobs is not that the black employee lacks skills “but that he is aesthetically objectionable—he spoils the decor, so to speak.” This “spoilage” is rarely noted in situations where the black relation to whites is subordinate. In the business decision, the personal views of the employer may become irrelevant; the concern is the loss of sales by putting black workers in positions that reverse the lines of authority when dealing with consumers.99 Thus, “racial preference” remains a prevalent factor in limiting black opportunities to serve a wide range of clients. This is particularly true when the provision of professional services entails direct face-to-face interaction between a black professional and a white client.100 As a result, black professional employees are likely to be limited in their opportunities to work directly with white clients in substantively important ways. The result is a segregated, racially stratified market for professional services in which black professionals are “ghettoized” in the delivery of their services disproportionately to black and poorer clients. This tends to lower their incomes, curtail their potential client base, and lessen the range of their professional social networks. On the other hand, however, my interviews indicate that black professionals generally want to provide services to “underserved” black clients, including the poor. This fi nding is contrary to the assertions of some that the black middle class seeks to abandon the black poor in their professional and civic efforts. Thus an important area of difference between black and white professionals—particularly those in the areas of social or medical services—is in their clientele bases. An African American social worker with nearly thirty years of experience discussed her career with me. She has had a strong sense of wanting to help others facing difficult social and personal problems. She started as a “community mental health worker” without a college degree but ultimately earned an master’s degree in social work from Berkeley. In her professional journey from caseworker to case management she has seen many sides of the social work profession while focusing on particular needs of minority communities:

68

The Black Professional Middle Class I worked primarily with disturbed kids. As I went through my career—I came in with a high school diploma—and as I began to get more and more into my craft, I found that I had to go back to school. So I went back to school and received my BA in psychology . . . and through that time I continued to work with kids who were severely emotionally disturbed, and they were primarily kids of color. And . . . after I went to graduate school [for the MSW] I came back and started doing school social work. So I’ve consistently been working in the social services area and working primarily with kids of color—kids and families of color— and also in mental health, so it’s been . . . for the past 28 years.

As her social work career developed after she had completed her graduate study, she was able to pursue new professional opportunities with colleagues. Her opportunities developed as part of social networks that primarily involved other black women social workers. They are collectively concerned with “minority community issues.” She elaborated on a sense of African American cooperation and obligation to the “community” as follows: You have an obligation. And most of these kids were of color. So, that was very revealing in itself. . . . [A]fter I got out of graduate school, my supervisor, . . . was a partner in a group [social work] practice in the community. She offered me a position to come in with her in this group practice. And the group practice at that time consisted of three African American women who were social workers. They were all licensed clinical social workers. And their specialty was working with kids of color who were victims of physical and sexual [abuse]. . . . The significance? I was an intern [then] and now I’m a partner in a group practice. In fact, research findings indicate that black social work students are much more likely to want to provide services to poor and racial minority communities than are white social work students. In urban areas, much of the service provision to the poor is through government agencies (directly or indirectly through government contracts). This is of particular concern given that the field of social work is rapidly moving toward an emphasis on privately delivered services (e.g., counseling and psychiatric social work) to predominantly white middle-class clients.101 The elimination of the federal AFDC “entitlement” program and the corresponding overall diminution of basic social services to the poor is instructive in this regard. As with social work, the delivery of medical services to black urban neighborhoods is shaped by the availability of African American doctors. The experience of an African American doctor that I interviewed illustrates the role that black professional service providers play in black neighborhoods. She has held two primary medical practice positions during her medical career. The fi rst position was in private practice and she is currently

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employed in a nonprofit agency that contracts with the state government of California. She disbanded her private practice because she didn’t like dealing with the tedious paperwork and “business aspect” (e.g., figuring expenses, accounting, quarterly taxes, etc.) of private practice, which took time away from delivering actual medical services to her patients. In both positions she has preferred to serve poor and minority communities despite the relatively lower remuneration. I asked her about her experience in private practice: It was in East Oakland. I had mainly [Medicaid] patients. Mainly black patients. Mainly low income patients. Which I didn’t mind. I felt as a black person that I needed to give something back. I think it made me feel good to be in the black community. I realized that I would not make as much with the clientele that I had that I could make somewhere else but I was, again, satisfied. But I’ll admit I was not a business person. To be quite honest, I don’t think I had been prepared in medical school for that end of it. . . . I just did not like the business aspect of it. And she describes the positive impact that she was able to make serving the same kinds of clients, after becoming an employee of the nonprofit agency: I had a lot of autonomy. I was able to do training programs and work with the operators. From being a staff physician, I became the chief physician and the director of clinical services here. I am probably only one of—well actually I’m the only black physician. All of the psychologists are white. Most of the people in the prevention unit that deals with the children from fetal to three are white. In that unit are speech therapists, nurses, infant specialists who are at a master’s degree level, but they’re all white. But they’re working with a black community. And there were some issues going on. So I saw some possibilities for me really having some input, such as training, like how to deal with black clients and issues that happen with the population that we see. And I’ve enjoyed that because I think it really has made a difference. In the field of medicine, black and Latino doctors are much more likely to serve racial minority patients than are white doctors. In fact, communities that are disproportionately white and poor have significantly more doctors per capita than black and Hispanic communities regardless of their status as poor or nonpoor.102 Moreover, continuing political attacks on civil rights and affi rmative action policies will likely have the long-term effect of further reducing the supply of doctors serving poor and minority communities: Our data suggest that physicians who are black or Hispanic fi ll an important role in caring for poor people and members of minority groups. Changes that result in a decrease in the number of physicians

70 The Black Professional Middle Class from minority groups are also likely to result in reduced health care and may ultimately result in reduced health and well-being for a substantial proportion of the population.103

CONCLUSION Despite the institutionalization of civil rights and affi rmative action policies for two generations, African Americans remain greatly underrepresented in professional occupations and in other high-status middle-class occupations. This is a problem of unequal hiring and promotion processes into such professional (and related managerial) positions. Furthermore, there are deep socially reproduced structural inequalities of race (and class and gender) that civil rights laws and affi rmative action policies alone cannot resolve.104 This includes the dynamic of informal evaluation and decision making that frequently leads to a preference by white employers for white employees to be hired in positions of authority or expertise.105 The partially realized project of integrating blacks into mainstream professional occupational opportunities since the zenith of the civil rights movement has led to a new process of racialized class formation in the post– civil rights era. Occupational segregation has not been eliminated but exists in altered forms.106 As we have seen, members of the black professional middle class are racialized, and as a result are likely to (1) be employed in affi rmative action–defi ned positions; (2) be hired in positions that mediate relations between fi rms and/or government and the black community; (3) serve predominantly or disproportionately (read segregated) black clientele as either self-employed professionals or professional employees of predominantly white fi rms, nonprofit organizations, or government agencies:, and (4) in comparison to white colleagues, are more likely to be subject to evaluation by informal rather than formal criteria. Moreover, the controversial oversight of civil rights laws and affi rmative action policies has played a central role in the presence of blacks in mainstream institutions of higher education at the undergraduate, graduate and professional levels.107 Indeed, higher education provides the vital “pipeline” for black professional employment opportunity.108 Thus, recent and future political and judicial efforts to eradicate key civil rights and affirmative action policies (e.g., Proposition 209 in California) at the national and state levels, as well as overall economic decline in the United States, will likely have serious implications for the continued social reproduction of the black professional middle class. Efforts to incorporate racial minorities into the mainstream of primary labor markets—especially African Americans and probably Latinos as well—will face serious challenges. The exclusionary barriers posed by race and other forms of social status serve to reduce aggregate-level access for blacks and other underrepresented groups to professional occupations. Thus the likely forthcoming

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dismantling of basic civil rights policies and affirmative action will likely hurt both the social reproduction of the black middle class and the professional service needs (e.g., educational, medical, legal, etc.) of blacks (especially the poor) by reducing the pool of professionals interested in serving poor and racial minority communities. Ironically, there is evidence that the life chances of blacks vis-à-vis occupational mobility is shifting back toward increased “racial significance” in the contemporary post–civil rights era. Research on the era of the 1980s has found that the children of middle class whites were nearly twice as likely to improve their occupational status as the children of middle-class blacks.109 Downward mobility is also much more prevalent among African American men than among their white counterparts.110 Furthermore, a study conducted by the Brookings Institution found a clear trend of downward mobility for blacks of middle-class background born in the late 1960s.111 The combination of these shifting trends raise questions about the continuing viability of the cross-generational social reproduction of the black professional middle class in the ongoing post–civil rights period. African Americans have entered the mainstream professional middle class later, in smaller relative numbers, and at lower occupational status levels than have whites.112 Indeed, until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, black professionals (as in other areas of public life) existed as virtually segregated subset of the professional middle class. They were mostly isolated in black colleges, teaching in segregated public schools, providing legal, medical, and spiritual advice to under-served black clients and patients. In fact, a mitigated pattern of segregated professionalization arguably remains the predominant form for most black professionals even while in mainstream institutional settings. Although we have a black president in the United States, there is continued underrepresentation of blacks in professional occupations, and the integration of blacks into the professional middle class remains an incomplete project at best. What happens in this regard to the contemporary process of racialized class formation of black professionals in the long term will depend on what happens in the debate about racial inequality in the larger society.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This chapter is based on Eric S. Brown, “Racialized Class Formation: Black Professionals in the Post-Civil Rights Era.” Political Power and Social Theory, Vol. 23, 2012. Emerald Group Publishing.

4

Black to Black “Traditional” Professionals and Segregated Clientele

THE PREHISTORY OF THE BLACK MIDDLE CLASS In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ownership of property— particularly farms, land, businesses, and professional practices—was the key basis of middle-class position in the United States. Property, more than occupational status, was central to distinguishing members of the middle class from the working class. In the nineteenth century, the petit bourgeoisie was almost completely bereft of blacks. Homeownership, inheritance, proprietorship, homesteading, and other forms of ownership or investment were the means by which property and wealth were created and concentrated among moderately prosperous whites. Most blacks in the late nineteenth century were not in a position to possess property. Indeed, most blacks had only recently ceased being property themselves. Nevertheless, we can consider the “prehistory” of the black middle class in the postbellum era. Some free blacks settled in cities and towns in both the North and the South during the era of slavery. Some had the ability to garner limited amounts of property and convert it into a viable means of earning a living as farmers or proprietors.1 Often these were former slaves who had been able to develop basic occupational skills that provided for them in slavery. Unlike “field hands,” some chattel slaves were in a position to develop craft skills that were needed on the slave plantation. Examples include construction workers, woodworkers, and metal smiths.2 Others had marketable personal or domestic service skills that echoed the traditional patterns of subservience to whites, such as cooking, catering, barbering, and hairdressing, for example.3 There were also some cases of slave women who bore children by their owners and whose children received freedom and small amounts of money or property as “inheritances.”4 Members of these “select” groups had early relative advantages over other blacks in the aftermath of emancipation. They were more likely to develop literacy or receive formal education. They were also more likely to be able to transfer relative economic advantages to their children. They were a small and powerless group in the larger society but nevertheless advantaged relative to other blacks.5 Indeed, because members of this group had

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discernibly greater amounts of white ancestry, most were distinguished as a “mulatto elite.”6 As compared with other blacks, this gave them advantages of greater “acceptance” by whites. Although they were also subject to the “one drop rule,”7 these lighter-skinned members of the black elite straddled the separate black and white urban worlds during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries until the World War I era and the beginning of the Great Migration.8 Although the “politics of skin color” still remains an important feature of African American life 9 and in the larger “multiracial” society of the United States,10 the mulatto elite of the period before the Great Migration sat on a particularly precarious social perch. The economic basis of this group was centered on relatively tolerant, paternalistic relationships with white elites. The mulatto elite frequently provided personal, culinary, or craft services (e.g., domestic servants, cooks, barbers, etc.) and, in rare cases in northern communities, they provided professional services to whites.11 For the most part, only a small portion of the mulatto elite was associated with professional services, because at that time blacks had relatively limited access to higher education and professional schooling.12 Moreover, by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Jim Crow segregation and disenfranchisement became more entrenched in the South and blacks as a whole faced an increasingly degraded existence. In the North, blacks faced increasing residential segregation13 and increased competition with white ethnic groups even for low-wage jobs.14 In both regions, the paternalistic white upper- and middle-class relations that had traditionally served the mulatto elite and other blacks began to dissipate.15 For example, in Detroit in 1870, blacks were only 2.8 percent of the population of the city but more than 50 percent of the barbers. By 1910 only 7.3 percent of the barbers in Detroit were black, with Italian immigrants becoming the largest ethnic group following that trade.16 When the mulatto elite began to lose the support of their upper- and upper-middle-class white patrons during the early Great Migration era, two important things began to happen. First, blacks who held positions serving whites (as personal servants, or barbers) ceased to be seen as black “elites” by other blacks.17 Second, a new segment of black leadership centered in the black community itself began to supplant the mulatto elite.18

RISE OF THE TRADITIONAL BLACK MIDDLE CLASS: SEGREGATED PROFESSIONAL SERVICES IN THE PRE–CIVIL RIGHTS ERA By the eve of World War I, more blacks were willing and able to move to the North. This was the beginning of the Great Migration. Immigration from Europe had provided the preferred labor pool for northern industrialists in the United States since the early nineteenth century. This European source

74 The Black Professional Middle Class of new labor was now drying up as the war and anti-immigrant sentiment reshaped national politics. Industrial fi rms in the North were so desperate for labor that they were willing to hire blacks. These new black factory and mill workers were paid less than their white counterparts. They also tended to get the “meanest and dirtiest” jobs that white workers came to reject. 19 These were the origins of a discernible black industrial working class in the northern cities. 20 African Americans had developed a limited foothold in the northern industrial economy that would extend at least into the aftermath of the Second World War and transform urban black communities. Limited black migration to the north continued during the Great Depression despite massive unemployment in the cities because life was even worse in the South. This was because of the ongoing collapse of both cotton prices and the sharecropping system itself. 21 Black urban poverty continued to intensify during the Great Depression as hardship and unemployment befell workers generally, but blacks disproportionately so. The entrance of the United States into World War II began a period of longterm economic growth into the postwar years, which became known as the “American Century.” Accompanying renewed industrial job growth during World War II was a second wave of black migration that transformed many northern cities spatially, demographically, and politically and produced the “second ghetto.”22 The large and rapid influx of blacks to northern cities during the Great Migration intensified white opposition to their presence. The greater the relative size and “visibility” of blacks, the greater the resistance from whites, who were seeking to monopolize jobs, housing, and political representation. In the labor market, this produced a system of occupational “queuing” that pushed blacks to the back of hiring lines for both desirable and undesirable jobs. 23 Aside from fi nding jobs in northern cities, black migrants collectively faced other problems as well. In terms of where blacks could live, racialized otherness corresponded with intensified residential segregation and increasingly institutionalized housing discrimination. As more and more blacks migrated to the cities, this produced an expanding dynamic of ghettoization that shaped everyday life for blacks as a whole. One result of these trends was that blacks had difficulty getting access to basic personal, business, and professional services. Black consumers had difficulty obtaining business and professional services from whites, including realtors, to purchase or rent housing, insurance, bank loans and mortgages, funeral services, and medical and legal services. 24 The social and economic void of limited service provision for black consumers was partially filled by the emergence of the old black middle class. 25 This was a grouping of black professionals and businesspersons who emerged in the northern ghettoes to deliver personal, professional, and business services that were frequently denied to blacks by mainstream proprietors and practitioners. This became an increasingly significant factor

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in segregated multiclass black urban communities. The old black middle class found ways to produce business profits or earn a living practicing their professions because of racial segregation and discrimination against blacks as consumers and clients. Very few blacks attended the almost exclusively segregated mainstream colleges and universities in this era. During this period, the resource-starved historically black colleges and universities were gradually able to increase their production of black professionals. These racially segregated institutions of higher education produced the bulk of the black teachers, doctors, dentists, attorneys, clergy, social workers, and others who at the time provided professional services to black students, patients, clients, and parishioners. Similarly, black-owned banks, newspapers, realtors, grocery stores, insurance companies, undertakers, bar and restaurant owners, barbers and hairdressers, and black-owned businesses grew in number and were geared toward serving black customers. Provision of these professional and business services to blacks collectively constituted the “Negro market.”26 It was virtually impossible for blacks to practice their professions in predominantly white fi rms or government agencies. Potential white clients likewise rejected black professionals. Mainstream (i.e., white) fi rms and clients had the ability to compensate professionals to a much greater degree than did black clientele. Blacks collectively faced very strict occupational segregation—including those in the professional ranks. Black professionals and business owners could serve black clients where they could fi nd them. However, black clients were mostly poor, and this meant that black professional practices or business were generally not very well compensated. As a result the incomes, assets, and general standing of black professionals was much lower than that of their white counterparts. For example, in 1928 black doctors earned only 28 percent of the income of white doctors. 27 Many black professionals in this era had second, nonprofessional jobs or business ventures; and some even engaged in illicit activities in order to make ends meet. 28 By 1930, teachers made up virtually half of all black professionals in the United States. Clergy were 18 percent of that total. By contrast, the higherstatus categories of physicians, dentists, and attorneys together comprised only about 5 percent of black professionals. 29 Black teachers were increasingly assigned to teach black children in the rapidly segregating public schools of both the North and South. Such teachers have long been the underpinning of the black middle class. That is, they were members of the black middle class themselves, and also provided a foundational education to future members of the black middle class. Another large group of professionals in the Migration-era ghetto were black pastors or ministers. They served black churchgoers in segregated churches. The status of these clergy members varied because their profession was not closely regulated. Many in that day were “storefront” preachers or religious charlatans. Most black pastors, however, were connected

76 The Black Professional Middle Class to traditional black demoninations and committed to serving the spiritual and worldly needs of their congregations, and the larger black community. Because their congregations were mostly poor, these ministers often had to hold second jobs. Those black pastors whose church members were mainly middle-class blacks were also fi nancially better off than their less privileged black counterparts.30 Blacks in the more prestigious professions of medicine and law were found in relatively smaller numbers. Black doctors had to work hard to demonstrate their proficiencies and gain prestige in African American communities.31 Both black attorneys and physicians in this earlier era earned about a third of what their respective white counterparts did.32 This was at least partly related to the relative impoverishment of their black clients and patients. Black lawyers may have helped to increase their collective status by listening to the advice of the revered NAACP attorney Charles Hamilton Houston, who sounded the call for black lawyers to be interested in high-minded issues of constitutional and civil rights law and not merely in making a living.33 Four groups of black professionals—teachers, clergy, private practice attorneys, and physicians— have been key, in both the past and the present, in providing professional services to segregated black urban communities.

THE TRADITIONAL BLACK PROFESSIONAL MIDDLE CLASS IN POSTWAR OAKLAND In the case of Oakland below, I will focus on two categories of traditional black professionals already mentioned: teachers and private practice attorneys. The teachers are located in the public sector—employed by the Oakland Unified School District. Private practice attorneys are found in the highly competitive private sector of the East Bay legal services industry, plying their trade as individual practitioners or in small legal partnerships. Interview subjects from both occupational groupings provide insights into their professional work experiences. These black teachers and lawyers work largely with black students and clients, who mostly come from predominantly black neighborhoods in Oakland. Such neighborhoods are frequently underserved in terms of the need for social and professional services. In this sense the experiences of such black professionals in Oakland reflect aspects of racialized class formation, discussed elsewhere in this book. That is, these traditional black professionals, like their mainstream counterparts discussed in Chapter 3, have their career experiences shaped by race in terms of clientele, relationship to respective local black communities, and particular aspects of their workplace. This chapter focuses on traditional black professionals as a distinct segment of the black professional middle class as a whole. It is an occupational grouping that developed a critical mass in Oakland—and in other cities—during the Great Migration. That is, it is a group that—as we have

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seen—has its origins in the pre–civil rights era. However, the traditional black professional middle class still exists and today provides professional services to predominantly segregated black institutions and neighborhoods in Oakland and elsewhere in the United States. Nevertheless, it is a group of professionals whose circumstances can be distinguished from those of black professionals who are “integrated” into mainstream institutions. The demand for professional services in Oakland grew as African Americans arrived from mostly rural lives in southern states such as Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas during and after World War II. Blacks faced institutionalized segregation, and this shaped their ability to get access to the resources they collectively needed. Black access to public education was increasingly met in segregated public schools. Spiritual needs were met “traditional” black churches—that is, in both the poorer “storefront” variant and the regular denominational black Baptist and Methodist churches. When African Americans in Oakland needed primary medical care or legal services they often turned to black doctors and lawyers. One historian of Oakland discerned that by the 1980s, “Oakland had a black middle class estimated by some observers to be proportionally the largest outside of Atlanta.”34 The members of the traditional segment of the African American professional middle class had a lot to do with that. Many of the traditional black professionals (e.g., attorneys, physicians, pastors) in Oakland and elsewhere serve a black clientele through private practice or separate black institutions. However, many of the traditional professionals also serve members of the black community through public institutions as teachers and school administrators. That is, traditional African American professionals are both “self-employed” and employees of larger segregated versions of mainstream institutions such as the public schools.

“GHETTO SCHOOLS” AND BLACK TEACHERS IN OAKLAND In southern states before contemporary civil rights legislation, the employment of black teachers in public schools was essentially a function of formal segregation itself. Some thought that with the passage of Brown v. Board of Education and relevant sections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, African American placement in the teaching profession would be threatened. The short-term effect of such racially inspired displacement of black teachers in the South was apparent, but in the long run the relative proportion of black teachers grew.35 In northern cities as well, the proportion of black teachers continued to expand during and after the Great Migration. In effect, during the 1970s, the expression of black protest and political power during the civil rights era had a positive effect on increased access and salaries for African American teachers.36 The continued de facto segregation of urban public schools—including those in Oakland—highlighted the political

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dimensions of the demand for black teachers serving the disproportionately black inner city students.37 African American teachers also play an important role as teachers serving students in “ghetto schools.” These schools are segregated along both racial and class lines. Ghetto schools are found in large and medium sized cities in the United States and face problems of decaying buildings and infrastructure, insufficient per capita pupil spending, poor test results, low academic achievement, and high dropout rates.38 Increasingly, poor Latino and Asian American students are also found in these segregated inner-city schools in Oakland and elsewhere in California. 39 Oakland public schools exemplify those institutions that have been most threatened by the punitive dimensions of state and national education policy prerogatives, including “No Child Left Behind.” One way of thinking about the stark inequality facing students in Oakland is to consider the city’s schools in relation with the wealthy “neighboring” city of Piedmont. Although Jonathan Kozol wrote the following in 1991, the basic conditions of K–12 public education that he observed in Oakland (relative to its suburbs) have not changed significantly: In Northern California, Oakland remains a mainly nonwhite, poor, and troubled system, while the schools that serve the Piedmont district, separately incorporated though it is surrounded on four sides by Oakland, remains richly funded, white, and excellent. The range of district funding in the state is still extremely large: the poorest districts spend less than $3,000 while the wealthiest spend more than $7,000 [per pupil].40 The San Francisco Bay Area as a whole is seen as one of the more prosperous and politically progressive regions in the United States. However, the benefits of these quality-of-life characteristics do not reach all in the region and are divided largely along race and class lines. Poverty is concentrated in the inner cities of the region. Additionally, although Bay Area cities experience significant rates of residential segregation, public schools in the region are even more segregated. This can be glimpsed in the patterns of “white flight” from the inner-city schools of the Bay Area. As pointed out by the research of Pedro Noguera, the number of white students in these district schools, including Oakland, is proportionately much lower than the numbers of white school-age children in these cities as a whole.41 Additionally, although whites and more affluent households have traditionally tended to enroll their children at lower rates in the public school systems, the recent rates in Oakland are notably miniscule. In 1960, the proportion of white students in the Oakland public schools was 30.9 percent. By 1990 that share had dropped to only 6.1 percent.42 Thus teachers in Oakland serve students from largely poor households in the racially segregated, underfunded Oakland public schools. Today

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Oakland schools are segregated, fi lled not only with black students but also with Latino and Asian American students. The black teachers who teach in these ghetto schools are generally residents of Oakland—part of the black community. They are also public employees and as teachers are caught in the middle of debates about “failing schools”—along with students, parents, and administrators. This is this backdrop that frames the conditions faced by African American teachers in Oakland.

BLACK TEACHERS IN OAKLAND: BACKGROUND AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT The three African American teachers I interviewed all described their own background as important in their choice of teaching as a career. These teachers each suggested that growing up in a black urban community was important in their wanting to be teachers—although their experiences varied. One teacher from a stable lower middle-class background described her childhood neighborhood in Los Angeles this way: I was raised at 76th and Central—the original South Central Los Angeles. And [we] moved [when I was] an adolescent to the Inglewood area, which at that time was pretty upscale, middle class. . . . But when my parents [previously] bought the house at 76th and Central it was also middle class. We were the fi rst black family to buy in that area. My father’s a roofer so we never had any economic problems. . . . The neighborhood now is majority Mexican American. Actually, we just moved my mother from there. The neighborhood’s pretty gone. It’s pretty bad. The same teacher provided a very positive evaluation of the quality of her formative education in rapidly segregating South Central Los Angeles and her later attendance at a (then) predominantly white high school in Inglewood when her parents divorced. These urban neighborhoods—like others with significant black populations—changed in the aftermath of postwar black migration. Nevertheless, the strongly entrenched residential segregation seemed to produce a sense of a local black community with common cause, exemplified by black-middle-class commitment: Well, interestingly I’m an educator, so I’ve reflected on my education quite a lot. I attended public school in Los Angeles in the fi fties—early fifties. At that time mostly all of the teachers in South Central were African American because black professionals weren’t hired anywhere else. So with a college degree you taught. So I had the cream of the crop for teachers. [Former Congressman] Mervyn Dymally was my fourth grade teacher. So I had role models. I had an excellent public education.

80 The Black Professional Middle Class Absolutely excellent. I attended the local elementary school and the local middle school. And then after my father moved to Inglewood, which was a predominantly white neighborhood at the time, I attended George Washington High School, which was predominantly white. We were the fi rst large group of black students coming in but I had received an excellent background in education that I could compete on an equal basis with the white students at that school. Another teacher that I interviewed was born in New Orleans but came to Oakland when she was eleven months old. With the exception of a couple of years, she has lived her entire life in Oakland. A product of a workingclass family, she has a sister on welfare and identifies with the “struggling” people of the local neighborhoods: We came to Oakland. And so I pretty much lived here the rest of the time. I think for a short period of time we lived in Berkeley. We lived in housing projects for a hot minute until they put us out. I think because my stepfather earned a little too much money. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was a little more than what they wanted people to have. I think that was the reason.

EARLY FORMATIVE TEACHING EXPERIENCES: INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE BLACK COMMUNITY Just as background experiences growing up in black urban communities helped to shape the outlook of black teachers serving in urban public schools, so did early work experiences. The teacher originally from Los Angeles described the role that idealism and student activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s played for her: I went to UCLA and did well. I studied history. But college for me was a different time. I was there in the middle of the demonstrations, and the peace movement and the origins of the black studies programs. So my education was more than just book learning. My education was participating in the events around campus. She also remarked that these experiences were among the factors that drove her eventual career choice. At one time she was a “community activist” and teaching was work that could be done in the black community. She wasn’t “career driven.” That is, she wasn’t pursuing a career because it would be lucrative but because it was “relevant to the community.” As she put it: I just gradually moved into teaching. Because my senior year at UCLA I needed a job and so I got a four hour job in the LA School district

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teaching after school kids and just stayed in education. . . . I realized that I didn’t have [at that time] all of the paperwork that I need to be stable in a [teaching position] but also at the time you didn’t need it because there was all of this poverty money in the community and those of us with a college degree always had work. It wasn’t like now these kids are graduating and don’t know what they’re going to do. We knew we could work for Head Start; we could work for EOP. We could work for something. There were jobs. So there wasn’t this careerdriven thing, we were politically driven. Which was kind of fun. Another teacher actually began her teaching experience in an elite boarding school in wealthy Danville, California. It was the late 1960s and there was some effort at the time to bring in black (i.e., “underprivileged”) scholarship students and to also hire black teachers. In fact, this boarding school had a black headmaster who, in turn, hired the interview subject as the only black teacher. Having spent virtually all of her life in a black-workingclass neighborhood in West Oakland, trying to make a transition to teaching white-upper-class kids in an elite boarding school was quite difficult. While, the two worlds were socially distant, they weren’t that far apart geographically at least. “[Danville was a] totally different world. And it was a difficult environment—it would have been impossible for me to succeed there, and in fact it was.” And: As my fi rst teaching experience it was extremely difficult. I felt that I was programmed for failure. And I was defi nitely out of my element and I needed to be back here (Oakland). It was the fi rst time, actually, that I had been that far away from home. And that’s not that far. Fortyfive or fifty minute drive from here. Both she and the black headmaster were fired after one year. Apparently he was paid for the remaining year on his contract. She had to find a new job. She was happy to find a job teaching at a high school “back” in East Oakland. She pointed out that black protests included demands for more black teachers in the Oakland schools. “There were a couple of districts that wanted to interview me, and that’s where I ended up. In fact, things were so bad at that time, they were recruiting people of color.” At the time of my interview with her, she had served a long time at the high school. She lives nearby as well: I’ve spent the last twenty-five years at this school. And lived here. I live seven minutes away from this school. During the twenty-five years I’ve essentially been a classroom teacher. For the last three years I have been the English Department chairperson. I’ve also been GATE—gifted and talented—student coordinator. And essentially I’ve been the class sponsor—currently I’m the senior class sponsor.

82 The Black Professional Middle Class SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND INNER-CITY SCHOOLS: BLACK TEACHER PERSPECTIVES The teachers were also very insightful about the prevalence of significant social problems in the neighborhoods of East Oakland—as in so many impoverished and segregated urban areas all over the country. The everyday conditions faced by students make it extremely difficult for them to learn effectively at school. Indeed, the daughter of the teacher mentioned above initially attended public school in East Oakland but, ironically, began to have “behavioral problems,” like many of the students in her own classrooms. This led her to enroll her daughter in a parochial school, which is not a viable option for most black parents in the Oakland flatlands: She started in public schools, but I found her behavior getting a little bit more than I could handle—it was starting to distract from her education, I thought. She had to have more self-control and she couldn’t control herself. And I wanted to put her in an environment where her behavior could be controlled. So I took her out of public schools. The fact that the teacher felt compelled to remove her own daughter from the public school system in Oakland is indicative of how aware she is of the problems found there. Her daughter went on to receive a doctorate at a prominent private university in the South. Such academic achievements are far less likely for the students at the high school where she teaches. The high school and the neighborhood that surrounds it have become increasingly “integrated,” not with white students but with poor Latino and Asian American students. One source of interethnic tension in the local schools concerns “bilingualism.” Because as many as eighty languages may be present in the Oakland public school system—and other urban school districts in California—this is a relevant policy. African American students are generally not the beneficiaries of extra monies provided in the local schools for bilingual education. Much of the school board debate in Oakland (which received some national attention) over the implementation of “Ebonics” and Afrocentrism at predominantly black McClymonds High School in West Oakland was linked to this issue.43 The aforementioned teacher had served on a number of multicultural committees wrestling with such issues at the more “diverse” high school in East Oakland: Yes. I’ve done some multicultural workshops here. Just before school started I did a two day workshop that was actually requested by the district. I worked on a committee—multicultural committee for the last year or two and we made recommendations to the board that were adopted. And part of that was to focus on issues of diversity—not only on ethnicity but other things. And I think they are important things

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because a lot of emphasis is being put on bilingualism and very few people see African American students as bilingual. And many people are beginning to resent the amount of attention being paid to bilingualism, which really drives the district. Not only this district, but many districts here in California. The teacher also noted basic problems in the schools. First the problem of the lack of resources and also the basic difficulty of being able to teach mostly poor and underachieving students in an inner city public school: The problem we’re having with the money that’s been spent is that many of the computers are in disrepair. Many of them need mouses. They’re outdated. . . . We still have problems with low student attendance. We have discipline problems and so many of the other things. And on the difficulties in the classroom: The bottom line is that you need to have good teachers in the classroom that are able to do the job. And able to do the job may mean not only in terms of their ability to teach but also their ability to control the environment and to be able to bring materials to the students that relate to their lives as well as give them the academics that they need. The academic part is the hard part because our students are very low skilled. Very low. So I struggle with that issue every day. Every day could I have done this better? If it doesn’t work then I look at myself and think, “I should have done this or I should have done that,” or I should have prepared in different ways. But there are so many other things that impinge on your ability to carry out those things that often you’re left feeling very, very frustrated. Although there are overwhelming problems—such as lack of resources, discipline, and inadequate student preparation in the schools themselves— there are other issues as well. The problem of poverty, and the attendant encompassing issues that correspond with it, shapes students’ lives in ways that truly preclude their ability to get a good education. The teacher became emotional when she talked about this at length: Oh gosh. Social problems are overwhelming. They’re overwhelming. How can a child attend when they’re dealing with all of these other problems. For example, a colleague pointed out two young men on campus and she said, “Their situation is really so bad.” I don’t know what she did about it. She said they were living in a garage with a dog. Their father had married a woman whose children lived in the house but they were living in the garage and they were really very nice young men. But there has to be some kind of tug of war going on inside of them as to

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The Black Professional Middle Class the justification for that. I have at least two students that I know are pregnant. I had three. One I haven’t seen since the beginning of the year. A tenth grader. Another who is an eleventh grader. But the high pregnancy rate. Issues of self-esteem. Issues of money. Having clothes to wear, decent clothes to wear. Issues of homelessness. These overwhelming social problems that impinge upon whatever anybody is able to do either administratively or in the classroom. It leaves me feeling very, very sad much of the time when I see our kids who are unable to see the benefit of education. Many are able to. But I’m saddened by the numbers, the too large numbers of those who aren’t able to. It’s almost like I have to remove myself from the pain. It gets down to that.

The issue of delivering public education to disproportionately poor black (as well as other minority) children in urban neighborhoods illustrates the role that traditional black professionals—in this case teachers—provide to the black community. It also demonstrates that problems like academic underachievement by black children can’t be solved solely in the black community. Indeed, these are examples of national problems that are more intensely visited upon impoverished and segregated black neighborhoods. However, black professionals have been more willing than most to provide needed professional services to deprived black and minority neighborhoods. This has been true historically of black teachers and is also true of black attorneys providing legal services to African Americans.

BLACKS IN A “PRESTIGE” PROFESSION: THE CONUNDRUM OF LAW IN THE PRE–CIVIL RIGHTS ERA Owing to the dictates of white supremacy, blacks have historically been discouraged from attempting to enter the legal profession in the United States. As compared with the three “safe” professions for blacks—“teachin’,” “preachin’,” and to a lesser extent “doctorin’”—black lawyers were considered a potential threat to the racial status quo. This was precisely because they might be expected to raise questions about the legal basis of such matters as the legacy of slavery, legal and de facto segregation, lynching and terror, employment discrimination, and civil rights. This was particularly the case in the South, where, during much the time, black attorneys would simply not be recognized by the bar or the court.44 In the pre–civil rights era, black lawyers were most likely to be in practice in the northern cities. Opportunities for African American attorneys expanded with the Great Migration, which created a larger potential market for their services. Nevertheless, black attorneys were dogged by particular stereotypes even within the black community. Many potential black clients simply thought that white attorneys were “better.” Because of this many African American attorneys had difficulty getting black clients, let alone

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white ones.45 The white attorneys who provided legal services to black clients at that time were most likely to be Irish American or Jewish attorneys who themselves were not generally accepted in the more prestigious “white Anglo-Saxon Protestant” (WASP) law fi rms. They were likely to be greater in number and more established than many of the more newly minted black attorneys coming, most likely, out of Howard University Law School.46 Black attorneys in the pre–civil rights era were also subject to stereotypes about being insufficiently concerned about matters of “social uplift.”47 This stereotype may have been partly true, at least in comparison with the contributions that black attorneys would later make to questions of constitutional law during the civil rights movement. It may also reflect the fact that many black attorneys once had to hold second jobs of a nonprofessional nature just to make ends meet.48 This contradiction between making a living and supporting the black struggle for social justice was a significant Achilles’ heel for many black attorneys. The significance of this point was captured in the famous Charles Hamilton Houston quote, “A lawyer’s either a social engineer or he’s a parasite on society.” As has been suggested, it may be that the work of Houston and his colleagues in the service of civil rights helped to raise the collective status of black attorneys in the eyes of African American citizens and others in the postwar period.49

CLINTON WHITE: AN ELDER STATESMAN AMONG AFRICAN AMERICAN ATTORNEYS IN OAKLAND The late Clinton W. White was a towering figure among African Americans in the history of Oakland and the East Bay, and I had the good fortune to interview him. Born in 1921, he moved to the Bay Area from his childhood home in Sacramento, where he had been high school class valedictorian. He moved to the East Bay to attend UC Berkeley as an undergraduate and law student. After interrupting his university attendance for service in the Army Air Corps, he graduated with a law degree in 1948. He was the only black student in his graduating law school class at Boalt Hall. He built his legal reputation as a very successful trial lawyer who accepted difficult cases that others would not take. Several African American attorneys described him as an important mentor. 50 He also served as one of the fi rst black judges in California. He was appointed to the Alameda County Superior Court in 1977 and then, in 1978, to the California Court of Appeals, where he served until retirement in 1995. Among other things, he has been a pivotal figure among traditional black attorneys in Oakland. White’s formative years—while he was living in Northern California rather than the South—were shaped by the realization of apartheid for African Americans. He would later experience assignment to an all-black military unit during World War II and be the only black student in his graduating class in law school at Berkeley. However, as a youth in Sacramento

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he was made aware of the conditions faced by blacks in the South and elsewhere and became convinced that something needed to be done about it. He was very bright and had the pursuit of a professional career in mind. He specifically felt that he could make a difference if he became a lawyer: The newspapers that were given to me that I was told to read every week were the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Public Defender. So it was nothing for me to read in the Sacramento Bee that Congress had [pro-segregation Senators] Bilbo and Eastland and one or two others, and they didn’t let the anti-lynching bill out of committee. As a black youth, when I picked up that Chicago Public Defender and Pittsburgh Courier and I see what Billie Holiday referred to as “strange fruit” hanging from a tree then my eyes were opened. If ever I was to become a lawyer—I wanted to become a lawyer—because I didn’t think teaching [or the ministry] would do it. It was after he graduated from law school that Clinton White “came out into the community and started working on its problems.” The problems were numerous. White excelled in legal theory in law school. However, he would learn much more from another black attorney, Tom Berkeley, who would become his mentor in the street-level practice of law. Tom Berkeley was the fi rst African American to graduate from Hastings, the University of California law school campus in San Francisco. White joined Berkeley and George Vaughns at their office on Adeline Street near 10th in West Oakland. One of the things that White learned from Tom Berkeley and other senior black attorneys about being a black lawyer was the need to become properly ensconced in the black community: [Tom Berkeley] was from Riverside, went to UCLA undergrad. Was a world class hurdler. Then he fi nished in business administration and went to law school. He went to Hastings and when he graduated he went to practice with George Vaughns, who was a black St. Mary’s graduate. All these men were fi rst—one of the fi rst [black law school graduates]. In those days—I guess it’s true these days—one of the things you had to do in the black community was belong to a church. You had to be a member of the Prince Hall Masons. This meant a sizable population of homeowners. And then they were in business. And women who had businesses, such as beauty parlors. They were your clients. At least some of them. Because it was still true, the majority of blacks because of their concept of the system felt the only person who could get them what they wanted was a white lawyer. Eventually Tom Berkeley and George Vaughns ended their partnership owing to differences in legal philosophy. The impression was that Vaughns was becoming more of a specialist in property cases rather than in more

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general practice. Berkeley and White continued together in practice for a while because, “Tom and I were a little more rambunctious.” Eventually, black attorneys—in particular Berkeley and White—were having greater success with a larger black clientele. In the early postwar period Oakland had a still growing black population that was a significant dynamic. These demographic changes created new opportunities for black attorneys, who were better able to challenge the traditional prerogatives of white attorneys practicing law in the black community. Berkeley and White found that, by working through church and community relationships, the traditional pattern of blacks not wanting black lawyers could gradually be broken down: It was still a struggle because you still had blacks saying, “Man I’m hurt. No Mr. White I don’t want to sign with you. I talked to my minister and he said don’t do anything. He’s got a good lawyer.” I’d say, “What’s his name?” Jess Nichols. I’d say, “Well he’s white.” “Well he didn’t say that, but he’s all right if he’s all right with my pastor.” So then we got around to knowing all the pastors. All they wanted was—they wanted money. We weren’t going to give them any money. But we’d certainly give them a plaque or a new pulpit or something. Because we were members. So [our practice] grew and grew. The lack of fairness in the criminal justice system itself was very obvious in the early postwar years, and this would highlight the kinds of issues that the civil rights movement would raise. According to White, the issue of social justice versus making a living seemed tobe part of the nexus of conflict in his partnership with Tom Berkeley: At that time I was a partner with Berkeley. But I could see that really Tom was obsessed with the business end and I was obsessed with going to court and fighting for our rights. That phase had not become full blown yet. We were still getting juries with no blacks on them. We were still getting juries with one or two blacks and they would say, “Let me off judge, this is the white man’s law.” You were still getting blacks who would say, “I’m losing $20 a day working.” You were still getting grand juries with no blacks on them. There was so much about the institutions, business, law, etc. that you knew you had to work even harder. And being young, it wasn’t really hard. One of the cases that proved lucrative for the partnership but also helped lead to its breakup involved the Texas-raised and Oakland-based blues singer Ivory Joe Hunter. Capitol Records was allegedly cheating Hunter out of his legal share of the profits from his record sales. This was, of course, “business as usual” when it came to the income of African American musical performers. However, Hunter was quite diligent about uncovering his own record sales and the apparent fi nancial shortfall. He hired Berkeley and White to

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rectify the situation legally. This case would give Berkeley the chance to ultimately pursue new legal business opportunities, while White would subsequently choose different legal pursuits. As Clinton White put it: One day Tom comes in, he says, “We got Ivory Joe Hunter. His wife Bea says she’s tired of these white lawyers.” And what had been happening—of course Ivory Joe, whether you remember him or not, was a great blues singer. He wrote his own music. And he performed it. And he wrote the lyrics. And he cut the records. So believe it or not that meant that he got instead of one cent a side or two cents a side, he got three cents a side. Now the only way you knew how popular your record was, was if you subscribed to Billboard, who would put the ten best, or the twenty best with arbitrary figures as to why they were the best. Three hundred thousand records, or whatever it was. So you sit down—you didn’t have a computer—you’d figure out about what you had coming. In one case there were two brothers who ran Capitol Records and Ivory Joe was tied up with them after they stole his label—paid for his label out of Chicago. And Joe was still the most famous blues singer but he wasn’t making as much money as Sinatra and Sinatra wasn’t even known [at the time]. So he hired us. And I did the research. And I gave Tom all the figures and he went to Capitol Records and came back with a pot of money for Joe. But [Tom] learned that once he pulled their hole card they were willing to hire him for other things. In his own practice Clinton White played a prominent role in African American legal practice in the Bay Area. He became known as an attorney who would take on unpopular and “impossible” criminal cases that others wouldn’t touch, including the notorious “Zebra” killings in San Francisco. He also, like his mentor Tom Berkeley, became a mentor to several notable African American attorneys in the Bay Area. For example, White hired Allen Broussard, who ultimately ended up as a justice on the California Supreme Court. For highly capable attorneys like White, Broussard, and Wilmont Sweeney, eventual entrance into mainstream positions via judiciary appointments in the public sector was more the more general pattern. Access to predominantly white private sector law firms was less forthcoming even for high-achieving black attorneys. 51 Allen Broussard’s experience provides an illustration of this pattern. At one point, it seemed that Broussard was on the “fast track” to a corporate law fi rm. He was a top law student at Berkeley and clerked for Justice Raymond Peters of the First Appellate District Court in the 1950s. Normally a law degree from Berkeley and such a clerkship would provide the appropriate steppingstones to a prestigious law fi rm. Even Justice Peters was working behind the scenes on Broussard’s behalf, to no avail. As Broussard describes it in his oral history:

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No, I did not interview with any law fi rms except a couple of minority fi rms and a couple of minority lawyers. No, I didn’t even realize that the interviewing process was going on, you know, that the law fi rms were interviewing my classmates. I was not into that at all. I mean, it just wasn’t done at that time. The law school did not refer me to any law fi rm. Fortunately—I don’t know who initiated it—I did come to Peters’ [clerking for Justice of the First Appellate District Court] attention and he employed me. But when I graduated from law school, I couldn’t join the American Bar Association. 52 Broussard’s early personal career opportunity structure illustrates the basic problem for African American attorneys as a whole when it came to efforts to reach the mainstream law fi rms. This dynamic would continue into the post–civil rights era for most black attorneys. Clinton White summed up Broussard’s situation and that of minority attorneys generally at the time: [Broussard] worked for Judge Peters, who was a fantastic judge. A real liberal along with [California Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger] Traynor and others. He told Al [Broussard], as Al tells it to me, “Well I’m sorry Al, you’re back from [military service in] Korea but I can’t get any of the fi rms to hire you.” So that dates prejudice as of that time. Which is very relevant to this argument about affi rmative action. The theory is now, “Well Al Broussard is a graduate of Boalt, fought in the army in Korea, and he wouldn’t have any trouble getting into a fi rm.” Bullshit. Somebody had to affi rmatively tell these fellows to hire blacks, hire Japanese, hire Chinese. Now it’s a two-way street. The people who were hired forgot how they were hired. And the people that hired them are no longer there. They’re just names on the window, or on the letterhead.

OCCUPATIONALLY SEGREGATED “TRADITIONAL” LEGAL SERVICES AND BLACK CLIENTELE IN OAKLAND The experience of lawyers in the pre–civil rights era was typified by that of older black attorneys like Clinton White, who was the only black in his class at a time when professional schools—including northern schools like Berkeley—would remain “desegregated” by admitting one black student every three years.53 However, as discussed in Chapter 3, affi rmative action has been an important policy in the growth of the black professional middle class when it comes to access to mainstream opportunity structures. The traditional segment of the black professional middle class continues to serve segregated black institutions and clientele in the post–civil rights era. For traditional black professionals, affi rmative action policies that promote

90 The Black Professional Middle Class recruitment, hiring, and promotion in employment are generally less relevant. However, affirmative action policies have still been important for access to mainstream institutions of higher education. They are especially important for professionals who depend on graduate and professional education. The growth of the black professional middle class is a product of black protest for “equal opportunity,” which led to the later reform policies (e.g., civil rights and affirmative action policies). These created a social mobility project that moved many working class blacks into a revitalized black professional middle class during the civil rights and post–civil rights eras. One black attorney who experienced new opportunities in the postcivil rights era provides an example of this process. He grew up in a poor single-parent household in West Oakland and “got into some trouble” in his youth. His course toward graduation from law school in 1974 took a more circuitous route than that of the conventional law student. It included community college, work experiences, and military service: I graduated from McClymonds High School in 1961. After that I went to Merritt College. There for a year. Went into the air force and studied ground communication technology, radio. I got out and went back to Merritt. Then I transferred to the University of California, Berkeley. Got my BA in psychology. Then I went to law school at UC Berkeley, Boalt Hall. Got my JD there. When he applied to the law school at Berkeley he did not know that they had started a minority admissions (i.e., affirmative action) policy. He found out later that, fortunately, his application was “pulled” by a law student representative on the admissions committee so it could be considered under affirmative action guidelines. As he put it, “I’m grateful to him that he did because I probably wouldn’t have gotten in.” He did pretty well in his classes, graduated in three years, and passed the bar exam. When it came time for the swearing-in ceremony, his participation was delayed. Because he “got into some trouble” in his youth, he needed to be cleared by a special judiciary committee before he could be allowed to practice law. When he finally was sworn in, the judge who did so humorously wished him success in his future practice: I got sworn in, but not with the group that I came out [of law school]— that I passed the bar with because I had some things in my background. I had to go before a judiciary committee—the way I came up. I remember myself and another fella we got sworn in together—another brother—and the judge says, “Good luck gentlemen. May all your clients be wealthy, or if not may at least your opponents be wealthy. I said, well that’s the way I’m going to have to go. After passing the bar and being officially sworn in as an attorney, he slowly built his practice. His main income was derived from a city job working

Black to Black

91

with youth in Oakland. Over time he got more clients and moved from “part time” law practice to full time and resigned his city job. He admits that he made many mistakes in his early efforts to practice law. Unlike the experience of those who go into mainstream law fi rms or even partnerships with more seasoned traditional black lawyers, it is very difficult to begin a law practice on one’s own. Nevertheless, he was able to foster a mentoring relationship with Tom Berkeley (who was still practicing) and friendships with other black attorneys: That was one of the things that sticks out in my mind when I think about the learning experiences in private practice. It’s things like that you have to go through. You make your mistakes and you learn from them. So yeah it was tough. But fortunately, I did have some people that I could consult with. Tom Berkeley for a while. I rented some space in his building and had a little agreement with him, where I’d get office space in exchange for doing some work for him. After I left there and got my own office, I was able to call him periodically and ask questions of him. And then I started meeting older attorneys that had been practicing for a while and forming friendships. That made it easier. He explained that it took a while to develop his practice. This entailed a gradual shift from a very general practice to a more specialized one. That approach depends on the ability to garner a reputation—generally by word of mouth—that will produce a steady flow of clients over time. A small practice can be somewhat specialized but not too specialized. He described the change in his practice and clientele: Well, initially it was whatever came through the door. What I gradually did was to tailor it to personal injury and medical malpractice. And that’s basically what I do. I took a real estate course because I did some investment in real estate. So I’ll handle some landlord-tenant matters. Sometimes I’ll do some work in secure transactions, foreclosures, and things like that. But primarily it’s personal injury and medical malpractice. When I asked him about the issue of race when it comes to the law, he hesitated but felt strongly that race continued to be a major factor for black attorneys and black clients when they pursue cases: Man, it’s like we practice two different sets of legal rules. White and black. There’s so much discretion in the law. You come out of law school thinking you’re going to “tear it up.” You’ve got the rules down, you know the law, you get a client in, listen to the facts, apply those facts to the letter of the law, but sometimes you’re dumbfounded by some of the decisions. Nobody would say [race played a role in the decision]

92

The Black Professional Middle Class but race pervades everything. Sometimes I sit back and say we’re still slaves playing their game, with their rules. If we go in [to court], and you’ve got a black client and a black opponent, you’re more likely to get the law applied the way it’s supposed to be applied than if you’ve got a black client and a white opponent.

Another African American attorney had a very different background but his legal career eventually developed in somewhat similar ways. He was raised in the Jim Crow South and attended historically black Fisk University in his hometown of Nashville. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father a prominent attorney serving the segregated black community in Nashville. His thoroughly middle-class background gave him some privileges compared to most blacks in the South, and his parents had high expectations for his future. He was the only the second black student to graduate from the law school at the University of Tennessee. He was the only black law student in his class. He completed his law degree during the Vietnam War era. After graduating from law school, he was no longer eligible for a student deferment from military service. He faced the prospect of being drafted into the Army, and that didn’t appeal to him. If that happened, he would be likely to serve in the ground forces as an enlisted man. He therefore decided to join the Navy, where he would be able to enter as an officer. Beyond that he was able to put his legal training to work with the Judge Advocate General Corps. This turned out to be a great opportunity for him—very unusual for blacks at the time—and helped in the development of his later legal career. He was stationed at the Treasure Island Naval Base at San Francisco and, before he left the Navy, decided to stay in the Bay Area, settling in Oakland. He then worked in the federal antipoverty program for a year before starting his legal career. His practice developed slowly from the late 1960s onward. Like the previous interviewee, this man, as an individual practitioner starting out, had initially to be a generalist rather than a specialist. “It was a general practice. I did a little bit of everything to make ends meet.” However, his practice originally tilted heavily toward criminal law. This had some advantages—at least for helping him to move toward a different specialization in personal injury law later on: When I fi rst started I was doing a great deal of criminal law because that was an easy way to make a dollar back in those days. And my practice started growing from a criminal perspective. Many of my criminal clients then started having other problems which they brought to me, such as divorce, bankruptcy, personal injury, some real estate matters, some eviction matters, and things of that nature. So I primarily started off doing criminal law with a little smattering of many other things. During those days my personal injury practice started growing and it

Black to Black

93

appeared that the personal injury practice was very lucrative. And so I discovered that if I spent more time on personal injury I could have a more satisfying practice than running all over the Bay Area to these various and sundry courts to chase criminals. After you do that for so many years it gets a bit tiring. So about four years ago I began to restrict my practice to personal injury. That’s all I do today, personal injury cases. The growth of his practice was gradual. It relied on the painstaking provision of services and on building a reputation. Without the built-in reputation of an established fi rm or resources for advertising, many black attorneys in individual practice have to rely on word of mouth to see that their practices become known to a wider potential clientele. This requires providing a personal touch in the course of their work. It is an effective way for small practices to add clients in the long run: The vast majority of my cases are by word of mouth. Ninety-eight percent maybe. I’ve been in the community for thirty years. A lot of people out there know you. If you’ve given fairly decent service for that amount of time then there are a lot of happy people out there. They make sure their friends know. Unlike white legal practitioners, however, black attorneys generally have client bases of markets of limited size. A good white attorney can set up an office in a wider range of locales and also seek out a wider clientele. For black attorneys, this is usually not the case. Racialized class formation for traditional black professionals features a largely segregated clientele. As this attorney attests, he didn’t even seriously consider the prospect of a broad client base: I’ve never tried to seek out white clients—one way or another. I’ve always understood, and realized, and thought that’s the way it was going to be. When I started practicing I was never under any illusion that I was going to have a large influx of white clients. I always assumed and thought I would have a large influx of black clients. Which has been the case. I have some white clients, but out of about 150 clients that I have, I have one white client. That’s generally where it’s been.

CONCLUSION This chapter illustrates the particular circumstances of those members of the black professional middle class who are engaged in providing professional services to a primarily black clientele. In the case of Oakland, we have considered the experience of public school teachers and attorneys

94 The Black Professional Middle Class serving students and legal clients respectively. For this traditional segment of the black professional middle class, the overlapping dynamics of occupational and residential segregation are apparent. These professionals tend to base themselves in the black community with little expectation that they will have much interaction with white students or clients. Even as poorer Latinos and Asian Americans increasingly integrate the flatland neighborhoods of Oakland with blacks, whites remain unlikely to send their children to schools with blacks, and whites in need of legal services are not likely to avail themselves of black attorneys. Ironically, these traditional black professionals have found themselves dependent upon the continuity of informal segregation practices—as were black professionals in the pre– civil rights era—to carve out a niche for their own careers.

5

The Black Professional Middle Class and the Black Community in Oakland

BLACK URBAN COMMUNITIES AND RACIAL INEQUALITY: BEYOND THE UNDERCLASS DEBATE The major contemporary theoretical approach to understanding the status of the black middle class remains the class-determined racial inequality argument of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and William Julius Wilson, among others. That approach emphasizes the increasing inequalities among African Americans. This is seen, particularly, in the description of bipolar inequality between the black middle class and the black “underclass.”1 The class-determined approach argues that the problem of racial inequality since the successful passage of civil rights laws and the implementation of affirmative action after 1964 is one of “class” rather than “race.”2 Class-determined racial inequality theory argues that civil rights policies have helped to diminish racial discrimination to a point of declining significance. Consequently, a relatively prosperous and competitive black middle class has emerged in the last thirty years or so. As a group, their life chances are determined by class factors rather than race.3 By contrast, the black underclass is mired in joblessness, poverty, and pathology in ghetto neighborhoods. Likewise, the life chances of this group are also seen as being determined by class rather than race. From this perspective class-based spatial inequalities between the black middle class and the black urban poor are exacerbated. The “social isolation” of poor black urban neighborhoods is fed by the exodus of middle-class blacks to the suburbs.4 The class-determined approach represents the most theoretically prominent approach to the status of the black middle class even though it has not had much to say empirically about that group. Furthermore, it has contributed little to the understanding of the status of the black middle class in terms of urban community life. Scholars arguing from the classdetermined perspective are primarily interested in the problems facing the black underclass. The argument also underestimates the role that race plays in the social reproduction of black urban poverty. One example of this is the historical construction of racially segmented welfare policies in the United States. 5

96 The Black Professional Middle Class While class-determined theory reduces racial inequality to class inequality, an alternative approach emphasizes the interactive relationship between race and class inequalities more defi nitively.6 Race and class factors both cast shadows on the other and both affect the life chances of blacks of differing class backgrounds.7 I have termed this alternative approach racialized class formation theory. In this sense racialized class formation theory is an emergent paradigm that seeks to supplant the long dominant arguments made by the class-determined theory of racial inequality. As discussed earlier, it represents an alternative analytical framework for exploring patterns of racial inequality.

SPATIAL INEQUALITY: SEGREGATION AS AN ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE OF BLACK URBAN COMMUNITIES I will focus on race and class inequalities as two interactive types of social stratification. First, there is racial inequality based on inequality of social position, such as income, wealth, socioeconomic status, educational attainment, occupational status, social class categories, etc. Second, there is racial inequality based on patterns of the spatial dynamics of inequality between and within neighborhoods, communities, cities, metropolitan areas, census tracts, regions, or other such geographic or spatial areas where populations defi ned by race and class (including the black middle classes) reside.8 These two types of inequality represent the intersections of class, race, and space. They are necessarily interrelated because communities are places where inequality exists. Spatial inequality is important because it highlights practices of exclusion (i.e., segregation) that reduce the relative life chances of blacks (to comparable whites) of different social class backgrounds (e.g., equal schooling, home property values, accumulation of wealth, quality of local services, neighborhood safety, etc.). This chapter is specifically concerned with the ways in which race and class have shaped the formation of the post–civil rights era black professional middle class in the urban community. One of the most important studies to challenge the assumptions of the Moynihan-Wilson paradigm is the important work of Massey and Denton Their demography-centered research is focused on the underclass, but it is a key example of the strength of a racialized class formation approach to local studies of racial inequality. American Apartheid, apparently designed as an answer to Wilson’s Truly Disadvantaged (1987), demonstrates that residential segregation is central to producing pernicious patterns of racial inequality faced by the poorest urban blacks.9 Segregated black neighborhoods exacerbate problems of joblessness, poverty, and crime.10 Indeed, patterns of “hypersegregation” expanded in the 1990s for blacks in many cities. They were the only group to experience this level of spatial separation from other groups.11

The Black Professional Middle Class and Community in Oakland 97 Norman Fainstein further challenges the hegemony of the Wilson argument regarding the “declining significance of race” and the standard “underclass narrative.” As Fainstein puts it, the underclass narrative “does not need to tell the story of African Americans who are in the ‘stable’ working and middle class.” He establishes that middle-class blacks are generally affected by segregation and greater proximity to poorer blacks.12 Fainstein illustrates patterns of inequality based on race that differentiates middle-class blacks and whites. Middle-class blacks fare much worse in terms of income, educational attainment, earnings returns from education, and wealth.13

METHODS, PROBLEMS, AND QUESTIONS I am specifically interested in studying those blacks who entered professional occupations in the 1960s and 1970s. This represents the origins of the contemporary black professional middle class in the civil rights era, and the chapter continues to focus on the post–civil rights era since the 1980s. This transition in racialized class formation is readily contrasted with the “old” black middle class derived from the earlier era of formal segregation. I see this “entering class” of civil-rights-era professionals from the 1960s and 1970s specifically as the fi rst-generation cohort of the black professional middle class in the then newly integrated (primary) labor market. I am interested in two types of black professionals: professional employees and self-employed professionals. Self-employed professionals retain many similarities with the old black middle class from the pre-civil rights era of segregation depicted by E. Franklin Frazier.14 This group of self-employed black professionals—for example, lawyers and doctors—has played a vital role historically and within the black community and continues to do so. However, in my study, other occupations such as—teachers and clergy—although not self-employed, play a similar role as the self-employed professionals. That is, some black professional employees who serve segregated black clientele in public and private institutional settings (e.g., teachers and clergy) overlap with most self-employed black professionals to form the traditional segment of the black professional middle class. This includes the provision of professional services to the black poor. The black urban poor are a group that generally does not have broad access to professional services. By contrast, most black professional employees—since the civil rights era—have increasingly sought to move into the mainstream. Indeed, members of the black middle class have been key institutional and ideological activists seeking (both before and since the modern civil rights era) to integrate the basic institutions (higher education, labor markets, political representation, etc.) and communities (housing and neighborhoods) of the larger society (i.e., mainstream professionals). On the other

98

The Black Professional Middle Class

hand, middle-class blacks have always been central to the attempt to maintain viable, separate black institutions and communities (i.e., traditional professionals). These separate communities have been the bases of support for their professional clientele because whites have not been interested in making use of black professional services. That is, the “symbiotic” relationship between the social and economic interests of black professionals and their efforts to help maintain the social, political, and economic viability of black communities (that have been created by institutionalized discrimination and segregation) remains an enduring and contradictory dynamic of African American consciousness and lived experience.15 Thus, racialized class formation for black professionals includes these two dimensions, in which both the integration of black professional employees (employment dependent on the continuation of a politically threatened civil rights policy regime) and the dependence on the shaky viability of separate black markets for professional services by self-employed black professionals are both shaped by the contours of race. This effect of race makes the lives of black and white professionals substantively different. This chapter poses some specific research questions. Does segregation by race and class affect the life chances and the experiences of neighborhood life among the black professional middle class? In what kinds of neighborhoods do members of the black professional middle class live? Are there differences between mainstream black professional employees and traditional black professionals in terms of the kinds of neighborhoods that they live in? Are there differences between them in terms of the kinds of civic involvement that they are engaged in? What kinds of relationships do members of the black professional middle class have to the larger local black community, including the urban poor?

METHODOLOGICAL RATIONALE FOR OAKLAND AS AN URBAN CASE STUDY The predominance of the underclass debate associated with Moynihan and Wilson has shaped perspectives on the problem of the role of the black middle class in the black community in an indirect and derivative way. They have taken a cue from what has been termed the “gilded ghetto” argument of some historians. Wilson’s earlier work has emphasized the hypothesis that in the pre–civil rights era, blacks of different social classes lived in racially segregated multiclass ghetto neighborhoods. By contrast, in the post–civil rights era, the black middle class is to be found disproportionately in the suburbs, where they are unable to provide poorer blacks with appropriate role models, social capital, or viable social networks for social mobility.16 However, historians Henry Louis Taylor and Robert Sugrue have found that “class-segregated” middle-class black neighborhoods are not a new, post–civil rights era phenomenon. By examining local census tract

The Black Professional Middle Class and Community in Oakland 99 data in Detroit, Buffalo, and Chicago, they have found evidence of viable class-segregated middle-class black neighborhoods in northern cities since the Great Migration.17 Blacks, like whites, sought to use strategies of social closure to increase the appreciation of the property values of their homes and to exclude what they considered to be the “worst elements” of the black community. In Oakland, historical evidence demonstrates the tensions that existed between long-standing black residents—frequently homeowners—and rural, southern black migrants who came to Oakland in large numbers during the 1940s. These migrants were pushed into large public housing projects in West Oakland and other parts of the East Bay.18 The formation of distinct black middle-class neighborhoods is not simply a post–civil rights phenomenon as proponents of the “gilded ghetto” argument have suggested. These class-distinct black neighborhoods have been part of black ghettoes of the pre–civil rights era as well. When blacks successfully “invaded” predominantly white neighborhoods in search of new and better housing, it was generally members of the black middle class who moved fi rst. This often led to the creation of class-segregated black middle-class neighborhoods. These black-middle-class neighborhoods also exist in contemporary cities in and around “traditional” black ghetto neighborhoods.19 Often, these class-segregated black neighborhoods are temporary and are transformed into multiclass neighborhoods when members of other class segments of the black community move in. The black middle class generally has a relationship to, and influence upon, events in the less-well-off neighborhoods in terms of their work, residential, and civic activities. There are important connections between these three aspects of black professional middle-class life and their relationships to other social class segments of the local and national (symbolic) African American communities. This paper explores the dynamics of these linkages. In addition, relatively less sociological and historical research has been focused on African Americans in West Coast cities. Of course, twentieth-century black migration to the Northeast and industrial Midwest was far greater than in the west. Nevertheless, some important research has been carried on black communities in the twentieth century urbanization of the West. 20 In light of this, more research does need to be carried out on the outcomes of black urban life on the West Coast. Oakland is a good choice for this endeavor because it has the greatest proportion of black population of any large city on the West Coast (including Los Angeles). In 1990, blacks composed 43.9 percent of Oakland’s population (down to 39 percent in 2000) as seen in Table 5.1. Within the nine-county standard metropolitan statistical area known as the San Francisco Bay Area, a decided majority of blacks (56.7 percent) lived within just the two East Bay counties (Alameda and Contra Costa) comprised by the Oakland Metropolitan Area. This illustrates

100

The Black Professional Middle Class

Table 5.1

Population by Race in Oakland, 1940–2000

Race

1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

White

287,936

328,797

270,523

213,512

129,692

120,849

124,921

Black

8,462

47,562

83,618

124,710

159,281

163,355

141,294

Latino*

NA

NA

19,309

NA

32,492

51,711

87,443

Asian**

NA

NA

NA

NA

26,341

54,931

60,110

Total***

302,165

384,575

367,548

361,561

339,337

372,242

399,477

Source: Eric S. Brown. “The Black Professional Middle Class and the Black Community: Racialized Class Formation in Oakland and the East Bay,” in Kenneth L. Kusmer and Joe W. Trotter, eds. African American Urban History Since World War II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009, p. 269. © 2009 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Census of Population. 1940-2000.Characteristics of Population. California. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. *Data for Hispanic or Latino was not collected by the census before 1960. Based on the census category, “white, Spanish surname” for 1960. Data is not available for 1970 census. For 1980 and 1990, Latino can be of “any race.” **Data for Asian Americans was generally lumped into the categories of “nonwhite” or “other race” before the 1980 census. ***Total Population numbers do not equal the total of the distinct “racial” categories because Latinos are not officially defined by the Census Bureau as a racial group. They may be members of any of the other “racial” groups.

the racially concentrated residential patterns also found in urbanized places elsewhere in the country. In California in general and in the Bay Area specifically, both blacks and whites have higher incomes than comparable citizens in the United States as a whole (see Table 5.2). They are somewhat better off in the East Bay than most other places in terms of income. These relatively greater incomes reflect the higher cost of living (i.e., greater demand for housing, food and services, etc.) in the Bay Area as well as the greater demand for labor in service industries (including professional labor) in the region. The higher standard of living experienced by blacks in the East Bay makes it an important local area to investigate via the casestudy method. This is true given the apparent racial inequalities that remain locally manifest despite the relatively greater prosperity of the region and the higher than average income experienced by blacks in both the city of Oakland and its suburbs. 21 This is evident in comparing local disparities in median income and poverty rates between blacks and whites. Therefore the aggregate secondary, local historical, and interview data collected concerning Oakland is appropriate for examining the relationship between national social and policy changes since the 1960s and 1970s and the effects that can be analyzed at the level of a local case study. No single urban

The Black Professional Middle Class and Community in Oakland 101 Table 5.2 Median Household Income and Poverty Rates by Race and Place in 1989 and 1999 Black median income Place

1989

1999

United States $19,758 $24,423

Black poverty rate

White poverty rate

1989

1989

1999

1989

1999

29.5%

24.4%

$31,435 $44,687

9.8%

9.1%

$37,724 $51,279

9.1%

10.5%

$43,904

5.9%

NA

$41,740 $62,181

6.4%

7.2%

California

$26,079 $34,956

21.1%

22.4%

Oakland (PMSA)**

$25,444

21.1%

NA

Alameda County

$24,480 $35,909

21.3%

21.2%

NA

White median income 1999

NA

Oakland city $21,771 $31,184

23.9%

24.9%

$34,623 $54,076

9.0%

11.5%

Oakland $32,201 $44,270 suburbs***

17.0%

17.2%

$45,299 $67,829

5.2%

5.4%

Source: Eric S. Brown. “The Black Professional Middle Class and the Black Community: Racialized Class Formation in Oakland and the East Bay,” in Kenneth L. Kusmer and Joe W. Trotter, eds. African American Urban History Since World War II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009, p. 270. © 2009 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Metropolitan Areas, Summary of Social and Economic Characteristics for Persons and for Households and Families, 1990 and 2000. *Based on category of “not in central cities” for the Oakland Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area. **The Census Bureau ceased using the designation of Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area in reference to the collection of Alameda and Contra Costa counties after the 1990 Census. ***For 1999 the data refers to Contra Costa County

or metropolitan area, can capture all of the complexities of qualitative changes in urban racial inequality. Nevertheless, local and qualitative studies are still needed (in addition to aggregate and quantitative research) to capture the broader context of changes in racial inequality since the civil rights period. This study makes a contribution to that research agenda. It is important to note that the black professional middle class in the East Bay has been primarily an urban-dwelling population, as demonstrated in Table 5.3. By contrast, white professionals reside primarily in suburban communities. This is important for contextualizing the relationship of the black professional middle class to the larger segments of working class and urban poor black populations in the East Bay urban centers of Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond. The relationship of the black professionals to the rest of the local black communities can be found in terms of their work, residence, and civic and political involvements. That the black middle class can still be found in spatial proximity,

102

The Black Professional Middle Class

to less privileged members of the black community in Oakland is important for examining the larger processes and social relationships taking place among African Americans at the local level. It should be noted, as the data below indicate, that black professionals have declined somewhat over time in their rate of urban residence. If this trend continues, as is likely, it will probably say something about the viability of, or perhaps, the fi nal exhaustion of the civil rights movement that mobilized blacks across class lines two generations ago.

Table 5.3

Number of Professionals Living in Select East Bay Cities, Counties, and the Oakland Metropolitan Area and the Percentage of Urban-Dwelling Professionals by Race 1970*

1980

1990

City

Blacks

Whites

Blacks

Whites

Blacks

Oakland**

3,406

14,185

4,959

19,474

6,732

Berkeley**

1,552

13,022

982

15,159

1,278

Richmond*

914

1,669

963

3,155

1,589

Fremont

17

6,478

143

11,048

487

Hayward

80

3,115

189

3,445

502

San Leandro

14

1,788

43

2,422

250

Concord

37

5,343

278

6,868

143

Walnut Creek

25

4,452

6

6,060

73

Alameda County

5,335

57,649

6,885

80,176

10,486

Contra Costa County

1,491

37,397

2,026

53,813

3,307

6,826

95,046

8,911 133,989

13,793

86.0%

30.4%

OMA*** Percentage of urban professionals

77.5%

28.2%

70.0%

Sources: Eric S. Brown, “The Black Professional Middle Class and the Black Community: Racialized Class Formation in Oakland and the East Bay,” in Kenneth L. Kusmer and Joe W. Trotter, eds., African American Urban History Since World War II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009, p. 271. © 2009 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Census of Population. 1970–1990.Characteristics of Population. California. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. *The Census Bureau did not denote local level data for whites by occupation for the San Francisco SMSA in 1970. **Denotes that the municipality comprises an “urban” area. ***Refers to the Oakland Metropolitan Area (a two-county region and Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area of the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area).

The Black Professional Middle Class and Community in Oakland 103 THREE TYPES OF NEIGHBORHOODS IN OAKLAND INHABITED BY THE BLACK PROFESSIONAL MIDDLE CLASS In the post–civil rights period, the black professional middle class can be found residing in a range of neighborhood types. Applying Weber’s concept of “ideal types” and considering census tract and interview data, we can identify at least three major kinds of neighborhoods that are inhabited by middle-class black professionals. First, is the race- and class-segregated predominantly black-middle-class neighborhood type. This kind of neighborhood is segregated in terms of both race and class. It is predominantly black and also predominantly middle class. Spatially, these neighborhoods often tend to be isolated by major roads, open space, wooded areas, hills, or other such natural or artificial barriers that preclude connection with contiguous working-class and poor black neighborhoods. The “hills” versus “fl atlands” distinction is one that is simultaneously geologic, spatial, and social. Social class and affluence in the residences of California cities literally rise and fall with the patterning of the hilly landscape. These kinds of neighborhoods may be small in size and were often initially exclusive white neighborhoods. Such neighborhoods tend to have relatively high property values that fi nancially exclude working-class and poor blacks. An example of this type is the largely black section of the East Oakland Hills, which includes the Sequoyah Hills neighborhood. Many black professionals live in this sprawling upscale neighborhood. Even this most affluent, class-segregated black-upper-middle-class neighborhood looks down (literally from the hills above) on poorer black neighborhoods in the East Oakland flatlands. Second, is the multiclass black neighborhood type. This tends to be the dominant type of black-middle-class neighborhood for a couple of reasons. Because of the predominance of racial segregation in housing patterns in the United States, most African Americans live in predominantly black neighborhoods. 22 In turn, because of limited wealth accumulation by blacks of any occupational background, middle-class blacks are likely to live in less expensive housing than their white counterparts. 23 Furthermore, “the fi nding that higher status blacks had significantly lower levels of homeownership than comparable non-blacks indicates that class does not supersede race in the area of wealth accumulation.”24 Multiclass neighborhoods do not necessarily mean that poorer blacks live “right next door” to affluent blacks. Rather, it refers to broader, traditionally or recently defi ned geographically configured communities in which blacks of various social classes live in relative proximity to each other. These African Americans of different class backgrounds may share access to a wide range of public and private community institutions, services, and public space. Those with greater resources will be more likely to be able to afford better private services, such as private or parochial

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schools. These kinds of communities can be found in the flatland neighborhoods of Northwest Oakland. The third major type of neighborhood inhabited by some middle-class blacks is the predominantly white-middle-class neighborhood. Some African American professionals are scattered throughout such neighborhoods in the East Bay suburbs that surround Oakland. Because of predominant patterns of racially segregated housing, this is the least frequently found residential pattern for blacks, including those in the middle class. 25 Many but not all of these neighborhoods are “transitional.” That is, when blacks move into a neighborhood, whites often move out. Alternatively, gentrification has been occurring at a rapid rate in the Oakland fl atlands, given rising housing costs in “nicer” Oakland neighborhoods and elsewhere in the Bay Area (e.g., San Francisco and Berkeley). Gentrification was the explicit policy of two-term former mayor Jerry Brown to raise depressed property values and promote commercial development in both downtown Oakland and the neighborhoods.26 Consequently poorer black neighborhoods have been increasingly claimed by more affluent, nonblack artists, professionals, and university students. Nevertheless, there are some neighborhoods, such as those found in the North Oakland flatlands, that constitute a long-standing quality of “integration.”

WORKING-CLASS, MIGRATORY, AND PRE–CIVIL RIGHTS ERA ORIGINS OF THE BLACK PROFESSIONAL MIDDLE CLASS IN OAKLAND Members of the black professional middle class in Oakland and East Bay are the childhood products of the local black community as well as adult migration from elsewhere. Many members of this race and class grouping migrated as adults from both northern and southern localities. However, most of the subjects in my sample arrived in the East Bay as children or were born in Oakland. Thus, this group is chiefly a product of the West Coast version of the Great Migration during and after World War II. These black migrants to Oakland emerged primarily from Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. The local emergence of middle-class blacks from ghetto neighborhoods in the 1960s and 1970s was a story that was not unique to Oakland but one that was replicated in urban communities across the United States. This massive social mobility project (as it was played out in the life of the black community) is a process that needs to be further analyzed. 27 One black professional described his movement at the age of four from a rural Louisiana community of about a hundred people. His family settled into the racially segregated public housing projects in West Oakland in 1941: Let’s see. 1941. My father brought us here. Me and my brothers and my mother. And he found out that there were jobs out here. And he lucked

The Black Professional Middle Class and Community in Oakland 105 out and got a job with the shipyard. . . . There was a lot of migration from the South. Blacks were moving out of the South. Getting away from that sharecropping. [Blacks were] tired of picking cotton for somebody else. A defi ning experience of initial community life for black migrants in Oakland was that of the “projects.” The construction (and conversion of existing facilities such as military barracks) of these public housing units became a key facet of black urban life. The dire poverty of the migrants, coupled with the desire of white residents to keep them as far away from their own established communities as possible, led to the viability of this segregated, low-income public housing. Just as blacks (e.g., in the shipyards) were relegated to the racially stratified and least remunerative sectors of the labor market, they also inhabited the least desirable sectors of the housing market. 28 One of the public housing projects in West Oakland that housed black migrants was Kirkham Court. A black local public health professional who had resided there as a child described the experience: All black. We lived in Kirkham Court. Oakland Army base housing. [The navy] had moved out and made that an army base down there. So most of the blacks that came to [Oakland] lived in either Campbell Village [near the waterfront] or further down where I lived on 22nd and Kirkham. And that was the projects. We lived there. It was all blacks. We had some brothers who came out of those projects who did really well though. The experience of the new migrants can be contrasted with that of the “long-time” and more stable black residents (often homeowners) of West Oakland, and seen in the initial expansion of blacks into more viable East Oakland neighborhoods. As another subject described it: I think the [black] people at that time that were born and raised in Oakland, didn’t live down in those projects. They lived around where old Merritt College is. Because a lot of the blacks who lived in there were people who worked as porters on the trains and [so forth]. And East Oakland. Some of the families that I met when we moved to East Oakland had been here for a long time, which we didn’t know. So there were people here in the 1920s and 1930s, blacks. But we had to move when they tore down all those projects and put that post office down there. And then a whole influx of blacks moved from there to East Oakland. And all the whites moved from there and that’s when they built the suburbs in San Lorenzo and San Leandro. A black attorney who arrived as a youth from Louisiana described his experience with the projects as a transitional community. His mother

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supported six children with AFDC and “under the table” domestic work. Even so, they sought to leave the projects. By pooling both conventional and unexpected resources and by “doubling up,” the extended family was able to buy a “fi xer upper” in a rapidly ghettoizing neighborhood in West Oakland in the mid-1940s: I lived with my mother. My father is still in New Orleans. My mother basically did domestic work. She received AFDC. She supplemented that with domestic work. But we had an extended family. The housing that we moved into—my grandmother had come out here before my mother—she was living in Alameda and we were all living in the same project area. And she got into an automobile accident, a drunken sailor hit her and [injured] her foot and she got some kind of settlement. So what she did—we moved from the projects and moved to Oakland and bought an old Victorian style house. And my uncles—my mother’s sisters’ husbands—they were all handy with their hands. They did carpentry, [etc.] those type[s] of thing[s]. They turned the whole basement area into a livable area. And so there were about four or five families living there.

LATE CIVIL RIGHTS PERIOD: LATE 1960S AND 1970S AND THE PROBLEM OF ACCESS TO PREDOMINANTLY WHITE NEIGHBORHOODS The expansion of black population during World War II and in the postwar period put tremendous pressure on the limited housing available in segregated black neighborhoods in West Oakland, Northwest Oakland, and South Berkeley. By the 1960s and 1970s, blacks began to “invade” other urban neighborhoods including other areas like the Temescal neighborhood of North Oakland and the sprawling bungalows of East Oakland. Later there was further eastward movement into contiguous suburbs such as San Leandro and Hayward. In this case, as in other cities, those who moved out of the confi nes of the traditional ghetto were those with relatively greater resources—middle-class blacks. Many newly middle-class blacks sought to avail themselves of new possibilities for housing that were commensurate with their new socioeconomic statuses. The broad horizon of expanding suburbs represented, quite literally, the “California Dream” for many. The East Bay suburbs provided quiet, comfortable private residences in the suburban rings of Alameda and Contra Costa County. These suburbs were not hospitable to blacks in the 1960s and 1970s and still remain, at least with regard to blacks, noticeably segregated. 29 Today African Americans remain underrepresented in the suburbs of the Oakland Metropolitan Area. Before the 1968 Fair Housing Act there were no significant (enforced) civil rights laws that applied to equal housing access.30 Indeed, federal

The Black Professional Middle Class and Community in Oakland 107 housing policy—especially the mortgage policies of the Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration—explicitly promoted residential segregation in cities and virtual exclusion of blacks from suburban housing.31 Beyond that, and despite the active or passive resistance of white homeowners, some blacks still sought access to suburban homeownership. One small and limited source of pressure to integrate the suburbs came from progressive white activists. The feeling among many of these progressives was that if one black person could initially move into a neighborhood, then others would be able to follow. These efforts at integrating the suburbs by local leftist activists ultimately had little discernible effect. One physician described this phenomenon. She was the second African American who was able to move into an affluent East Bay suburb of several thousand people. Her home is valued today at more than $600,000. She described a situation in which prointegration members of the Communist Party USA and their friend, an unconventional realtor, were able to move the fi rst black person (her friend) into a new home in the all-white suburb in 1965: [At that time] the realtors had to acknowledge to [prospective black buyers] that they couldn’t show them the house during the daytime. Because if the neighbors saw them showing the houses to blacks they would get upset. But they would be happy to show them at night. And I heard of one experience where they were taken in and shown a house by flashlight at night. And of course I had heard about that story when [my] house became available. The way that I knew about [my] house was that I received a letter at my office from a real estate person and it just happened to be my day off and the letter stated that there was a new house in [this community] that was built by the owners but because of illness, the owners found that they would not be able to live in the house. I said to myself, I wonder if this person knows if I’m black. . . . So I called to see if I could see the house in the daytime, that afternoon. . . . The realtor was a big black woman. She was working in association with some of these Communist [Party members]. So they were determined to [promote] integration, so they let her in on selling this house. In another similar case brought up by another interviewee, a progressive white realtor who had connections to the Black Panther Party was involved in opening access to white neighborhoods in the Berkeley flatlands outside of the black ghetto in South Berkeley in 1967. These activists were responding, in part, to the passage of Proposition 14 in Berkeley. This proposition represented a last-ditch effort to make it possible for white homeowners to sell only to “preferred” home buyers. This was a thinly veiled effort to keep certain neighborhoods “all white.”32 This local proposition was made legally irrelevant by the passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act.

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Of course, a widespread movement of blacks into predominantly white neighborhoods in the 1960s and 1970s did occur. However, it was primarily an urban phenomenon. Whites were fleeing Oakland in large numbers for the suburbs. Blacks began to sift out of the highly concentrated African American neighborhoods in West Oakland, Northwest Oakland, and South Berkeley. Consequently, in this period the predominantly white Oakland flatland neighborhoods were increasingly inhabited by blacks. This corresponds to what occurred within cities throughout the United States at that time.33 This twin process of white flight and expansive black ghettoization became especially apparent in East Oakland, which was at one time a segregated stronghold of Ku Klux Klan support.34 One woman, a teacher and school administrator, described the process by which her neighborhood in East Oakland went from white to black “overnight” during the 1970s: “When we fi rst moved to the house the neighbors were all white. The apartment [building nearby] was all white. And overnight it turned all black. It’s interesting. I just looked around and it was all black. I don’t know where the white folks went but they were gone.” This incident was a case of both “racial steering” and “block busting” because her family was the fi rst black family on the block and thus bought the house from a white homeowner. The case was made more interesting because the realtor they dealt with, who “steered” them there, was black. Most white realtors deal primarily with white clients. In turn, white realtors have a fi nancial interest in promoting the “stability” of segregated white neighborhoods.35 On the other hand, most of the black realtors’ clients are black. The primary way for black realtors to increase their incomes is to promote the spatial expansion of segregated black communities. These expanding, segregated black neighborhoods become potentially remunerative real estate markets for black realtors.36 In cases such as these, black realtors are able to create a new market niche for themselves by benefiting from residential segregation that is, ironically, promoted by powerful white institutions such as banks, developers, and realtors. 37 What made the aforementioned case even more noteworthy was that the teacher’s husband was white and the realtor wanted only him to see the home initially. By having only the white husband view the home, the realtor may have managed to make the neighbors believe that the house was being bought by a white family, and thus they would not put pressure on the owner to avoid selling to a black family: In terms of moving to where I live now, it seems to me that I . . . remember distinctly being asked to stay home. To stay home [and not go] to see this home. And I don’t know if that was a strategic move by the realtor. My husband and she agreed on this. That’s my remembrance. . . . We became the fi rst black family on the block. I didn’t realize it until I’m saying it now, but we became the fi rst black people on the block. Hmm.

The Black Professional Middle Class and Community in Oakland 109 Aside from the general problem of exclusionary strategies by white homeowners seeking to deter blacks (middle class or otherwise) from “invading” their neighborhoods, there are other problems. When some blacks do move into such neighborhoods, there is often a rapid process—as in the case above—of transition from a segregated white neighborhood to a segregated black neighborhood. Once block busting has occurred, there is often a rapid transformation, resulting in a segregated black neighborhood. Thus, whether in the central cities or in the suburbs, the practice of blacks living in “integrated” neighborhoods is frequently a brief and transitional phenomenon.

BLACK-MIDDLE-CLASS NEIGHBORHOODS SEGREGATED BY CLASS AND RACE IN THE POST–CIVIL RIGHTS ERA Given that integrated neighborhoods are generally a fleeting thing, aggregate-level research has found that residential segregation is the general pattern for African Americans regardless of class background. Middle-class blacks are as likely to live in highly segregated neighborhoods as are poorer blacks.38 In my own case study, most of the interview subjects reported living in predominantly or disproportionately black neighborhoods. These neighborhoods include both class-segregated black-middle-class neighborhoods and racially segregated multiclass black neighborhoods. For the most part, the relatively privileged members of the black professional middle class have access to a much more limited metropolitan housing market than their white counterparts. “Race” is a factor that must be taken into consideration by black professionals who seek homeownership. The black middle class has fewer assets than middle-class whites; when they are seeking to maximize those assets through homeownership, these inequities are magnified by the process of residential segregation, which devalues black-owned homes. 39 This is the case whether blacks are seeking housing in the central city or in the suburbs.40 One black professional who grew up on the South Side of Chicago and began his professional career in that same neighborhood illustrated the way in which race frames the life chances and experiences of such middle-class blacks. The street crime and poor schools that were prevalent in the “multiclass ghetto” on the South Side prompted him to move his family to the suburbs: I grew up in Chicago. We lived in Chicago for the fi rst 2 or 3 years of our marriage. We lived on the South Side in the same area that we grew up. We encountered some pretty severe crime issues. As young married folks there was a time when everybody in our house saw the wrong end of a gun, including my one-year-old daughter. So we decided to move to the suburbs.

110 The Black Professional Middle Class His experiences in two different Chicago suburbs varied. The first suburban community was relatively less prosperous but was an ecologically designed, planned community that adopted a fair housing ordinance and sought religious and racial diversity as far back as the 1950s. The second suburb was more affluent and better reflected his family’s true economic standing. However, it was “colder,” especially as his children approached dating age: And we moved to . . . Park Forest. And we lived there for 6 or 7 years and we just loved it. It was an integrated community. [The community] worked very hard to promote diversity for people who knew what diversity was. We moved from there to Olympia Fields, which was a more upscale community in the suburbs, and actually did not like that. It was upscale, but it was also “colder.” Not from a racial standpoint, but it was just colder and we didn’t enjoy that as much. And also our kids got older we saw that the majority kids who had associated with them in grammar school, their parents seemed to want to put some distance between them and the minority kids in high school. I think it’s the fear of interracial dating and stuff like that. When he and his family made their third move—this time across the country to the Bay Area—they had to again factor issues of race and class into the decision of where to live. The interview subject concluded that the Oakland suburbs had “less diversity” than the Chicago suburbs. This is ironic, because the city and suburbs of Chicago have had a long and inglorious history of confl ict over “open housing.”41 They resolved this by deciding to move to Oakland and chose to reside in a “class-segregated,” largely black upper-middle-class neighborhood in the East Oakland Hills: So we said, that moving to a new community, are we going to move to the suburbs of the Bay Area, or do we want to live in [Oakland]? The suburbs of the Bay Area seemed to have less diversity than the suburbs of Chicago. . . . So I grew to like Oakland and saw that it was a very diverse place. And it was very unlike the stereotype that the city has outside of the Bay Area. . . . So we moved to the Oakland hills. . . . [W]e’ve had some minor issues—but we haven’t had any serious issues to deal with. It should be noted that a relatively small proportion of African Americans live in the more expensive and exclusive homes that dot the hill neighborhoods of Oakland. However, their choice of residence in an affluent and largely black neighborhood resolved problems of seeking “diversity” (read “avoiding racial isolation”), ensuring neighborhood stability, reducing exposure to crime, and being part of a broader urban black community. The family benefited from the nearby presence of a significant black-middle-class that reinforced for their children that they were also expected to prepare themselves for professional careers. That is, they were supposed to socially reproduce themselves in the black professional middle class:

The Black Professional Middle Class and Community in Oakland 111 [W]e think that our kids are better off being raised for the past ten years in a more urban environment. One of the things that we clearly see today is that the only way that you’re connected with African American culture is to be in an urban setting. . . . One of the things that we really like about Oakland is there’s a large African American professional population in Oakland. And there is real diversity of occupation. It’s key for kids to be able to see that they can be anybody. My experience is that if a kid has never seen anybody like him who’s an airline pilot, it’s difficult to aspire to be an airline pilot. Or whatever. And it’s been good for my wife and I to be exposed to black professionals in areas that we’re in. Most of my interview subjects felt that today, overt housing discrimination by realtors was less of a problem within Oakland itself. Rather, they expressed the sentiment that discrimination was much more likely to be experienced in the suburbs, where blacks were far fewer in number and apparently less welcome by and realtors or other residents: Everybody has negative experiences with realtors. Realtors are a pain in the rear. So you always run into problems with realtors, so that’s nothing new. But I’m not aware of any realtor [in Oakland] who has deliberately said, “I’m not going to sell you a house.” I suppose if I was trying to go out to Danville or somewhere else in the suburbs, where people have deliberately gone out to try to get away from black folks then I suppose I might run into something like that. Even when overt or hostile discrimination isn’t experienced, African Americans are likely to experience racial isolation in the suburbs, especially in exclusive suburbs: A number of my friends, some of them are officers in the major corporations around here who are black, have moved back in from the “Moragas,” the “Walnut Creeks,” back into Oakland. Isn’t that strange. And for the same reason. They got a little lonely out there. They wanted to come “back home.” And they feel comfortable back here and they’re living a better quality of life here [in Oakland] then they are out there. But again, everybody has a right to live where they want to live. I choose to live in Oakland because I like it. I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else in the Bay Area.

PROBLEMS OF THE TRULY ADVANTAGED The racial problems involving housing that were experienced by most of the black middle class professionals in Oakland that I interviewed seemed to be of a more subtle nature.42 However, these subtle forms of discrimination

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can have potentially serious personal and economic consequences in the life chances of those blacks that have “made it.” One black corporate attorney who lived in an affluent East Oakland Hills neighborhood described an appraisal incident that could have reduced both the market value of his home and his family’s assets by more than $300,000: They will under-appraise your house because of the fact that you’re in Oakland and because you’re in a certain neighborhood, so to speak. And they would try to not give your home the correct appraisal. So what you do is call them on it. If a white person had been in that same house they would probably have given him a different appraisal because appraisals are subjective. So I called him on it and it was redone. And it came up to exactly what I thought it should be. This person came in and just was convinced that no person of African American descent—if he’s in this house it just couldn’t be worth this much. I’ve seen as much as a $300,000 to $400,000 difference. In fact, in my home there was a $300,000 difference based just on the appraisal. Based on who the person was. Even in Oakland, efforts to maintain semblances of white privilege and black exclusion remain. The “all-white country club” remains as an enduring symbol of this phenomenon. The maintenance of such exclusive institutions is certainly easier in the suburbs. In the city of Oakland, it may be one of few things (outside of corporate work settings in the workplace itself) to remind privileged, affluent whites of their status, especially if blacks are generally able to live where they can afford to (though few can afford it) in Oakland proper. The same black attorney described his neighborhood in the East Oakland Hills. The neighborhood was once all white but is now an area where upper-middle-class black professionals are concentrated: [The neighborhood is] about fi fty percent black, about fifty percent white. It’s an upper middle class area. It’s right next to the country club which for many years, until about four years ago, didn’t even let blacks into membership. The community, what we call the Sequoyah Hills, is a very integrated community—racially and fi nancially. When I asked if he was a member, he offered a “country club” story: Well I could afford it, but I wouldn’t waste my money. At the time it was integrated, a friend of mine integrated it. It cost $10,000. After they let him in, the membership went up to $40,000 [laugh]. So I have no desire to be a member of [that] country club. At any price. The status of black professionals is one of marginality. The professionalmiddle-class segments among African Americans are marginal to their

The Black Professional Middle Class and Community in Oakland 113 white professional peers, who are likely to live in segregated white neighborhoods, have significantly greater wealth, have greater chances for cross-generational mobility for their children, and are likely to associate in racially stratified private and professional social networks.43 On the other hand, the black professional middle class is also marginal to the larger working-class and poorer segments of African Americans. Whatever the overlap in perceptions or experiences of race may be, these groups face class differences in life chances based on educational attainment, mobility, income, and social capital. It is this experience of marginality that shapes the overlapping of race and class consciousness for the black middle classes. It informs and constrains their agendas as civic and political actors.44

MULTICLASS BLACK NEIGHBORHOODS IN THE POST–CIVIL RIGHTS ERA: THE EAST OAKLAND FLATLANDS While the race- and class-segregated middle-class neighborhoods discussed previously tend to be populated by black professional employees, there is another type of neighborhood to make note of. Self-employed professionals, clergy, and teachers I interviewed were more likely to live in or near the traditional black ghetto communities. These neighborhoods, taken as a whole, tend to be more racially segregated and tend to possess more multiclass diversity. Middle-class and poor blacks aren’t likely to live next door to each other. Rather, they are likely to live in near proximity in broad neighborhood areas that might include middle-class, working-class, and poorer blacks. African American mainstream professional employees were more likely to live in more “upscale” neighborhoods. In part, this seems a reflection of higher incomes from employment in private fi rms, nonprofit organizations, and government jobs in the core sector. The communities they inhabit are apparently less racially segregated. Correspondingly, these neighborhoods are less likely to be directly proximate to poor or working-class black flatland communities. Many lived in the more affluent East Oakland Hills neighborhoods. Not surprisingly, these subjects were relatively more marginal or less directly involved in the daily affairs of the broadly defi ned black community. They were rather less likely to interact with poor or working-class blacks on a daily basis in their work or community lives. The case of traditional black professionals was rather different. On the one hand, they were more likely to live in neighborhoods that were contiguous with, or included, poor or working-class blacks. On the other hand, they were also likely to deal with those less affluent neighbors in their professional work. Their professional work was more likely to be focused on the direct delivery of professional services to working class black clients, patients, or students. In addition to residential proximity and professional work, they are also more likely to be involved with poor and working-class blacks in terms of civic activities, as we shall soon see.

114 The Black Professional Middle Class One case is indicative of the kinds of problems that might be faced by the black middle class living in a multiclass black neighborhood. One woman, a teacher and doctoral candidate, lives in an East Oakland flatland neighborhood. In her college days she was an “activist” and was loosely affi liated with the Black Panthers. Today she questions—self-reflectively—whether she has become more “conservative.” This concern is based on her more recent views about the black poor. She has had some bad experiences with some of the parents of her students, including one parent who allegedly had her daughter declared mentally retarded in order to receive Supplemental Security Insurance disability benefits on her behalf. Another incident in her neighborhood has been particularly devastating. Her neighbor, a computer technician, bought another home in the suburb of Hayward, and that became his primary residence. He then sought to rent out his house next door to her in East Oakland. He didn’t fi nd an immediate taker so he opted for a subsidized low-income renter under the Section 8 program. The teacher was very upset about what she considered a trend among some homeowners in Oakland because of the consequences for other stable homeowners: [T]hat’s becoming a trend in Oakland. Middle-class black folks want to live in Hayward, San Leandro, or whatever, and they can’t rent [their homes]—the rental market is so bad in [East] Oakland. So they’re going section 8 without any concern about the other property owners around there. Apparently the owner of the dwelling unwittingly (or not) became a “slumlord” and rented the house to someone who was apparently engaged in numerous illegal activities. A large part of the problem was that the renter then sublet a room in the house to other people who were also engaged in illicit activities. The renters allegedly engaged in drug dealing, prostitution, and threatening behavior toward the neighbors. Many of the neighborhood residents were retired African American working-class homeowners concerned about the safety and stability of the neighborhood. This teacher was apparently one of the few people to stand up to her criminally inclined next-door neighbors and report their activities to the police: My friends say I’ve gotten to be very conservative (laugh). So the stuff that I’ve seen over the last two years, and the games people—like these folks who moved next door. Section 8 [for a house estimated to be worth $200,000] and they pay $200 a month to live in this four bedroom house? . . . [The renters pay] about $200, we [taxpayers] pay the rest. And they had the nerve to [sublet] a room—the storage room—to this man and his prostitute (laugh). And then they got mad because we reported it. And they’ve got this scam going on—now that’s not poverty, that’s pathology, and it’s happening everywhere.

The Black Professional Middle Class and Community in Oakland 115 The teacher was very adamant in explaining that she was not against poor blacks. She was opposed to what she termed “pathological” behavior, which she distinguished from poverty: Yes. There are poor people in the neighborhood and it’s not poverty that I’m having problems with. For instance, there’s a grandmother a couple of doors down that raises her grandkids because her daughter’s strung out. And those kids are obviously AFDC kids. I have no problems—and I work with AFDC kids all the time. So poverty’s not an issue. It’s behavior, it’s drug-related behavior that I’m having a problem with. The people next door, who happen to be Section 8, I think are poor representations of poor people. So it’s not poverty, it’s pathology. And I’m a strong advocate that poverty does not mean pathology. Ultimately, this teacher faced the threat of violent retaliation for “snitching” on these volatile neighbors. At the time of my interview with her, she was house sitting for a friend, pending the outcome of a civil lawsuit filed against the owner of the house next door. Her goal was to get the renters evicted from the residence. She was also considering moving out of the neighborhood. This case exemplifies the fact that middle-class blacks are more likely than their white counterparts to experience residential segregation and thus to face an increase in exposure to higher rates of crime and violence, unstable neighborhoods, and potentially declining property values, all of which tend to lower their quality of life.45 The same home that she lived in might double in market value if it were located in another Oakland neighborhood. Middle-class whites are much less likely to face these kinds of issues.

CIVIC ACTIVITIES AND THE BLACK PROFESSIONAL MIDDLE CLASS Bowen and Bok have found in their research on black graduates of elite colleges, that those young, mostly middle-class blacks were much more likely to be active in civic and community affairs than their white counterparts.46 In my research, I found that the older cohort of black professionals that I was studying was also very active (both in the past and currently) in “the community.” However, the fact that they were either traditional professionals on the one hand or mainstream professional employees on the other seemed to have a great effect on the types of civic activities in which they were engaged. Specifically, black mainstream professionals were more likely to be involved in activities that were initiated through established mainstream civic institutions (e.g., the National Association for Colored People [NAACP], private foundations, and nonprofit organizations). The mainstream civic

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institutions tend to promote the integration of blacks into the predominantly white opportunity structures of society (e.g., scholarships for higher education). Alternatively, traditional professionals were more likely to be involved in activities directly within the local Oakland black community, and these activities varied depending on the particular perceived need in that community, at that time, by the person (or persons) offering the help. The connection of professional employees to “mainstream” civic organizations reflected their employment by “mainstream” employers—large corporations, non-profit agencies, and government. Indeed, it is these “core” sector institutions that provide the donations, funds, voluntary effort, publicity, and legitimacy for mainstream civic organizations and their integration-oriented civic activism. One mainstream professional employee—also an executive vice president of a large Bay Area–based corporation—typified this type of civic participation. He sat on the boards of several foundations and civic organizations that operated at both the national and local levels: I’m involved with Not For Profits . . . here in the Bay Area. I’m on the board of the East Oakland Redevelopment Center, that’s a community center in East Oakland. Most of the leadership of that board is white. It supports an organization that is in a very depressed community. I’m also on the board of the Marcus Foster Education Institute. I haven’t been very active lately. I’m the past president of that board. That’s another organization that has a very mixed membership. It’s an education fund that raises money for projects. I’m on the board of the United Negro College Fund. I was the dinner chairman for their dinner in January. And I’m going to be the dinner chair for the East Oakland Youth Development function. Most of his involvement is focused on activities that benefit some segment (i.e., economic development, youth, education, etc.) of the larger black community, either locally or nationally. Another key organization that he is a member of is the Executive Leadership Council, which is a combination black professional organization and policy think tank: It debates the current issues of the day, like affi rmative action. And hopes to frame the issue toward the members so that we can articulate—forcefully articulate the position of affirmative action to our companies since so many of us are in positions where we can influence positions in [the private sector]. The organization helps to give its members the academic framework for a lot of these issues. . . . To give you an example, one meeting we had about affirmative action, A. Leon Higginbotham gave a tremendous speech where he took us through the history of affi rmative action. It was very, very helpful to have that kind of resource, to have that kind of experience.

The Black Professional Middle Class and Community in Oakland 117 Another mainstream black professional (an attorney) and executive who discussed his civic involvement, was active in many of the same civic organizations mentioned previously. He was also involved in the NAACP and did some pro bono work for them. I asked him if he thought black professionals should be involved in civic activities. He said yes, because: The reason why is because every middle class [black] person in my opinion . . . got there on the backs of the common people whether that person admits it or not. They got there because the common people helped raise the consciousness of this nation to get them there. Whether it was the struggle from Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board of Education. Whether it was marching in the 1960s . . . those people who had traditionally been denied opportunity made it possible for them to get there. So yeah, they owe a debt they can never repay. These upper-middle-class African American mainstream professionals sought to maintain both “concrete” and “symbolic” connections to the larger black community despite being relatively more detached from older and poorer “ghetto” neighborhoods than their traditional counterparts. However, it should be noted that most of these first-generation black professionals of the civil rights era come from poor and working-class backgrounds.47 Many still have siblings or other extended family who live in poorer black neighborhoods. More research is needed to determine to what degree these factors still apply to younger generational cohorts of black professionals. To a large degree, the civic activities of this group can be described as being geared toward promoting policies that would socially reproduce black middle-class opportunities (e.g., affirmative action). This strategy was intended not just to reproduce opportunities for those who are already middle class (e.g., their children) but also to promote mobility and solidarity for poor blacks who want to become middle class. There is no way that black middle-class professionals can maintain political and cross-generational relevance to the black community unless they work to promote strategies to reproduce black access generally to important mainstream opportunity structures (e.g., higher education, political office holding, and professional and managerial jobs). Mainstream black professional employees who are involved with national foundations and civic organizations are relatively more connected to the symbolic national African American community than their traditional counterparts. In this case, there is an interest in linking the symbolic national community with concrete and local ones. The black community (like the larger, predominantly white society) is divided by social class and status distinction such as: gender, religion, age, region, and the like. National (read white) U.S. elites fi nd it important to appeal to a symbolic American society (e.g., nationalism and patriotism); as African American “elites” find it important to appeal to a symbolic national black community.48

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The Black Professional Middle Class

Each local urban black community has a history that is unique but comparable with that of other local African American communities. This includes the local civic, and political activities of a relatively race and class conscious black professional middle class. Thus, organized political and civic efforts by members of the black professional middle class to challenge the structures and practices of exclusionary closure, and to make claims to improve the quality of life for African Americans collectively occurs at both the national (symbolic) and local (concrete) levels. In this regard, traditional self-employed professionals, teachers, and clergy tend to play a somewhat different role in the black community than mainstream professional employees in terms of their civic involvements. These traditional black attorneys, physicians, clergy, and teachers are involved in direct work with clients, parishioners, patients, or students. Because of this, they provide direct professional services to residents of black communities. Also, as mentioned previously, they are more likely than professional employees to live in or near the traditional black ghetto neighborhoods. Correspondingly, their civic and volunteer activities are also more directly linked to those local communities. The choices of civic involvement are often motivated by a specific problem that they have witnessed directly from the community, and which they feel they can try to do something about. They might also work with foundations or other non-profit agencies, but they are more likely to bring together people and resources in the community to work on the problem at hand. That is, the focus of their civic and political energy is more on the level of the local/concrete community and less on the larger scale of the larger national/symbolic black community dominated by civil rights groups or national foundations. The pastor of a Baptist church in the “upper avenues” of East Oakland has steered his church for the last thirty years. In light of diminishing federal programs, his church has been at the forefront of providing “practical” non-profit social services to the community including college scholarships, housing for the elderly poor, job training for ex-felons, anger management to deter domestic violence, and day-care services, among many other things. As he puts it: If you look up and down International Blvd. (East 14th Street) you can just see the problems. People drinking wine out of a paper bag. Men standing on the corners, dope sales going on. You can see all of the pain and all of the poverty. If the church is going to part of the solution rather than a part of the problem, she has to deal with the nasty now and now. A public school teacher who lives and works in East Oakland expressed a similar sentiment. She does volunteer work in her church to help the local poor. She compared the West Oakland neighborhood where she grew up with her present neighborhood, and the challenges that existed: The blacks who live next door to me are poorer blacks. My church is Bookings AME. That’s where I have my membership. It’s on 73rd

The Black Professional Middle Class and Community in Oakland 119 Avenue [in East Oakland]. And certainly poor people are there. I sing with a choir at Taylor United Methodist, which is in West Oakland and there are poor people there. And I’ve chosen to stay here for 26 years in a poor neighborhood [in the East Oakland flatlands]. I grew up in a poor family. That’s what I know. The social factors were different. Though you were poor, it didn’t mean that you were poor in spirit or that you didn’t feel that you couldn’t do better. And I think that so many people are poor . . . and don’t see themselves as being able to do better economically. A self-employed doctor who lives in a North Oakland flatland neighborhood discussed the importance of mentoring for him. He grew up in a small rural South Carolina town. There, while he was in high school, the only black doctor for miles around found out that he wanted to be a doctor. The doctor helped him with money and personal encouragement until he fi nished his degree at a highly ranked private medical school. After he became a doctor, he returned the favor: “When I started in private practice, there was a kid here in Oakland that I took under my wing and he’s now an anesthesiologist and I used to do about the same thing that my mentor did for me, including giving him fi nancial support.” This doctor, who was the most politically conservative of my interview subjects, has a strong belief in, and practice of, civic involvement. He also created a continuing program in the East Oakland neighborhood where his practice is located. The program provides summer jobs for neighborhood youth: During the summer I have a jobs program here at my office. And welast summer I think we had eight kids employed. And I anticipate doing that again this year. We do it—it’s a yearly thing. And hopefully we can increase the number that we employ this summer. Another interesting example of civic involvement by black self-employed professionals involved an attorney who lives in the foothills of the East Oakland neighborhood of Havenscourt. He says, “you’d have to go three or four blocks until you get to the ‘poor’ people. But I ain’t that far from them [laugh].” He became concerned about the problem in the neighborhood of too many bored, idle youths hanging around during the summer. He decided to become involved in reorganizing the local youth baseball leagues. A generation or two ago Oakland youth baseball leagues produced such major league players as Frank Robinson, Joe Morgan, Vada Pinson, Rickey Henderson, Dave Stewart, and Gary Pettis. More recently, however, the traditional Little Leagues and Babe Ruth Leagues had fallen into disrepair. He got other prominent black attorneys involved in sponsoring teams. He also wrote the legal articles of incorporation that gave the troubled Babe Ruth League renewed status as a nonprofit organization and provided for financial reorganization. He has been involved for more than ten years and says:

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The Black Professional Middle Class I know one thing, when baseball season comes around, boy these kids and all the parents in the community—they love it. They’re out there every week over by Havenscourt Junior High, the field back there. All the residents of the housing projects out there, they’re out there every Saturday, every Sunday. Having a good time. We’ve got a thriving program, man. We started out with just a few teams. Now we’ve got so many teams now they have to divide it up into three different leagues. So it’s alive and well.

CONCLUSION The black middle classes (including the black professional middle class) represent a group that is often discussed, generally as a backdrop of other issues (e.g., affi rmative action, role models, underclass debate, etc.) but less frequently as a focus of empirical research in and of itself. One empirical setting that is central in understanding the status and experiences of the black professional middle class is “in the community.” This black community—or communities—is both symbolic/national and spatial/local. One such location is in Oakland and the East Bay in California. Residential segregation plays an important role as an organizing principle of black urban communities. Indeed, the black middle class is affected by both race and class segregation. These dynamics shape the life chances and experience of neighborhood life for middle-class blacks. The relationship of the black professional middle class to other (i.e., working class and poor) segments of the black community is affected by their proximity (or lack thereof) to the less well off, by their particular involvements in civic activities, church membership, and relationships with extended family members who are often poorer. Whether one’s professional work is client-based or based in large organizations (e.g., government or corporations) also plays an important role in outlook and opportunity. The differing material conditions of the two segments of black-middle-class professionals shape their experiences, ideologies, and actions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT This chapter is based on Eric S. Brown, “The Black Professional Middle Class and the Black Community,” in Kenneth Kusmer and Joe Trotter, eds., African American Urban History: The Dynamics of Race, Class, and Gender since World War II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. © 2009 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.

6

The Black Professional Middle Class and Racialized Class Politics The Rise and Fall of a Black Urban Regime in Oakland

THE POLITICS OF THE “BLACK COMMUNITY”: RACE, CLASS, AND PLACE The “black community” contains residents living in neighborhoods in many localities across the United States. In the post–civil rights era, African Americans still live primarily in residentially segregated neighborhoods.1 However, these contemporary neighborhoods are increasingly dispersed throughout the metropolis, in contrast to the more centralized ghettoes of the earlier industrial era. Life in varied black neighborhoods is shaped, to one degree or another, by shared grievances regarding racialized urban problems 2 such as poverty, unemployment, job and housing discrimination, high rates of crime, low-performing schools, inadequate local services, and the like.These social problems are concentrated disproportionately among blacks precisely because of residential segregation.3 Middle-class blacks generally tend to live in neighborhoods that are less affluent than those of middle-class whites and that are also likely to be near poor and workingclass African American neighborhoods.4 Black political activity at the local and national levels, is generally focused on efforts to solve racialized urban problems. Local black politics is shaped by the connection between concrete and symbolic black communities. 5 African Americans generally conclude—even across class lines—that they have problems that are shaped by common experiences based on race and that these require some degree of black political unity.6 This is the backdrop for the development and maintenance of “black politics.” It is an effort to use political means (electoral or protest) to give voice to perceived common grievances faced by African Americans. Racialized urban problems experienced by blacks fi lter across class, gender, age, and other intersectional lines.7 One issue is that not all blacks are “equally represented” by black politics, either at the local or national level. However, given the traditional limits of the expression of black political concerns even through “progressive” organizations and movements not specifically organized around racial identification (e.g., feminist, union-based, gay, and environmental politics), black politics remains

122 The Black Professional Middle Class an effective organizing principle for politically mobilizing African Americans in the United States.8 There are black politicians and there is black politics. It is possible for black politicians to be elected outside of black politics. Black politics involves significant engagement with the black community. Most black politicians are elected with the support of a significant proportion of black voters and must shape their message to appeal to African Americans, even if they are seeking the support of a broader electoral base. Even President Obama, arguably the most successful black politician, began his political career involved in black politics on the South Side of Chicago. However, in some cases black politicians are elected to office with little or no support from black voters.9 Because black politicians mostly rely on segments of the black community as their key constituent base, their electoral success generally relies fully or partially on what I term political segregation. This is a related offshoot of patterns of residential segregation generally experienced by blacks of varied class backgrounds. Thus the success of black politicians, like that of other black professionals, relies on providing political services to a disproportionately black clientele (or electorate in this case). Black professional middle-class politicians (elected, appointed, advisory, etc.) share a general understanding of the problems that should be solved with the black community they serve. That is, the political concerns of black politicians and black constituents are largely focused on racialized urban problems. Black politics historically has involved blacks mobilizing as outsiders participating in self-help, protests, boycotts, and social movements.10 Alternatively, African American civil rights activists like Bayard Rustin pushed for blacks to become engaged in legitimate politics and participate as insiders in the electoral system.11 In the post–civil rights era, an important form of black political expression at the local level has arisen through efforts to organize and exercise power via the black urban regime. This is an effort to combine expedient alliances in the private sector with black electoral power; it is generally led by a black-middle-class vanguard to mobilize local resources and potentially solve racialized urban problems faced by the black community.12 In the effort to mobilize black communities for collective goals, there is a jostling of African American elites and masses. There are diff erent class interests in both the real (local) and imagined (national) black communities. This is what racialized class politics is about. In order to get things done, black political leadership must mobilize the black community. There is black power in black numbers. Whether it is a social movement, urban rebellion, boycott, demonstration, or election campaign, legitimate black-middle-class leadership must make claims on behalf of the larger black community. This leadership is frequently made up of relatively wellorganized and well-placed black professionals of various stripes, including attorneys, pastors, academics, community organizers, government bureaucrats, and professional politicians.

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Through the dynamics of racialized class politics, black professional middle-class leadership generally steers black political mobilization in a direction that favors the interests of middle-class blacks relative to those of workingclass and poorer blacks. For example, the efforts of black mayors to use city affirmative action policies to secure government contracts often benefits black professional and business interests. Members of the black professional middle class are likely to feature a racialized class consciousness that fosters interests held in common as both racial and class actors in society—that is, specifically as members of the black professional middle class. However, they are generally more effective when they pursue their local political interests through efforts at mobilizing other class segments of the black community. Black mayors may genuinely seek to provide jobs for their poor and working-class constituents. However, their hands are tied because job creation is mostly the province of the private sector. Political patronage jobs are few, and local and state governments have been compelled to reduce payrolls in recent decades. These contradictions have been recognizable during the emergence and decline of the black urban regimes in many U.S. cities since the late 1960s.13

THE CHANGING CONTEXT OF LOCAL BLACK POLITICS IN THE POST–CIVIL RIGHTS ERA AND THE RISE OF BLACK MAYORS By the time of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the energy and mobilization capabilities of the famed civil rights movement had begun to dissipate. Part of this political energy was siphoned into the burgeoning Black Power movements led by organizations like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panthers. In addition, local neighborhood activism became a more prominent feature of the local black political landscape of the 1960s. In many cities, such as Oakland, there was substantial overlap between sectarian organizations like the Panthers and various community organizations. The ultimate limits of protest would be infused with newly available political rights and opportunities.14 An important outcome of reformist black power efforts was to push for the election of black officials at the local level—especially the top prize of mayor. This does not mean the crop of new black mayors that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s were all involved in the movement, nor does it mean that they worked through the existing predominantly white local political machines of the day. There were a range of strategies for black mayoral ascendancy, but the black protest movements of the late civil rights era were essential to the mobilization and organization of black voters and others, who brought black mayoralties into being from 1967 onward. Indeed, the number of black mayors in the United States increased from 2 in 1968 to 316 in 1990.15 Initially, the promotion of efforts to elect local black officials readily corresponded with black political desires for local control and self-determination

124 The Black Professional Middle Class in response to the ghetto colony model adopted by many black power organizations and activists.16 As the analogies with newly independent or developing nations suggested, the electoral process could be used to bring black politicians into local offices, where they would presumably best serve the interests of the local black community.17 The African American politicians best situated to benefit from these early political efforts in local electoral campaigns were those who had most benefited from the efforts of the civil rights movement and the new laws it spawned. These were highly accomplished African Americans who had generally received postbaccalaureate education, particularly those who had been able to pursue professional careers.18 That is, members of the black professional middle class made up the bulk of these new black mayors. Lawyers were particularly adept and successful in mayoral politics. These patterns can be glimpsed in Table 6.1. Regardless of the means by which black mayoral candidates emerged, they have been highly dependent on the mobilization of black constituents as their electoral base. Despite campaign rhetoric, black mayoral regimes have generally curtailed any tendencies toward more progressive or neighborhood-based governing agendas. One moderating influence comes in the form of downtown and other business elements that seek progrowth agendas from local governments.19 Furthermore, black mayors—whatever their political orientations—are generally seeking some level of support from nonblack voters in the form of a more diverse constituent coalition to cement the political legitimacy of their regimes. 20

Table 6.1

Aggregate Characteristics of Black Mayors Elected between 1967 and 1996 in Cities of 50,000 or More

Cohort Era

Percent with College Degree

Percent with Graduate or Professional Percent Degree Lawyers

Percent Male

Percent Percent with Prior with Prior PrivatePublicSector Sector Work Work Experience Experience

First Civil cohort, rights 1967– era 1976

94.4%

88.8%

50.0%

94.4%

39.0%

100.0%

Second cohort, 1977– 1996

92.0%

69.0%

31.0%

93.9%

57.0%

100.0%

Post– civil rights era

Source: Adapted from data in David R. Colburn, “Running for Office: African American Mayors from 1967 to 1996,” in David R. Colburn and Jeffrey S. Adler, eds., African American Mayors: Race, Politics, and the American City. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001, pp. 24–36.

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CONCEPTUALIZING AND CONTEXTUALIZING THE URBAN REGIME My application of the black urban regime concept in this chapter is focused on analyzing the political pursuits of members of the black professional middle class. In this chapter, attention to the role of the corporate and private sector interests will be relatively limited compared with other work in the urban regime tradition. For example, the historical role of powerful corporations and special government agencies in Oakland—such as the Southern Pacific Railroad, the Oakland Tribune, Clorox, Kaiser Industries, Kaiser Permanente, Bechtel, Safeway, Bank of America, BART, and the Port of Oakland, among others—have been well documented by others.21 I should also note that there have been other studies of Oakland that provide more comprehensive historical analyses of the broad historical dynamics of social movements and political change in Oakland than I will attempt here.22 Urban regime theory was developed in the 1970s and 1980s, by scholars as a response to the anomalies of pluralist and elite theories that have traditionally been applied to the problems of urban power and politics. Generally speaking, pluralists have tended to overstate the amount of power wielded by disparate plural groups in the political process. Elite theorists have generally taken a narrower instrumentalist approach to power presumably exercised only by economic powerbrokers at the top of the wealth and power pyramid. Urban regime theory focuses on the ultimate interdependence of government and nongovernment interests in resolving local social and economic problems. For Clarence Stone and other regime theorists, private interests emphasizes the role of business, but “private” is not exclusive to business interests. It can also include unions, civic groups, community organizations, and other private actors. Stone defines an urban regime as: [T]he informal arrangements by which public bodies and private interests function together in order to be able to make and carry out governing decisions. These governing decisions . . . are not a matter of running and controlling everything. They have to do with managing confl ict and making adaptive responses to social change. 23 Indeed, urban regime theorists would argue that if we look around the industrialized world, all governments have to fi nd ways to mesh the resources of the public and private sectors to deal with urban problems. 24 In recent decades in the United States, local governments have been increasingly strained by the problems of urban crisis, including deindustrialization, business disinvestment, loss of population, loss of jobs, a declining tax base, decreasing provision of municipal services, and failing public schools. 25 Correspondingly, city governments are currently weaker in terms of having the public fi nancial resources to solve local problems. It is in this context

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The Black Professional Middle Class

that private business interests have gained relatively greater power in the local arena. Local governments have become more accommodating to the interests of developers, banks, and other corporations, and have reduced their role in the direct provision of services. Instead, cities increasingly rely on tax incentives, contracting, and privatization, thus turning over many public responsibilities to the private for-profit and nonprofit sectors.26 Regime theorists also argue that politics does matter. That is, a lot goes on informally and behind the scenes, but the machinations of politics are also important to political outcomes. This approach argues that the state has some relative autonomy from powerful business interests. On the other hand, regime theorists also argue that the organization of politics in the urban regime does not facilitate large-scale popular participation and makes government less responsive to the most disadvantaged groups, such as the inner-city black working class and the poor. Regime theory shares a concern with pluralists about the complexity (different groups—different interests—different settings) and fragmentation (bureaucracy and narrow interests) of local decision making. 27 In this sense, the utility of arguments by pluralists about the bargaining process of politics is limited. Politics in complex urban systems is about establishing priorities. That is, “the issue is how to bring about enough cooperation among disparate community elements to get things done.”28 What government does, largely, is to work with or help to mobilize other institutions and actors, and in that process certain ideas and interests prevail. The different interests cooperate because they recognize a mutual dependency despite the overarching differences and confl icts that are inevitable. Of course there are still ultimate winners and losers. Business interests—including banks, developers, and realtors—are generally among the big winners.29

THE BLACK PROFESSIONAL MIDDLE CLASS AND BLACK URBAN REGIMES Stone’s study of Atlanta is an important pioneering work in the regime tradition. The book details the origins of a black urban regime in precivil rights era Atlanta. The city is a fascinating case because the black urban regime there (as in other southern cities) has its roots in the contestation of Jim Crow segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. For Stone, two groups dominate the urban regime in Atlanta. First are the important business entities that are very well organized and control important resources, such as investment capital and job creation. They are led by Coca-Cola but also include banks, utilities, department stores, and major newspapers. The second group is made up of broad segments of the black middle class. Black political leaders and mayors serve as the leadership of that group with strong support of the black clergy, who help to mobilize

The Black Urban Regime in Oakland

127

masses of black voters and thus to keep the black political leadership in power. This is a general regime pattern that is found when black mayors are elected. In Atlanta there is a long (and ongoing) history of confl ict between the nascent black middle classes and different segments of economically powerful (i.e., read “white”) business interests. Nevertheless, the two groups cooperate because there are advantages to be gained. The black middle class is enticed not only by electoral power but also jobs, small business opportunities, access to good neighborhoods, and similar resources. If the regime were broken—say by a more militant neighborhood-oriented group that gained public support—both groups would lose. At this historical moment you probably could not effectively govern the city of Atlanta without blackmiddle-class support for the regime. Given demographic and political changes, this is seemingly not the case in most large cities in the United States today; including cities that have or have had black urban regimes. As we will see, this transition has taken place in Oakland as well. Adolph Reed defi nes black urban regimes as “black-led and black-dominated administrations backed by solid council majorities.”30 This defi nition distinguishes black regimes from other urban regimes that feature figurehead black mayors but lack substantial black representation throughout the local polity (e.g., the city council, administrative bureaucracies, and the electorate itself). For example, the late Tom Bradley’s successive terms as mayor of Los Angeles would not be characterized as having formed a black urban regime. However, it is the very process by which urban regimes rise and fall (e.g., the increasing or decreasing salience of the local black electorate) that amplifies the political challenges faced by black mayors and their supporters. The rise and fall of black urban regimes has been a notable political event in recent decades. The black takeover of the mayoralties of many large cities in the United States since the late 1960s has corresponded with three major phenomena. First was the massive postwar black migration to cities in the Northeast, Midwest, and West. Later southern cities such as Atlanta, Birmingham, and others experienced similar dynamics of urban migration coupled with the expanded enfranchisement of the African American electorate in the wake of the civil rights movement. The second factor—which was largely a result of the fi rst—was the phenomenon of white flight. White households fled to the burgeoning suburbs, leaving behind increasingly black and brown inner cities. The third factor was the tremendous social unrest in the 1960s and 1970s in U.S. cities. These forms of urban political protest gave rise to black collective organization and politicization that ultimately led to the election of black mayors. The new black mayors were themselves the beneficiaries of changes in civil rights policies in terms of their own expanded educational and occupational opportunities. Some were participants in the black protests during the period between the 1950s and 1970s. 31 Most of these new mayors have

128

The Black Professional Middle Class

been members of the black professional middle class. 32 However, they traditionally have made claims to represent the black community as a whole. For the white business and political establishment these emergent blackmiddle-class politicians were a preferred alternative to the more populist, unpredictable, and radical urban working-class black activists linked to groups like the Blackstone Rangers (Chicago) or the Black Panthers in Oakland.33 Indeed, the black professionals who became mayors were typically better educated and from higher-status occupations than the white “machine” mayors that they often replaced. 34 For black mayors, their terms in office have been frequently tumultuous and short-lived; in the post–civil rights era they are frequently serving merely as transitional figures to the formation of postblack urban regimes. The rise of the black professional middle class in the post–civil rights era has also corresponded politically (including the local level) with the development of racialized class interests. These interests revolve in large part around promoting the expansion of narrow opportunity structures (i.e., social, economic, and political) for the black middle classes. That is, support for social action and policies that promote the growth and social reproduction of the black middle classes. This might include black professional access to city administrative jobs, efforts to promote black opportunity in private sector fi rms tied to the regime, and local affi rmative action programs to promote city contracts for black-owned business. As Sharon Collins has found, opportunities for the black middle class are politically rather than market-mediated.35

MEN OF TOMORROW: RACIALIZED CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE BLACK PROFESSIONAL MIDDLE CLASS IN POSTWAR OAKLAND As discussed in previous chapters, by the postwar period a traditional black professional middle class had ensconced itself in the expansion of segregated black communities in Oakland. The traditional black middle class of teachers in rapidly segregating schools, black clergy, black attorneys, and black physicians serving black students, parishioners, clients, and patients was an important catalyst for social change. In Oakland and the East Bay, this group began to effectively organize and network among itself through civic, professional, and political associations. The blending of personal, professional, and political interests within the black middle class has been a common feature of black-middle-class life since the rise of a discernible black middle class during the Great Migration era. Informal organizing by middle-class black professionals and business owners in their own racialized class interests and those of the community as a whole has been a prevalent strategy in the postwar period. An important example of this was the Oakland-based Men of Tomorrow.

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It was an organization that fi rst emerged in embryonic form in 1954. As the traditional black professional middle class grew and the prospects of black political influence also grew, so did the Men of Tomorrow. Arguably, the organization—including many southern migrants—illustrated DuBois’s progressively elitist concept of black community leadership by the “better class.”36 The Men of Tomorrow limited its membership to “adult male persons of good character and of good community and/or professional, business or occupational repute.”37 This meant that the organization was made up of a small local black male-middle-class social network of professionals and small-business owners who were “civic-minded.” The objectives of the Men of Tomorrow were rather broad involving the betterment of the community: This organization shall have as its objectives the development, by precept and example, of a more intelligent, aggressive and serviceable citizenry; to encourage and foster the recognition of the worthiness of all useful occupations and the dignifying by each member of his occupation as an opportunity to serve society through fellowship.38 The Men of Tomorrow was a nonpartisan civic organization that officially took no stand on political matters or candidates as such. 39 However, the organization was an important unofficial base for the rising black politicians and other would-be black power brokers of the day. Several members found on the 1961 Directory of Members would come to play significant roles in the political life of the local black neighborhoods, the city of Oakland, the East Bay, and in the state of California. These include important political players such as: Lionel Wilson (future Oakland mayor), Joshua Rose (future Oakland city council member), and Wilmont Sweeney (Berkeley city council member elected in 1961).40 Allen Broussard had a distinguished legal career and eventually served on the California Supreme Court.41 Men of Tomorrow and the social and political networks that it provided, was helpful in generating the notable accomplishments of these local black “fi rsts.” Additionally, a number of behind-the-scenes black political actors were part of the Men of Tomorrow. D. G. Gibson was a profoundly important black political power broker in the East Bay. He was the man behind Byron Rumford’s successful 1948 election to the California State Assembly. The election of Rumford (a pharmacist) to the California State Assembly represented the fi rst notable infringement of mainstream political institutions by the black professional middle class in Oakland. Gibson was also a key founder of the East Bay Democratic Club, which launched several of the prominent black political careers mentioned above and grasped a share of power within the mainstream Democratic Party organization in California.42

130 The Black Professional Middle Class Another important black middle class political actor in Oakland was Evilio Grillo. He was born in Florida, of black Cuban descent. Grillo was a professional social worker; he was more directly involved in community activism than Gibson but also an important behind-the-scenes political actor in the East Bay. He was central to the complex linking of segments of the liberal black political and institutional actors that emerged over time: community organizations, the NAACP, Democratic Party regulars, private foundations, Latino activists, and local, state and federal government bureaucrats.43 Norvel Smith was another Men of Tomorrow member who was involved in linking blacks to local public institutions and service (Oakland public schools, Merritt College, and the University of California) and behind-the-scenes political work in the black community of the East Bay.44 Whereas the Men of Tomorrow can be considered a key civic and nonpartisan organization for the black professional middle class in the postwar period, the East Bay Democratic Club was its political and partisan counterpart. It was an important venue for liberal mainstream-oriented political mobilization of the emergent black electorate in the postwar period in Oakland and other Northern California cities.45 These organizations would help to provide blacks in Oakland with emergent opportunities to elect local black officials from the late pre–civil rights era to the post–civil rights era. As previously mentioned, most of the early key actors in the emergence of black political expression were elected and appointed executives, legislators, and judges and behind-the-scenes operators who networked through these two key black organizations in the East Bay. The initial challenge for the early black politicos was formidable. In the postwar era, political power in Oakland was consolidated around the “Knowland machine.” Joseph Knowland, a Republican, was the wealthy and powerful owner of the Oakland Tribune and championed downtown fi nancial and commercial business interests. Knowland’s influence came to be widely felt in the state of California and in Alameda County, even before he consolidated his influence in Oakland proper. By the 1930s the Knowland machine had used its influence to initiate city charter reform and change Oakland’s governing system from the graft-ridden commission system to a late Progressive Era style council-manager system. The Knowland machine, with its white nativist middle-class base, was in confl ict with liberal and progressive political forces (e.g., organized labor, civil rights activists, and student protesters) in the state and in the city of Oakland over several decades.46 By the 1960s, African Americans in Oakland and the East Bay would begin to organize for political power. The black professional middle class would ultimately carve out a formalized political leadership role representing the black community through the emergent black urban regime. Neighborhood activists and the Black Panthers, however, largely did the work of mobilizing the mass of the black community in Oakland. Organizing on behalf of poor and working-class blacks in the flatland neighborhoods

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was no small effort. To achieve these goals, the “street activists” operated through the controversial framework of “black power,” which variously met with the hostility of the FBI, the Oakland Police Department, and local white political and business interests. The work of these activists was central in laying the foundation for the movement of blacks into the opportunity structures of mainstream institutions and eventually allowing for “responsible” elected black governance in Oakland.

POLITICAL MOBILIZATION I: WAR ON POVERTY AND “CLASS CONFLICT” IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY As the black proportion of Oakland’s population swelled during the 1960s, new pressures for black political participation and representation were being expressed. The rising black professional middle class was making its claims to represent the mostly excluded black community in the local politics of Oakland and the East Bay. However, class divisions in the black community were evident. In the South, the civil rights movement appeared to cement cross-class black unity in the effort to overthrow Jim Crow. At the same time in northern cities, black communities were faced with similar problems, including discrimination in employment and housing, residential segregation, joblessness, poverty, police brutality, and inadequate schools. In northern (and western) cities, black political unity was seemingly more questionable and class and ideological differences were apparent.47 In the South, blacks mobilized locally under the rubric of the larger civil rights movement.48 In northern cities, blacks also organized against segregation, discrimination, and racial inequality. In the North, charismatic leaders like Malcolm X and groups like the Black Panthers had goals of creating a larger and more cohesive movement based on “black power,”49 but this did not come to full fruition. Without an overarching shared condition such as Jim Crow, it was difficult to mobilize blacks along singular lines of collective racial interest. Northern black protest was largely splintered along local, neighborhood, class, and sectarian lines. 50 Although black-power ideology and praxis had national and even international (i.e., pan-African) dimensions, most organized efforts at black protest or “struggle” in northern cities became centered at the local and neighborhood levels. By the late 1960s the civil rights movement proper had dissipated and given way to the more salient but fleeting expressions of “black power” and “community activism” throughout the United States.51 This dynamic is also found in the growth of black social activism in Oakland during the 1960s and 1970s. West Oakland formed the traditional heart of the black community and the center of efforts of poor and working class blacks to collectively mobilize on their own behalf in the city. These organizing efforts varied in form and substance, but one notable

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example centered on the local execution of federal Great Society programs during the 1960s. Activists organizing on behalf of poor and workingclass blacks in West Oakland came into confl ict with various social forces, including federal policymakers, white political leadership in Oakland, downtown business interests, and in some contexts the black professional middle class. These different groups sought to capture and administer the federal programs for their own varied political purposes.52 In the late 1960s and 1970s, the Oakland Project, carried out by political scientists at the University of California at Berkeley, produced a series of studies that considered the structure, actors, and efficacy of the Great Society programs that were implemented in Oakland, including the Ford Foundation grants, Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) policies, and Model Cities programs. 53 The studies of the Oakland Project also raised critical insights into the kinds of local political participation that were encouraged by those federal policies. On the other hand, many other analysts of the period were intrinsically critical of the participatory characteristics of the Great Society and raised tropes about the “culture” of the poor, suggesting that too much power was being given to the poor through the antipoverty programs. 54 Nevertheless, community action was a significant dimension of the OEO programs in expanding the possibilities for increasing black participation and representation in the political life of Oakland. This was the “maximum feasible participation” called for by the Johnson administration, and it was in effect in the flatland neighborhoods—particularly West Oakland. The Oakland Economic Development Council (OEDC) was the local organization created and sanctioned by Mayor John Houlihan to operate as the city’s official Community Action Agency in 1965. The emergence of black community activism in West Oakland during the civil rights era was initially independent of federal policies in Washington but ultimately abetted by them. Much of the political contention concerned whether the Great Society policies would be implemented as conventional Keynesian policies to promote economic “growth” (i.e., boost demand in ways that generally benefited dominant economic actors) or to promote genuine “redistribution” of resources to the black urban poor in particular.55 For example, would Model Cities funds be primarily used to expand the capacities of the Port of Oakland, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), the Oakland Airport, and the City Center project, or would such resources be used primarily to help produce jobs, affordable housing, and neighborhood development for poor and working-class residents in the flatland neighborhoods? This was the fundamental political question for black activists and residents in poorer black neighborhoods in West Oakland and other flatland neighborhoods. For the most part, downtown and black neighborhood interests seemed fundamentally incompatible. In this political void, prominent professional middle-class blacks were well positioned to play a significant role on the

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OEDC board, which would oversee the implementation of the OEO and Model Cities programs in Oakland. Many members of the black professional middle class were well situated within key institutions and sites such as professional practices that served the black community, civic organizations (e.g., the NAACP), and city government positions. These politically networked middle-class black leaders were able to position themselves as responsible mediators between the black community (i.e., working-class and poor African Americans in the flatlands) and the forces of white public and private power, which ruled the city. 56 The black professional middle class in Oakland was relatively small and marginal to mainstream institutions, so any effort at creating an independent political base involved their being linked to the numerical strength of the larger black community. However, from the point of view of powerful white business and political interests, dealing with middle-class black leadership was decidedly preferable, and far less politically threatening, than becoming involved with representatives of the black working class and poor, who wanted their fair share of power in the city. Houlihan appointed several black professional middle-class members to the OEDC from the circles of the East Bay Democratic Club, the Men of Tomorrow, and the local NAACP branch. These representatives included future mayor Lionel Wilson as OEDC chairman, Norvel Smith, Clinton White, and Don McCullum (from the NAACP).57 Mayor Houlihan resigned suddenly in April of 1966. 58 Lionel Wilson was able to wrest real control of the council from John Reading, Houlihan’s replacement as mayor.59 By this point Wilson was professionally successful and moving into mainstream circles traditionally closed to blacks. He was an Alameda County Superior Court judge and the fi rst black on the Oakland Museum Board. Wilson was, however, challenged by some black representatives from the Neighborhood Advisory Committees (NAC). The committees were designed to provide political input and voice from the people in the West Oakland neighborhoods. The NAC activists highlighted black class distinctions with Wilson and other middle-class blacks who were to represent them concerning problems of unemployment, poverty, and community development in West Oakland. Wilson made the point to the activists of his own poor working-class origins in West Oakland. The OEDC did eventually accede to the demands of community organizers to allow a 51 percent representation on the council from the neighborhood committees.60 These events helped to produce a volatile “intraracial” crossclass alliance between middle-class black representatives on the OEDC and black working-class representatives of the West Oakland neighborhoods—an alliance that would soon find itself internally conflicted and in confl ict with the white establishment. A key battleground over the political direction of Great Society programs in Oakland involved the Model Cities program. Model Cities was specifically concerned with promoting community control over local

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economic and community development projects. Many African Americans complained that conventional “urban renewal” was more likely to displace neighborhood residents than to serve their interests. Model Cities was funded through the recently created (1965) Department of Housing and Urban Development. Grants were focused at the neighborhood level for the promotion of local jobs, small business programs, and local social services designed to benefit poorer residents. The organization formed to provide representation for the residents of West Oakland was the West Oakland Planning Committee (WOPC). Model Cities was supposed to exemplify the concept of “maximum feasible participation” by promoting the idea of local redevelopment with local control.61 Mayor Reading and the business interests he represented voiced strong opposition to the idea of black neighborhood control of OEDC. Reading and his political fellow travelers were also hostile to OEDC efforts to redefine the objectives of promoting more job opportunities for the poor along redistributive lines rather than through conventional growth objectives. The increased confl ict between the goals of the black community, as defi ned by the OEDC, and the political status quo as represented by the mayor and key business interests led the OEDC to declare itself an independent nonprofit organization renamed the Oakland Economic Development Council Incorporated (OEDCI) in 1967. This at least gave them nominal independence from the power of the mayor and the city council. The new executive director of the OECDI was Percy Moore, a native of West Oakland and a key mover in the effort to actualize true community control of the Model Cities program by sidestepping the mayor and city council. Moore would become a polarizing figure who was ultimately at odds with mayor Reading, the Office of Economic Opportunity, and moderate middle-class blacks on the OEDCI, including Lionel Wilson, the board chairman who had appointed him,.62 Moore’s tenure as executive director of OEDCI highlighted the ideological split between a black-middle-class liberal agenda (represented by people like Lionel Wilson and former OEDC executive director Norvel Smith) and that of younger, neighborhood-based activists like Moore and those in the WOPC. Moore attempted to put the idea of black power into practice through community-based activism and electoral politics. In doing so, he sought to completely sidestep the city administration of mayor Reading and the city council, which was hostile to efforts to promote the redistribution of resources to black neighborhoods in Oakland. These efforts included an audacious plan to essentially reallocate jobs to unemployed Oakland residents and away from white suburbanites, who held most of the private- and public-sector jobs in the city of Oakland. This would be accomplished by means of locally controlled central labor committees.63 After the Johnson administration left power in 1969, the War on Poverty was scaled back in Washington. Indeed, Republicans held the office of the president, governor of California, and mayor of Oakland. All were

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hostile to “black power” (especially but not exclusively in the form of the Black Panthers) and the disruptions caused by the community action programs. The withering rhetorical and fiscal attack on the OEDCI reached its culmination in 1971, when Moore announced that he planned to use OEDCI funds to directly support a campaign for city council seat by Stephen Brooks, the OEDCI community services director. This move was a violation of federal campaign spending laws. OEDCI refused to reconsider its decision. That was all that was needed for Governor Ronald Reagan Reagan and the OEO in Washington to pull the plug on federal grant funding of OEDCI, which subsequently ceased to exist as Oakland’s community action agency.64 This result effectively ended the role of community action programs in black protest politics in Oakland. The feat of linking preexisting black community protest politics in Oakland to the federal community action programs gave these activist efforts unexpected resources. On the other hand, it tied black community activists too closely to the federal programs, which were clearly not designed in Washington to be the vehicles of radical change desired by the activists in Oakland. Nonetheless, the termination of OEDCI was a significant setback for black power activists in West Oakland and elsewhere in the city. This outcome highlighted the difficult balancing act between protest and “legitimate” electoral politics. Another area of tension for this version of black power politics was the search for putative black unity, which was stymied by ideological and class differences in the black community. Much of the political vanguard of the black professional middle class, which was making its way into mainstream politics, was at odds with the kind of community action–based black power politics in the service of working–class and poorer blacks. However, there was another, more radical track of black power politics that was also driving efforts at social change in Oakland in the 1960s and 1970s: the Black Panthers.

POLITICAL MOBILIZATION II: THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY FOR SELF-DEFENSE AND THE RISE OF BLACK ELECTORAL POLITICS IN OAKLAND The Black Panther Party for Self Defense was born in West Oakland in 1966. It was cofounded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, who personally epitomized what might be termed the expressive black political anger of that era. Black Panther Party efforts to mobilize blacks in Oakland were highly contentious. Black Panther politics combined an ideology of black nationalism (derived from the Students’ Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Malcolm X), Maoist ideas of revolutionary socialism, and claims to armed community self-defense within an incendiary framework of praxis that would alarm the local and national political establishments

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(and most whites in general).65 The Black Panthers would be sensationalized in the media for several reasons including the misogyny of men in the party, criminality, the cult of personality surrounding Newton, and the legacy of Panther violence visited upon the police, political foes, and amongst the Panthers themselves.66 The Black Panthers famously issued their ten-point program, which enumerated their political agenda for the black liberation struggle.67 More generally, the Panthers sought to mobilize and speak for the working class and “lumpen” elements of the black community.68 They were known for providing a breakfast program for children, day-care services, school lunches, shoes, and clothes for the poor. They were also known for standing up to police violence and abuse by patrolling the police presence in black neighborhoods—an idea that resonated with young black males in Oakland’s flatland neighborhoods. Working-class and lumpen blacks have generally been seen as “threatening” in political (and other) terms by white business and political elites. By the professional middle-class leaders of the black community, they are seen as a base of support. This would become one of the key problems of the emergent middle class led black urban regimes: having to mobilize electoral support from poor and working-class blacks without ceding too much of the policy agenda to their interests. Of course the federal government responded to the Black Panthers with its counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) in order to combat the organization as a designated threat to national security. As has been documented, COINTELPRO involved espionage, planting evidence, utilizing informants and agents provocateurs, false convictions, targeting subjects for assassination, and other extralegal methods to destabilize the BPP and other radical organizations in the 1960s and 1970s. These efforts were frequently coordinated with state and local officials and police agencies.69 The Panthers also had numerous run-ins with the Oakland Police Department (OPD), including the noted shootout in which seventeen-year-old Bobby Hutton was killed.70 One important result of COINTELPRO and local police confrontations was that they fostered internecine sectarian confl ict within the Black Panther Party and also led to confl ict between the Panthers and other black organizations, such as US, led by Ron Karenga. For example, as the Oakland-based Black Panthers organized chapters in other cities, conflicts between Panther branches in different cities—particularly Oakland and Los Angeles—became prevalent. These “party splits” were promoted and readily exploited by the FBI to undermine the viability of the Panthers.71 As the “revolution” unraveled, it helped to push the Black Panthers and other black power activists in cities around the United States toward a path of less resistance—that is, toward electoral politics.72 Given the internal political turmoil in which the Panthers were embroiled and Newton’s increasing problems with drugs, violent behavior, and criminal indictments, by 1972 much of the day-to-day leadership of the Panthers

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had passed to Seale (chairman) and Elaine Brown (information minister).73 However, Newton remained the unquestioned leader of the BPP as minister of defense. The Panthers decided to wage campaigns for elected office in Oakland in 1973. The party decided to capitalize on the personal notoriety of Seale and Brown. They became candidates for Oakland mayor and city council, respectively. The BPP would put extensive party funds into these two campaigns.74 These populist campaigns for office garnered significant support in the black community and among progressives in the city. They endorsed a “people’s plan” that proposed to emphasize the needs of the neighborhoods over the interests of “downtown” and the growing economic importance of the Port of Oakland. They called for increased taxes on businesses to facilitate the redevelopment of poorer neighborhoods and expand needed public services. Seale, Brown, and the Panther rank and file produced an impressive neighborhood-level organizing effort in the poor black flatland neighborhoods of East, West, and North Oakland to register voters. In fact, these registration efforts would greatly exceed the efforts of the Wilson campaign four years later. Seale managed to get into a runoff with Reading. However, Reading prevailed and won another term as mayor. Seale received 36 percent of the vote, which was more than most expected for a candidate from the Black Panther Party. Elaine Brown (who would replace the expelled Seale as BPP chairman in 1974) came close to beating black incumbent council member Joshua Rose for a seat on the city council representing West Oakland.75 The Panthers were able to claim a degree of symbolic success when they veered down the path of electoral “reformism.” The 1973 campaign of Bobby Seale for mayor of Oakland fell well short in terms of electoral tally but proved a challenge to the political establishment in Oakland. White business and political elites were made nervous by the prospect of looming black electoral dominance in the city. On the other hand, the Black Panther effort to capture Oakland’s city hall was also a further challenge to the claims of black professional middle class leadership of the local black community. One of the questions in the 1970s for black power expressed both as a social movement and electoral politics in Oakland was how would it relate to predominantly white mainstream economic and political institutions? Another question was how to unite the black community and its various social intersections? This included uniting divisions between a more established black professional middle class with proper credentials, social capital, networks, and the beginnings of access to mainstream institutions with the interests and needs of the larger African American public. The fate of the OEDCI demonstrated the limits of independent black power operating within the regular political institutions—in this case, the city of Oakland’s community action agency. Moore and his WOPC activist allies were able to “capture” a mainstream political institution and sought

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to mobilize it—with public funding—primarily for the benefit of traditionally neglected black residents of Oakland. This was an audacious political effort at black power reform, which quickly roused the opposition of elite power brokers. Ultimately institutions of executive authority at the federal, state, and local levels worked together to expel this expression of independent black power from the formal institutions of the body politic. The decimation of the Black Panther Party would illustrate the far harsher and violent rejection by the state to black power in its revolutionary form. These two black power struggles had sought to promote the interests of poor and working-class blacks in particular. Arguably, all of this presented lessons at the time for relatively wellplaced members of the black professional middle class about how black power could be legitimately constituted and how far it could push the boundaries of acceptable political activity. A more watered down and less politically threatening version of “black power” that would be ultimately acceptable would come in the form of the black urban regime—that is, as long as the regime accepted the hegemony of private capital and did not challenge the prerogatives of the mainstream political parties in electoral politics. To answer the questions above, this more “legitimate” expression of black power would work within mainstream institutions without attempting to significantly reform them, and the black professional middle class would exercise leadership in this political venture.

LIONEL WILSON AND THE RISE OF THE BLACK URBAN REGIME IN OAKLAND Lionel Wilson was typical of many black Oakland citizens of his generation in that he was a migrant, having come to Oakland from New Orleans as a child. He was raised in the African American community in West Oakland and graduated from McClymonds High School. He was atypical because he became one of the few black attorneys in the East Bay in the pre–civil rights era. He earned his law degree from the Hastings School of Law at the University of California at San Francisco. His appointment to the Alameda County Municipal Court in 1960 and later the county Superior Court in 1965 served to groom him for future electoral office.76 Wilson’s work with the OECD was both frustrating and instructive. It provided him with important new connections in the black community, including links with neighborhood activists and the Black Panthers. In Oakland, Lionel Wilson transformed black and progressive campaign support for Black Panther Bobby Seale in the 1973 mayoral election into his own victory in 1977 even as he sought to move beyond the specific interests of the black community to larger issues of economic development and a multiracial Oakland public. This characterizes the efforts of black mayors as the society moved toward the post–civil rights era. The failed

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1973 Bobby Seale campaign functioned to organize the black electoral base in a rehearsal for Wilson’s 1977 mayoral campaign. As in other cities, a black mayoral campaign was compelled to reach out to the broader urban citizenry and to the particular interests of business, both large and small. Varied and confl icting constituencies backed Wilson’s successful initial run for mayor of Oakland. Besides the Black Panthers efforts, this included black community activists, organized labor, white progressives, and the regular Democratic Party organization. All of these groups were united in forming a winning Democratic coalition to defeat the remnants of Republican power. Wilson’s successful campaign was designed to be mainstream and pull together a broader coalition than that of Bobby Seale’s campaign in 1973. On May 17, 1977, Lionel Wilson was ready for his big opportunity. He defeated Dave Tucker, the Republican candidate, and became the fi rst black mayor of Oakland. Despite his groundbreaking victory, Wilson’s staid middle-class, probusiness campaign was less inspiring to those seeking a more progressive candidate. Voter turnout for the 1977 mayoral election was down compared with 1973, as the stakes were far different. Both progressives and conservatives appear to have stayed away from the polls for the triumph of Wilson, the black moderate. As Rod Bush puts it: However, neither was Wilson a particularly exciting candidate, nor one who could mobilize the black community. Thus turnout in the primary was only 46%, and in the runoff only 52%. Wilson drew 42,640 votes to Tucker’s 36,925; both candidates received fewer votes in actual numbers than Bobby Seale in the 1973 runoff. Wilson of course drew upon Seale’s strength, doing best in North Oakland, West Oakland, and East Oakland, the areas where the Panther campaign had been strongest. There was further consolidation of the working-class vote behind Wilson: in some working class precincts he pulled 97% of the votes cast. At the same time, there was an astounding drop in the conservative vote, from 77,000 votes for Reading to 33,000 for Tucker.77 Despite low turnout, Wilson still had political coattails. That, and the changing post-Migration demographics of Oakland, helped to push politics in the East Bay farther away from the past heyday of Republican rule. In 1979 a small progressive grouping emerged from East Bay elections. Wilson Riles Jr. became another black member of the Oakland City Council representing East Oakland under the progressive banner. Tom Bates, a white progressive, was elected to the State Assembly from Berkeley. John George was elected as the fi rst African American member of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. In addition, Ron Dellums was reelected to Congress. This small collection of progressives would sometimes support and sometimes oppose Wilson’s agenda from the left.78

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The large black electoral plurality in Oakland was paying political dividends for Wilson and the black urban regime. Wilson made dramatic changes in terms of minority appointments to key offices in his administration. He appointed Henry Gardner as the fi rst black Oakland city manager, and his old friend Norvel Smith as the second black member of the Oakland Port Commission (Wilson’s mentor Tom Berkeley was appointed by Mayor Reading). Smith would eventually serve as president of the commission. Wilson appointed far more minorities and women to leadership positions in city departments and on commissions in the city than his predecessor had done. Outside of city hall during Wilson’s administration, Oakland also saw the arrival of several other accomplished black professional “fi rsts.” Robert Maynard become fi rst black publisher of the Oakland Tribune. The Oakland Museum appointed its fi rst black director, and the Oakland Symphony appointed the fi rst black conductor.79 Aside from his black political appointees, Wilson was able to incorporate key elements of the black professional middle class into his regime. These included black pastors (and their congregations), black-middle-class political actors (e.g., the East Bay Democratic Club), other black politicians who were linked to the regime, black professionals and middle-class blacks seeking employment by the city or in the private sector, and black business interests looking for access to government contracts. This was accomplished in part by “minority equity,” which was adopted as a theme of Wilson’s affi rmative action policy.”80 For working-class and job-seeking Oakland citizens (blacks and others), Wilson mostly pushed private sector investment and development as an employment strategy. Voters reelected Wilson in 1981, as he solidified his local power base. In 1980, the city of Oakland, with Wilson’s support, adopted district elections for the city council to replace “at large” elections.81 This introduced a more popular basis for council membership and increased the chance of electing blacks to the city council. Indeed, by 1983 there was a black majority on the Oakland City Council. Wilson had already formed effective working majorities in the council to pursue his agenda before the black majority was reached. Rather, the black majority sometimes helped to raise cumbersome “neighborhood” issues that took a decided back seat on Wilson’s agenda. This allowed some political activists to give voice to concerns about neighborhood neglect by the Wilson administration. In fact, Wilson was fully aware of the priority of wooing business interests and melding the agendas of the public and private sectors in the city. On the day after his fi rst election, Wilson stated as much to the Oakland Tribune: My administration is not and will not be anti-business and I don’t interpret my election as a repudiation of business. I never at any time during my campaign took that kind of position. I’ve said all along that I felt

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that I have a history of being able to work with those people. I expect to have strong support and cooperation from the business community.82 Whereas some traditional Republican business elements were cool toward him, in his pursuit of the mayor’s office Wilson did have fi nancial campaign support from key corporate interests, including Clorox and Pacific Gas and Electric.83 Such major corporate support demonstrated that Wilson was sufficiently probusiness and certainly not captured by his blackworking-class electoral base. Wilson also relied on campaign funds from developers and realtors, who provide the traditional campaign war chests for local politicians.84 Despite whatever hopes neighborhood activists and other left-leaning Wilson supporters may have held about a more daring and progressive political agenda, Wilson gave priority to the interests of business for the same reason that previous mayoral regimes did: the vast majority of economic resources of the private sector.85 Thus Lionel Wilson’s ability to solidify his black electoral base—even with relatively low election turnout—and to keep important business interests happy was key to the viability of the black urban regime in Oakland. He was able to craft winning majorities in council votes, often with or without a majority of support from black council members. His agenda was generally acceptable to Republican council holdovers Dick Spees and Frank Ogawa—particularly when issues of downtown development were at stake.86 The issue of confl icting interests between “downtown” and “the neighborhoods” remained prevalent throughout Wilson’s three terms in office. Many Wilson supporters felt that a black mayor should be particularly focused on the problems of poor and working-class black neighborhoods in the West Oakland and East Oakland flatlands. By the time Wilson decided to seek his third term as mayor in 1985, he faced a challenge from former protégé Wilson Riles Jr. Riles was a progressive maverick on the Oakland city council with loose ties to the Dellums-Bates-George “machine.” Riles failed to gain valuable support from Dellums (who stayed formally neutral) or the Oakland electorate as a whole. Riles had tried to organize his own base of black flatlanders and white progressives through the Oakland Progressive Political Alliance (OPPA), but he was up against an entrenched and well-funded incumbent mayor.87 Wilson was now the mayor, backed by business competing against the progressive, neighborhood-oriented Riles. In the 1987 council elections, Riles and OPPA backed three progressive candidates, and all three lost. They were unable to compete with the fi nancial resources and political reach of the Wilson regime.88 Wilson’s third mayoral victory indicated that his regime had intensified the process of black political incorporation that was established in his second term and suggested that it was solidified around its select black professional middle-class inner circle, black multiclass electoral base, multiethnic liberal voters, and always hegemonic business interests.89 By the mid-1980s

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the question of development was the agenda for the city. Developers, realtors, investors, major corporations, and smaller commercial businesses were all behind the downtown development agenda. Middle-class black professionals were in search of access to mainstream mobility opportunities in either the public or private sector, and many working-class blacks were in search of jobs in general. This was the typical private sector–led urban development approach based on the assumption that cities are primarily designed to be “growth machines.”90 Oakland—like many cities in the United States—was attempting to make its transition from a manufacturing center to a postindustrial city. As discussed in Chapter 2, Oakland was at one time considered the “Detroit” of the West Coast, with railroads, steel foundries, auto plants, shipyards, warehouses, and other industrial activities at the center of its economic life. Deindustrialization had taken its toll on Oakland and left many of its citizens—particularly the black poor, in search of jobs.91 The ability of the service-based economy to meet the employment needs of large, economically dispossessed populations has been problematic. The rise of a service economy has produced many well-paying professional, technical, and managerial jobs. Alternatively, it also produces retail and other consumer services that tend to generate minimum or low-wage compensation while, as compared with earlier periods, not producing the needed volume of living-wage jobs for working-class people. Nevertheless, postindustrialism has become the centerpiece of economic activity, and in Oakland, downtown development was literally at the center of this agenda. Redevelopment is the buzzword for the succession of new investment, new construction, and fi nally the new inhabitants of the office towers, retail spaces, public parks, and upscale housing serving to rebuild urban space in Oakland.92 Preceding much of the redevelopment was the “creative destruction” of old buildings and neighborhoods. Initial redevelopment attention in the 1950s and 1960s went into the urban renewal of West Oakland. The federal government passed the housing acts of 1949 and 1954, which underwrote urban renewal projects to remedy blight in cities across the country.93 In Oakland, the poorest neighborhoods of the West Oakland ghetto were seen as logical starting points for the infrastructural, commercial, and residential redevelopment of the city as a whole (including its tax base).94 A major downtown development project that was cast as a villain by neighborhood activists was the City Center project.95 This project existed in different incarnations since 1967, when the city council provided a transfer of $3 million in federal funds from another redevelopment plan; the West Oakland-Downtown “Corridor” project. In 1969 an early version of the City Center project envisioned the transformation of twenty-five blocks of downtown space. Initial development of the City Center plan included a fi rst low-rise office building in 1973. The modernist Clorox Building office tower was opened in 1976 as the company’s headquarters. After that, other

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aspects of the development plan were stalled for several years, including a planned commercial mall area. Setbacks in development and withdrawal of potential tenants at the City Center site occurred despite the infusion of more than $300 million from a combination of federal funds, municipal loans, and private investment.96 By the time Wilson was in his third term as mayor, the City Center project was continuing to develop. There was essentially a hole in the middle of downtown where space had been cleared for new construction of office and retail space. Financially strapped Grubb and Ellis—commercial real estate developers—sold 80 percent of their share of the redevelopment project to Bromalea Limited, a Toronto-based company. The major commercial construction company Bechtel dropped out of the project because its own business faced financial difficulties at the time. The retail side of the City Center project also dropped plans for a major mall and downscaled to a smaller plan for retail, such as eateries and other stores. The existing office space was filling while developers waited for the construction of the two main towers that would eventually anchor the City Center. Nevertheless, Mayor Wilson remained optimistic about the major downtown development plan. “City Center has been on the boards for many, many years. But in the past six months, we’ve seen a lot of action. Things are starting to come together now.”97 Lionel Wilson spent much of his political capital trying to redevelop downtown Oakland. The City Center project was central to this, expanding office space and corporate settlement in downtown. There were also efforts to expand commercial investment downtown—keeping and expanding an anchor department store in the downtown near the central nexus of Telegraph Avenue and Broadway. Oakland’s major downtown department store, Emporium Capwell, was heavily damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and boarded up; it ultimately disappeared from the Oakland scene. In formulating his redevelopment strategies, Wilson relied heavily on economic advice from select faculty from the University of California in neighboring Berkeley. These redevelopment goals were wrapped in a series of city plans that went back to the 1950s.98 Mayor Wilson’s emphasis on downtown development— whatever the merits or demerits—were in conflict with solving problems faced by poorer residents in the “neighborhoods” (e.g., jobs, crime, poor schools, affordable housing, etc.). Growing discontent in the flatlands with Wilson’s inability to put a dent in those problems became more apparent. After three terms, it was probably time for the seventy-four-year-old public servant to retire gracefully.

STILL RISING? ELIHU HARRIS INHERITS THE BLACK URBAN REGIME IN OAKLAND Lionel Wilson decided to run for a fourth term as mayor of Oakland. Apparently voters were ready for someone else to be mayor. Wilson lost

144 The Black Professional Middle Class badly in the 1990 mayoral primary, coming in third in a multicandidate race. The field was narrowed in the runoff election to perennial mayoral candidate and local progressive stalwart Wilson Riles Jr. and his opponent, state assemblyman Elihu Harris.99 The election of either would assure the continuity of the black urban regime in Oakland. Harris, the better-funded “establishment” candidate endorsed by the Oakland Tribune, fi nally won. Harris was raised in Berkeley and graduated from Berkeley High School in 1965. His father was a mortician, known for providing services to the East Bay’s black middle class. Both Harris and Riles (son of the fi rst black California state superintendent of schools) were from middle-class backgrounds. Harris received his bachelor’s degree in political science from California State University at Hayward. He later obtained a master’s degree in public administration from Berkeley. Finally, he earned his law degree from the University of California at Davis in 1972.100 Both mayoral candidates had also belonged to the progressive Niagara Democratic Club in the 1960s.101 However, Harris emerged as the more acceptable moderate and “pragmatic” politician. In his earlier days, Harris was a student at Merritt College and met Huey Newton. He was asked about his view of Newton after Newton was shot to death in West Oakland in 1989. Newton was both revered and reviled in his hometown of Oakland, so Harris’s sentiment about Newton was not an uncommon one. It does serve, however, to demonstrate the political distance put by some “second generation” black elected officials (who indirectly benefited from past political mobilization) between themselves and the controversial legacy of black power activists. By contrast, Lionel Wilson (whose worlview certainly differed from Newton’s) always acknowledged the role that the Panthers had played in his own election as mayor in 1977. As Harris dryly put it: I remember him saying that he liked Cuba because everybody had a gun. That’s when I decided I didn’t want to be part of that group. Newton was a larger than life figure, romanticized by some. Some people would argue that Huey’s been dead a long time, and his body just caught up with the situation.102 By the time he considered running for mayor, Harris had lived in Oakland for many years. Yet he had not done his “political apprenticeship” in city politics or been directly linked to the black urban regime. Rather, he served in the California State Assembly from 1978 to 1990 representing Oakland and other parts of the East Bay comprised by the 13th district. He was tied to the John Burton–Willie Brown machine in San Francisco, which was a dominant force in Democratic Party politics in the Bay Area and in the California legislature. Perhaps because he was an “outsider” to Oakland city politics, Harris had been considered Wilson’s preferred successor (over Oakland council member Leo Bazile) at one point.103

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Nevertheless, it was Harris who inherited the black urban regime founded by Wilson. As did Wilson, Harris would have to navigate the hostile political terrain between the expectations of his base in the black community on the one hand, and those of the larger public and powerful business interests on the other. This political tension had been the undoing of Wilson and represented a looming challenge for Harris when he took office in January of 1991. During the mayoral campaign in 1990, Harris released an “Issues for 1990” document that described his policy positions on key issues for Oakland. The fi rst four of the nine issues in the document are, in order: education, economic development, the Port of Oakland, and neighborhood reinvestment. At the center of all of these “position papers” was an underlying emphasis on economic growth and investment. The section on economic development seemed to smartly question the large “pie in the sky” downtown retail plan that the Wilson administration initially negotiated with developer James Rouse. While pursuit of downtown development to revitalize Oakland was also central for Harris, less emphasis was put on conventional anchor-store commerce. Large retailers were mostly not interested in settling in disproportionately poor and black Oakland when suburban malls beckoned. In another section on economic development, the plan emphasizes Oakland’s role in the regional development of the Bay Area. In addition to downtown development, the document also emphasizes reorganizing the Port of Oakland.104 In his fi rst year in office, Harris faced the “Oakland fi restorm.” This event was partly a result of the unique terrain, flora, and demography of many California cities that contain hills and flatlands. A small brush fi re near Grizzly Peak Boulevard grew into a massive conflagration that spread from the edge of Berkeley into the neighborhoods of the North Oakland hills during the fall of 1991. These neighborhoods contained mostly white, affluent residents who lived in the urban wooded hills that are spatially separated from the homes of the less prosperous residents of the flatland neighborhoods of North Oakland below. Twenty-five people died, nearly 3,000 homes were destroyed, and total damages were estimated at $1.5 billion.105 On top of this, the city was still attempting to deal with the need for reconstruction after the disaster of the 1989 earthquake. That massive disaster had caused the collapse of much of the 880 overpass in West Oakland and heavily damaged the vitally important Bay Bridge. Harris was accepted as politically moderate and probusiness by important business actors in the Oakland scene. This included the African American Admiral Robert Toney, who served as president of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce. Harris was able to ingratiate himself with important members of the Bay Area’s New Ways Leadership Forum, a network of 100 or so business leaders who would contribute $500 each to political fundraising and in turn were in a position to offer policy advice to the mayor. “The forum’s steering committee meets once a month to give the mayor advice on topics ranging from the port to press relations and housing.”106

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The Black Professional Middle Class

As Harris began to forge his own economic strategies for the city, he, like Wilson, entertained advice from faculty at the University of California at Berkeley. A group of urban planning and policy advocates on the Berkeley campus was constituted as the University-Oakland Metropolitan Forum, which, in a report initially produced for the Wilson administration, recommended policy for 1991. But of course Harris was elected instead. The report neatly summarized Oakland’s positional problem as part of the larger regional Bay Area economy. Not surprisingly, it identified San Francisco as the “traditional center” of the region. It also pointed out that San Francisco was an important diversified service center “possessing a strong corporate headquarters and office base, especially for the fi nancial, insurance, and real estate sectors.”107 These sectors are central to the core of the postindustrial economy and were lacking as a base across the bay in Oakland. Instead, Oakland had traditionally been a manufacturing, transportation, and warehouse center. The forum’s recommendations for Oakland were suggestive of the policies that Harris would pursue: [Oakland] cannot compete with San Francisco for corporate headquarter locations because it lacks the required sophisticated and diversified business service base. Recent shifts in back office location have also passed over Oakland. Nonetheless, within the East Bay economy, Oakland remains a major node of economic activity, a function that will be strengthened with the revitalization of the downtown core. The buildout of the redevelopment area will greatly increase Oakland’s attraction for offices, retail, and other commercial development which, will in turn, strengthen its economic base. The key to Oakland’s future lies in strengthening its position as the East Bay’s regional, governmental, and distributive center.108 Even with the ongoing City Center project, Oakland had difficulty attracting major corporations to settle into its underutilized office space downtown. In terms of major retail, the city had difficulty attracting significant investment into the retail space set aside at the City Center and elsewhere downtown. Even Sears closed its monolithic Art Deco uptown store at 26th and Telegraph. It had originally opened in 1929. Combined with the previous closure of Emporium Capwell, this left Oakland without a major department store. However, Sears would return to downtown in 1996, taking over the old Emporium Capwell location and targeting a market of “medium scale” and bargain-hunting minority shoppers that could easily be found in Oakland.109 Harris recalibrated Oakland’s efforts at downtown development by luring government services and focusing on making Oakland a central location for government offices. What would eventually become the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building housing offices of the General Services Administration would begin during Harris’s fi rst term as mayor.

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Congressman Ron Dellums worked behind the scenes to see that the project was located in Oakland rather than San Francisco. This twin tower provided 4,000 jobs, and the office building would help to fi ll in the “holes in the ground” that existed at 13th and Clay Street, as the City Center Project had long struggled to fi nd corporate interest in locating in downtown Oakland. Caltrans, the California state transportation agency, and the East Bay Municipal Utilities District would also fi nd new office space in Oakland. Additionally, planning began in 1992 for a new state office building, which would eventually come to rest alongside the Dellums buildings at 15th and Clay. The state office building would eventually be named the Elihu M. Harris State Office Building.110 Another major effort at economic development in Oakland during the Harris administration was the effort to reinvigorate the capacity of the Port of Oakland. Oakland’s port faced traditional competitors on the West Coast—namely Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Seattle—and needed improvements to prevent the further decline of Oakland’s traditional status as an important port city. The Port of Oakland, which originally opened in 1927 was too shallow by the early 1990s to compete with other West Coast ports for the business of the large container ships that were arriving from other ports around the Pacific Rim. Harris made some bluster about having the city take over the port, but that idea had little support.111 Despite criticism and protest by environmental activists, Harris—working with the independent Port of Oakland—pushed through a project to dredge the port so that larger container vessels could dock there. American President Lines, Oakland’s most important port tenant, demanded as much. The port was dredged by the Army Corp of Engineers to a depth of 38 feet (from 35 feet) in 1992 and to 42 feet in 1994.112 During Harris’s term, his administration oversaw other economic developments. Most famous was the deal that brought the once-beloved Raiders back to Oakland from Los Angeles. The deal negotiated by the Harris administration and Alameda County officials was very expensive; it included luxury boxes, “seat licenses,” and renovations to the Oakland Coliseum. Other developments included the beginning of a new Amtrak station at Jack London Square, renovations of City Hall aimed at repairing damage from the 1989 earthquake, and the beginning of the Cypress (880) Freeway replacement in West Oakland. This last was supposed to indirectly generate 30,000 jobs, although little “trickled down” to residents of West Oakland. Other low- to medium-end retail jobs arrived in Oakland by way of new store openings by Kmart, Pak n’Save, and Costco.113 All in all, economic development efforts in Oakland improved the appearance of downtown and produced some new white-collar jobs. However, as in the Wilson administration, most of that development or redevelopmen did not have an impact on the most needy residents of the city. These developments did not really reach the base of the black urban regime—the poor and workingclass blacks in the flatland neighborhoods of Oakland.

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The Black Professional Middle Class

Most of the projects initiated by the Harris administration specifically for the neighborhoods were small in scale and had little apparent impact. Of course, gone were the days of the Great Society, when far greater resources were mobilized at the federal level to intervene in patterns of racialized inequality in Oakland and elsewhere. The city did fund the construction of several hundred affordable housing units, emergency housing for the homeless was provided, a multiservice center for the homeless was initiated, abandoned and “blighted” homes were torn down, midnight basketball and other small youth programs to deter crime were implemented, Head Start programs for hundreds of children in the city were provided, and funds for community art (murals, exhibits, community dance performance) were also dispensed.114 However, like other cash-strapped city governments in the age of neoliberalism, Oakland did not provide much to its most economically deprived residents. By the time Harris faced reelection in 1994, the cracks in the black urban regime were showing. The rapidly changing demographics of the state were being expressed in Oakland. The proportion of black residents and voters in the city was declining, while the proportion of Latino and Asian American residents was expanding. For example, the 1992 election of Ignacio De La Fuente to represent the Fruitvale District on the Oakland city council (replacing the retired black progressive Wilson Riles) was illustrative of these changes in the political landscape.115 The basic conditions of black electoral power in Oakland were changing. A politically unknown Chinese American businessman named Ted Dang was able to force Harris into a runoff election by seeking to unite the “nonblack” vote, including affluent white voters in the hills. Harris prevailed, but the election foretold the weakening grip of the black urban regime on Oakland. As Berkeley political scientist Bruce Cain observed, “The African American community is faced with losing the control and power they gained in the ‘60s and ‘70s. . . . Many feel they are losing the power when they were never able to realize the policy benefits.”116

FALL OF THE BLACK URBAN REGIME: JERRY BROWN TAKES A POLITICAL DETOUR THROUGH OAKLAND As Elihu Harris’s second and fi nal term as mayor of Oakland wound down, he contemplated the next move in his political career. He decided to run for his old seat in the California state assembly, now reconstituted as the 16th District. Harris, in a shocking turn of events, lost that “safe seat” by 327 votes to Audie Bock, an unknown Green Party candidate. Harris’s loss was apparently attributable to low black voter turnout and lackluster campaigning.117 Nevertheless, it was an unexpected and ignominious end to Harris’s political career. The black urban regime in Oakland was also facing its end. Former California Governor Jerry Brown moved to a specially designed “live-work

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space” in Oakland’s gentrifying Jack London Square in late 1993; by 1998, he had been elected mayor. He defeated an assorted collection of ten candidates, most of whom were black.118 Brown’s election did not require the usual runoff, as he won 59 percent of the vote in the general election. On the same ballot was Measure X, a proposition pushed by Brown, which also passed and would give him “strong mayor” powers on his fi rst day in office at the Oakland City Hall. Brown had made a successful transition from being a liberal radio talk personality in San Francisco across the bay to his latest elected office in Oakland. The Wall Street Journal reported that Brown, in order to accomplish this, was promising to “dismantle the African American–dominated political machine that presided over much of the city’s decline since the 1970s.”119 That statement didn’t go over well with the members of the African American–dominated political machine. Although Brown ran a campaign geared to the mix of liberal and progressive voters in the Oakland electorate, with rhetoric culled from his radio days, in power he and City Manager Robert Bobb crafted a four point administrative program dedicated to (1) fighting crime, (2) reforming the schools, (3) increasing community development, and (4) promoting the arts.120 Of these, at least the fi rst three led to some significant degree of political confl ict during the Brown administration. In 2000, Brown sought to gain control of the school board (a source of some black neighborhood– based power) through his support of Measure D, but he was unable to get a true majority of supporters on the school board. The Oakland School Board was put in receivership by the state of California in 2003.121 Brown fi red Joseph Samuels, the police chief previously appointed by Elihu Harris. Samuels was the fi rst African American chief of police in Oakland. Black pastors and others attacked Brown, who was forced to hire another African American to replace Samuels. In addition, the new police chief implemented the “Guiliani approach” to highlighting “data-driven” methods, which promote policing with high concentrations of officers in highcrime areas and more arrests for minor crimes like loitering. This led many black residents, including pastor J. Alfred Smith, to express concerns about increased police brutality.122 All of this was ultimately a side show to the main agenda of downtown development. Jerry Brown once championed “creative development,” which included mixed-use planning, affordable housing, environmentalism, and promoting ethnic and income diversity. This was called for in Brown’s own commissioned study, entitled Oakland Ecopolis.123 After his election, Brown took a more conventional approach to development. Unlike black professional middle-class mayors, who might be constrained by political obligations to their base—that is, poorer and working-class black residents—Brown had no such constraint. Ultimately Brown’s development policies seemed more revanchist than sustainable. Indeed, Jerry Brown’s publicly stated goal was to bring ten thousand new residents to downtown Oakland. Under Brown, the appropriation

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of progressive ideas about promoting the proliferation of the “creative class”124 in cities seeking redevelopment became mixed with the traditional progrowth agenda of local developers, realtors, and local politicians. The Brown administration saw a quadrupling of new housing units in the city, from 211 per year between 1990 and 1998 to 880 per year by the end of Brown’s fi rst term.125 Brown was working with important fi nancial actors such as Hank McColl at Bank of America and developer and fundraiser Douglas Shorenstein (son of Walter) who bought Oakland’s City Center Project for cheap when it fell into foreclosure. He then benefited as Oakland’s rents rose by 50 percent two years after the purchase126 —a metaphor for the rapid transformation of Oakland’s downtown under “Downtown Jerry Brown.” By the end of his second term, Brown was planning his return to statewide office in Sacramento. At the time of this writing he has gone full circle and returned to the governor’s office. Before he departed Oakland, he received both praise and scorn from political writers, critics, allies, and activists. The local East Bay Express even tried to “grade” Brown’s administration and to distinguish truth from fiction in assessing his accomplishments.127 His administration certainly remade the landscape of downtown by courting and giving freer rein to investors, fi nanciers, developers, and realtors. Rents and property values rose for a while. Brown left Oakland before the Great Recession dropped rent and property values in the city and throughout the state. Oakland was left with the same problems of joblessness, poverty, crime, drugs, and underperforming schools and with the same problem of what could be done about these issues. It should be noted that Oakland did elect another black mayor in 2006. The city elected the “lion” of progressive causes in Congress: Ron Dellums. Dellums was a professional social worker by training and also the nephew of the dean of black labor activism in Oakland, C. L. Dellums.128 Ron Dellums, like his prominent uncle, represents the long history of black progressive politics in the East Bay. Ron Dellums was effectively drafted for the mayoral race by the black professional middleclass core of the former black urban regime—the informal collectivity of the politically active black church pastors in the city.129 Dellums, who was a very formidable and savvy legislative player in Congress, was ineffective and disengaged as mayor of Oakland.130 These things were not exclusive to his administration, but crime rates, budget problems, his own personal and political distractions, and the continuity of “racialized urban problems” on his watch undermined his single term as mayor. Dellums’s election was supposed to signal the return of black political power to Oakland, but that turned out not to be the case. The city had changed qualitatively and the foundation of the black urban regime had been dislodged. Whereas blacks had a majority on the city council for most of the 1980s and 1990s, black representation on the city council had been reduced to two seats after 1996. These seats—epitomizing the

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problem of “political segregation”—are districts six and seven, mostly based in the fl atland neighborhoods of East Oakland. This is where most of the black population remains both heavily concentrated and politically delimited.

CONCLUSION Oakland provides an interesting and important case for analyzing the rise, resiliency, and shifting fortunes of mayoral regimes led by politicians from the black professional middle class. The tremendous wartime demand for black migrant labor to fill manufacturing jobs put into motion a rapid transformation in the racial and class demographics of Oakland in the postwar period. Oakland would become the only large West Coast city to develop a near black majority population. As deindustrialization and ghettoization unfolded in the postwar era, Oakland developed patterns of urban poverty and racial inequality similar to those experienced in older cities of the Northeast and Midwest. As the “urban crisis” deepened in the 1960s and 1970s, new political responses from the local black community for “black power” emerged. At the forefront were black neighborhood activists such as the Black Panthers; others also played an important role in the transformation of Oakland politics. Indeed, Oakland is a city with a long history of varied and dynamic social movements.131 As a result of the black political mobilizations in the 1960s and 1970s, Oakland underwent significant social change. During the 1970s, the emphasis of black political activism shifted from the “streets” to the “suites,” as earlier judicial and political appointments of members of the black professional middle class helped to create precedents for black political incorporation. Political activism and incorporation would lay the foundation for eventual electoral successes in city council and mayoral races. These precedents were important to the development of African American political opportunities and the rise of a black urban regime in Oakland led by segments of the black professional middle class. The election of attorney and former judge Lionel Wilson in 1977 as the fi rst black mayor represented a pivotal event in the history of Oakland. Since that time, several factors have challenged the status of the once entrenched black urban regime. First, the changing economic fortunes of the city were buffeted by deindustrialization and globalization, entrenching high rates of joblessness among the most disadvantaged residents. Second, multiple demographic changes in Oakland include “the new immigration” from Latin America and Asia, African American “reverse migration” to the South, and gentrification, which have brought more middle-class whites into the city and driven out poorer and working-class blacks. Finally, new political forces in the form of unleashed money and power from wealthy investors

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and developers, and the rise of newly emergent political constituencies in Asian American and Latino communities have altered the foundations of local politics in Oakland. Correspondingly, we have seen the rise and fall of a black urban regime in Oakland. A new volatile era of inequality, new movements, mobilization, and multiethnic political incorporation has arisen in Oakland.

7

Conclusion Social Policy and the Black Professional Middle Class

INTRODUCTION This concluding chapter will focus on the problem of social policy in relation to racialized class formation. Social policies of different types have played—and do play—important roles in the formation and social reproduction of social classes. The “middle classes” in the United States are a frequently mythologized segment of society. In the nineteenth century, property—in the form of agricultural land, a business, a professional practice, or even ownership of slaves (in the antebellum era)—was a basis for claims of middle-class status. As large corporations and the state became major features of the modern economy in the twentieth century, the middle classes became less based in individual enterprise and more in occupational positions that were part of primary labor markets. In both eras social policies of various sorts played important roles in creating opportunity structures for middle-class formation; these structures buffered the sharp distinctions between the propertied and those without, or between capital and labor. The later growth of the black middle classes has been shaped by very different circumstances and practices. The racialized class formation of the black professional middle was shaped by social policies that were also racialized. The current fragility of these racialized policies raises issues about the possible decline of the black professional middle class and other black middle-class segments. This is seen in part in the increased opposition to the civil rights policy regime that was developed during the post–civil rights era. Topics discussed in this chapter are summarized in Table 7.1.

RACIALIZED POLICY REGIMES AND RACIALIZED CLASS FORMATION Free-market advocates assert that the state should be neutral or noninterventionist in relation to a market-based economy. However, empirical

Early postindustrial society: 1960–1975

Late industrial society: 1933–1960

Preindustrial and early industrial society: late eighteenth century to 1933

(Decommodification)

(Decommodification)

New Deal: emergence of a minimal welfare state through the American version of Keynesian policy.

A “first generation” of Increased social spend- Black protest move“mainstream” black ments from 1950s– ing affects higher new middle class pro1970s cause the education, economic federal government to fessionals and managgrowth, and expaners emerge in “newly intervene for “racial sion of middle class integrated” core sector equality” by instijobs in the private labor markets. tutionalizing “civil and public rights” and “affirmasectors. tive action” policies.

No real black middle class, as such. A smattering of black professionals and small business owners by the late nineteenth century.

Racialized Class Formation (of the African American Professional Middle Class)

Late modern Rise and decline of liberalism the Great Society. Temporary expansion of the liberal welfare state.

Relatively small middle Slavery gives way to formal segregation class of mostly selfand state-led exclusion employed professionof blacks from mainals, proprietors and stream economy, civil farmers. and political rights.

Relationship of the State to Racial Inequality and Racial Formation in the United States

Great Migration leads Blacks shift to the Growth of a “new” to “traditional” black middle class of manag- Democratic Party and mount legal challenges middle class profesers and professionals sionals and small to continuing formal in the public and business owners in and “informal” private sectors after segregated urban comsegregation WWII. munities.

Classical liberalism

Relationship of the Statet Overall Class Inequality and MiddleClass Formation in the United States

Early modern liberalism

(Commodification)

Laissez-faire. Minimal state intervention in the private economy and reliance on private charity.

Dominant Domestic Political/Economic Ideologies in the United States

Black Professionals and Racialized Class Formation: Structure, Inequality, and Social Policy

Industrial Era/ Relationship of State Historical Time Period to Market Economy in the United States in the United States

Table 7.1

154 The Black Professional Middle Class

Late postindustrial society: 1990– present

Advanced postindustrial society: 1975–1990

(Recommodification)

Increasing state promo- Late tion of capital accumu- neoliberalism lation by corporations through direct government infusion of capital into struggling core sector industries and firms (especially finance). Smaller businesses and labor are left to the vagaries of the market. Privatization of public sector (schools, prisons, military, etc.).

(Recommodification)

Early neoliberalism State commitment to private capital accumulation and global markets. Decrease in welfare state resources and government regulation of markets.

Increased contention over civil rights and affirmative action policies due to claims of “reverse discrimination.” Growth of “neoconservative” alternative ideology and policies.

Economic and financial Increased official crises are amplified reference to racial under dynamics of diversity rather globalization. Trend than racial equaltoward downsizing ity. Increase in once “safe” profesproportion of “new sional, technical immigrants” and and managerial jobs multiracial identificaexpands decline of tion reflects increasmiddle classes. Tax ing “Brazilianization” policies speed upward of U.S. Blacks remain transfer of wealth and at the bottom of the income from middle racial status hierarchy classes to wealthy. and class structure.

Expanded “downsizing” of core sector for both blue collar and white collar jobs to lower production costs.

Increasing conflict among diverse racialized groups (both interracial and intraracial class conflict) for access to social resources and opportunities (higher education, jobs, housing, political office, etc.) extends relative decline of black professional middle class.

Underrepresented groups (women and minorities) in professional and managerial positions face declining support for the “civil rights policy regime.”

Conclusion 155

156 The Black Professional Middle Class research demonstrates that modern states have been—and remain—deeply involved in the organization of society and the distribution of resources. Furthermore, government policies are generally constructed in ways that benefit economic and political elites. Traditionally, this has included policies that keep corporate taxes and personal income taxes low (especially for the wealthy), support the deregulation of business activities, and limit the enforcement of laws regarding antitrust violations, labor rights, public health and safety, and consumer protection.1 However, research in the institutionalism tradition has also illustrated that the state has some degree of autonomy and also acts in ways that respond to the interests of the unprivileged: the poor, the working class, women, racial minorities, and others. 2 Indeed, in times of crisis or in the face of organized protest movements, alternative social policies are often crafted by state actors who promote redistribution, new rights, or other types of laws and reform policies that generate improved life chances for relatively disadvantaged or disenfranchised segments of society. Such policies in U.S. history have included universal white male suffrage (1840s); the Homestead Act (1862); the General Pension Act (1862) for Civil War veterans; the Nineteenth Amendment (1920), which gave women the right to vote; the Social Security Act (1935); the National Labor Relations Act (1935); the G.I. Bill (1944); the Social Security Act of 1965, which established Medicare; and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010). These are examples of varied policies that in different historical eras have buttressed middle-class formation in the United States by expanding income and wealth redistribution, pension benefits and other social protections, voting rights and political participation, homeownership, union membership, access to higher education, and health insurance. These policies have rarely been truly universal in fact. Many expanded citizenship rights and redistributive policies have historically been racialized and gendered, and subsequently parceled out disproportionately to white men first and only later, and to a lesser extent, to others. 3 The contemporary basis for a large white middle class in the United States was created in large part from policy changes initiated during the New Deal/postwar period. New Deal policies included the Wagner Act, Social Security retirement benefits, and unemployment insurance. The postwar period included important social policies such as the G.I. Bill, the Highway Act of 1956, the Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration mortgage programs, and Medicare. Collectively these policies promoted the rapid growth of unionization, homeownership, suburbanization, access to higher education, wealth accumulation, and secure retirement, all mostly associated with the white middle class in the postwar era.4 These programs remain today (in one form or another), and they have in common that they are mostly universal in form and initially and disproportionately benefi ted whites. Indeed, they

Conclusion

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were programs that (at least initially) mostly excluded blacks. 5 This was due in large part to efforts by southern congressional legislators to maintain Jim Crow segregation and black political quiescence in the South. Many of the above programs remain central to the maintenance of an increasingly fragile middle class in the present. Strong political mobilization has been garnered recently to protect these policies from political attack from the right. 6 By contrast, the racialized programs of the Great Society era featured many targeted and means-tested policies that were designed to disproportionately benefit blacks, other racial minorities, and the poor.7 Although the programs and policies initiated during the 1960s did not make up for the long-standing racist practices and policies of the previous centuries and decades (i.e., slavery, Jim Crow, ghettoization, political disenfranchisement, occupational and residential segregation, etc.), such policies formed something of a racial project that acknowledged the deeply entrenched racialized inequality in the United States. Specifi cally, the Great Society featured two key elements: (1) civil rights laws and affi rmative action policies and (2) antipoverty programs. The Great Society programs were initiated during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in response to the fervent challenges of the civil rights and black power movements, which were mobilized during the 1950s and 1960s. As discussed in Chapter 3, civil rights and affi rmative action (CRAA) policies constituted a civil rights policy regime that included legislation, executive orders, and court decisions designed to ameliorate institutional discrimination toward blacks and others in pursuing access to employment, higher education, voting and political participation, desegregation of housing, etc. Antipoverty programs enacted during the Great Society period included the expansion of AFDC, food stamps, Medicaid, job training, federal funds for low-income public schools, Head Start, and community action programs, among others. Unlike the universal social policies of the New Deal/postwar period, the antipoverty programs of the Great Society era have been seen as programs for the “undeserving poor” and read as “black programs.”8 Similarly, civil rights and affi rmative action policies are also seen as “black” policies. However, these policies, designed to promote equal rights of citizenship, have provided civil rights protections to a much wider segment that included (white) women, other people of color, the elderly, disabled, gays, and others who experience discrimination. With regard to the formation of the mainstream of the black professional middle class in the civil rights era, both elements of the Great Society program served to undergird a limited structural mobility process for poor and working-class blacks who were able to achieve new levels of occupational status and class position as “fi rst generation” members of the mainstream black professional middle class.

158 The Black Professional Middle Class ARGUING ABOUT CIVIL RIGHTS, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND THE BLACK MIDDLE CLASS: POLITICS, SCHOLARSHIP, AND POLICY CRAA policies constitute a highly contentious issue in the United States. As subject matter, they are debated in the realms of (1) partisan politics, (2) scholarship, and (3) policy advocacy. In none of these overlapping ideological realms is support for (or rejection of) these policies, an entirely settled matter. In the arena of partisan politics, the Democratic Party and political liberals are more likely to endorse CRAA policies than are Republicans and political conservatives. However, many political liberals oppose all or part of CRAA policies for reasons of principle or political strategy. Scholars focus on different empirical problems in the formation and practice of CRAA policies.9 Policy advocacy—marshaling both political and scholarly argumentation—is the key part of the debate to be examined here. The past, present, and future status of the black middle classes is one of the key topics in the debate about racial inequality and the legitimacy of CRAA policies. Virtually all scholars and policy analysts who concern themselves with the problem of racial inequality claim to want the same thing: a society in which racial inequality no longer exists. This includes progressive scholars or policy advocates whose views may be considered outside of the narrow political mainstream on issues of race.10 It also includes the bulk of mainstream policy analysts and advocates whose perspectives range from properly liberal to conservative and may be easily associated with conventional political opinion within the Democratic or Republican parties. The fi rst point here is that only those whose arguments and positions fit within the political mainstream have legitimacy with regard to comments on CRAA policies. The second point is that the range of acceptable mainstream arguments seems to be shrinking in much the same way that judicial criteria for the constitutional legitimacy of these policies has been narrowing. Increasingly “color blind” CRAA policy arguments are acceptable in a way that “race conscious” arguments are not. On the issue of race, analysts of CRAA policies divide over whether they assert in their theorizing the importance of race consciousness (i.e., the assumption that racial inequality is still important in the stratification system) or color blindness (i.e., assumption that race is no longer truly significant vis-à-vis other factors like class) . Given this, the differences in the positions on CRAA policies are presumably about political means rather than ends. Those who advocate the continued use of civil rights legal enforcement and affirmative action policies do so because they reason that race and gender remain significant facets of inequality in U.S. society, and that such policies have been significant in opening opportunity structures for historically excluded racial minority groups and women. Those who oppose CRAA policies “in principle” see a continued emphasis on such policies as unwarranted for three major reasons: (1) discrimination against women or racial minorities is no longer a significant problem; (2) the policies

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are perceived to be no longer effective, particularly in reaching the poorest among racial minorities; and (3) civil rights enforcement or affirmative action is perceived as promoting “reverse discrimination” against whites— white males in particular. In terms of broad policy positions, both conservative and “color blind” liberal scholars and policy analysts have proposed either the abolition of various CRAA policies or their substantial augmentation. There is apparently significant ambivalence about the use of affi rmative action among the public at large, in policy circles, and among politicians. Whereas public opinion polls vary in levels of support and opposition to affirmative action for racial minorities and women, the electorate in a number states has voted in state referenda to abolish the policy. Public opinion seems to have at least an indirect effect on the politics of the issue—in the legislative, judicial, and referenda spheres.11 For the most part, partisan conservatives have frequently used opposition to affi rmative action as a political “wedge issue.”12 Many “color blind” liberals, likewise, have reacted to the conservative position by also offering to restrict affi rmative action and promote “race neutral” policies instead in order to undercut “white backlash” politics or to promote broad coalitions.13 “Color blind” liberal scholars prescribe race-neutral ideas in part because they are driven to remain relevant in increasingly “centrist” policy debates within various academic circles, policy institutes, and the rightward drifting Democratic Party. William Julius Wilson’s ambivalence about affi rmative action is based on his argument that it benefits the black middle class rather than other more needy segments of the black community.14 However, this contention belies the large number of working-class and poor blacks who have received opportunities through affi rmative action.15 The “race neutral” liberal contentions of Paul Starr are premised on the idea that because affirmative action is strongly opposed by whites, it is politically on its way out anyway, so we must begin to consider alternatives before the policy is done away with. Furthermore, such race-based policies are seen as a deterrent to white political support for broader policies designed to help the poor of all racial backgrounds.16 In the same vein, the liberal Richard Kahlenberg has argued for the replacement of race-based policies and the development of class-based affi rmative action to help the poor of all racial backgrounds.17 Conservative scholars and policy advocates focus more on “moral” and cultural assumptions in their critiques of CRAA policies. Collectively, they have long-standing and broad-based reasons for opposition to various aspects of CRAA policies. Nathan Glazer once argued that affi rmative action is inherently in confl ict with basic principle of individual rights promoted by the constitution.18 Stephen Carter focuses on a perceived loss of self-esteem and the way the policy leads to a racially separate “best black” track for the beneficiaries of affi rmative action.19 Shelby Steele goes even further to argue that the institutionalization of CRAA policies helps to

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The Black Professional Middle Class

promote a “flight from personal responsibility” and an internalization of “victimhood” status among blacks who benefit from the policy.20 A similar argument is generated by linguist John McWhorter, highlighting the “victim status” and “self-sabotage” of blacks that is fueled by policies such as affi rmative action. 21 In a later work, Steele argues that the civil rights movement devolved into an effort by black power advocates to make whites feel guilty about past racism and thus to promote untenable policies like affi rmative action. 22 Thomas Sowell makes the claim that affirmative action has far overstepped the legal bounds of civil rights law by promoting equality of result rather than equality of opportunity, particularly by protecting the rights of women, who make up the majority of the population. 23 In his later work, Sowell extends his early arguments by analyzing affi rmative action at an international level of comparison and claiming that CRAA-type policies in themselves generate ethnic, sectarian, and civil confl ict. 24 Political opposition has increased, but CRAA policies have certainly played an important role in bringing minorities and women into the professional workforce. They have also increased access to higher education for these groups, which is the basis for professional employment opportunities. However, the effects of affirmative action are much more widespread and have contributed to inclusion for historically excluded groups into various blue- and white-collar jobs. Opening up working-class jobs (e.g., police, fi refighters, construction and other craft union jobs, etc.) to women and minorities has been just as important as opening access to the professions. 25 However, the future of these policies is in doubt, as political conditions have changed substantively in the post–civil rights era. As discussed below, conservative (and color-blind liberal) policy arguments and well-funded political efforts have been effective in challenging affirmative action policies in several states.

NEOLIBERALISM AND POLITICAL OPPOSITION TO THE CIVIL RIGHTS POLICY REGIME In the last two decades, since President Clinton uttered, “Mend it, don’t end it,” liberal-conservative policy arguments have become increasingly linked to changes in the political economy that have buttressed partisan political effort to overturn key portions of the civil rights policy regime. The ideas of modern liberalism informed important strategies of government intervention through Keynesian economic policy and staggered stages of New Deal (read “white”) and Great Society (read “black”) programs between the 1930s and the 1970s. This relatively brief forty-year period of expanded regulatory and social policies replaced the traditional practice of laissez-faire that ended with the Great Depression. Since the 1980s, presidential administrations of both parties have moved toward reducing

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the scope of government intervention. This period of neoliberalism has featured deregulation, deunionization, increasing inequality of wealth and income26 and increased efforts to challenge the continuation of civil rights policies (including affi rmative action). Two neoliberal ideological factors are involved in the organized opposition to the continued use of civil rights and affi rmative action policies. One is the basic neoliberal belief that, in principle, there should be as little government intervention or regulation as possible. A second factor in opposition to various civil rights policies is the belief that discrimination faced by women and minorities is no longer a problem or that “reverse discrimination” is prevalent. However, these neoliberal-based claims are not supported by empirical evidence, which shows that women and minorities continue to face discrimination in employment. 27 Recent cases of employee class action race and sex discrimination lawsuits against major corporations give insight into the institutionalized patterns of employment discrimination. A recent report disclosed that more than 100,000 employees were covered in recent class action civil lawsuits under the 1991 Civil Rights Act. The defendants included employers such as Texaco, State Farm, Shoney’s Inc., Lucky Stores, Motel 6, Smith and Barney, Dun and Bradstreet, CocaCola, and Federal Express, among others. 28 Nevertheless, political efforts to eradicate CRAA policies have increased since Proposition 209 (also known ironically as the California Civil Rights Initiative) was passed in California in 1996. “209” abolished affi rmative action for women and racial minorities in employment, government contracts, and college admissions. Some whites in California, for example apparently believed that “reverse discrimination” was a common occurrence. 29 This was the fi rst successful electoral effort to eradicate an affi rmative action policy at the state level. It was implemented after the failure of subsequent civil suits fi led by plaintiffs who supported the continued use of affi rmative action. Affi rmative action is, of course, only one feature of overall approaches to civil rights law and policy. However, some have argued that 209 selectively excludes women and minorities from a potential form of government redress against discrimination while not singling out other groups (e.g., veterans, the elderly, the disabled, etc.) who might also seek redress, in patterns of discrimination in employment, for example. Thus, these opponents argue, the proposition violates the “equal protection” of women and minorities by making them the only protected groups that explicitly cannot pursue redress for discrimination through affi rmative action policies in California.30 More recently, seven other states—Washington, Michigan, Florida, Nebraska, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma—have abolished affi rmative action through ballot measures or legislation. In addition to the successful political efforts to abolish affi rmative action in the aforementioned states, bold efforts to eradicate basic foundations of civil rights law itself have also been undertaken. In 2003, the same

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The Black Professional Middle Class

conservative supporters31 of Proposition 209 put forward Proposition 54 in California. It was also known as the “Racial Privacy Initiative.” This proposition asked the California electorate to vote to amend the state constitution to “prohibit state and local governments from using race, ethnicity, color, or national origin to classify current prospective students, contractors or employees in public education, contracting, or employment operations. Does not prohibit classification by sex.”32 Proposition 54 was defeated at the polls, receiving only 36 percent support.33 The objective of Proposition 54 would have been to effectively end the collection of data on the basis of race in California—with some exceptions for medical or “law enforcement descriptions.” California is the most racially and ethnically diverse state in the nation. The “racial privacy” afforded by this ballot would derail efforts to collect data that could help scholars, policy analysts, courts, government agencies, private fi rms, universities and research institutions, nonprofit organizations, politicians, and the general public better understand problems of racial inequality and disparity in the state. This would include collecting data related to such problems as poverty, employment discrimination, unemployment rates, school dropout rates, college enrollment, wage inequality, arrest, sentencing, incarceration rate disparities, and the like. It would also deter the ability to propose policy responses to these problems. It would therefore have undermined efforts to gather information and deterred efforts to promote and protect the civil rights of racial minority citizens and others in California. The electorate was able to see through the false claims of the amendment advocates and perceive the potentially disastrous implications of the initiative for the protection of civil rights. Other efforts to undermine civil rights laws are more blunt. Current anti– civil rights political activity involves, among other objectives, concerted efforts to undermine protections for minority voters under the Voting Right Act of 1965. All or parts of sixteen states are currently monitored by the federal government because of a history of racial discrimination against black, Latino, Native American, and Asian American voters. The affected states are found mostly in the South but also include Alaska, Arizona, South Dakota, Michigan, California, and New Hampshire. The Supreme Court agreed in late 2012 to hear the case of Shelby County (Alabama) v. Holder. Political leaders in this Alabama county are seeking to have the Supreme Court declare Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional—this is despite the fact that Congress voted to reauthorize Section 5 for another twenty-five years in 2006. Shelby County has been joined in the suit by other states and jurisdictions. The case was pushed forward despite the fact that the Bush administration Justice Department was previously compelled to intervene in Shelby County regarding voting and redistricting irregularities apparently designed to systematically undermine voting rights and diminish local black political representation.34

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Political challenges to the civil rights policy regime began with congressional votes against the 1964 Civil Rights Act itself. Organized political opposition became fully constituted in party politics in the rise of Richard Nixon’s southern strategy during the 1968 presidential campaign. In the interim, civil rights organizations, politicians, judges, scholars, policy advocates, activists, research institutes, human resource managers, the electorate, and the public at large have participated in support, opposition, or indifference toward the controversies surrounding CRAA policies. What has been key about affirmative action as a policy is that it has served as a proactive method—in the form of “goals and timetables”—to link civil rights laws to positive aggregate changes for greater black access to higher education, and upgraded employment opportunities including entrance into the black professional middle class. In this sense, the racially divisive political battles over civil rights policies in the post–civil rights era have certainly created more heat than light. Ironically, when affirmative action policy is finally brought to an end at the national level, it will probably occur with a whimper rather than a bang as a result of a future narrow decision from a divided Supreme Court.35

CONCLUSION As discussed in Chapter 1, the emergence of the civil rights policy regime has corresponded with the transition from the pre–civil rights to civil rights era. This transition corresponded with a shift in federal policy toward citizenship rights for blacks from exclusionary policy (formally prosegregation) to inclusionary policy (formally prointegration). As we have seen in this chapter, the post–civil rights era has been shaped by increasing challenges against CRAA policies from political conservatives. If they are successful in dismantling significant portions of the civil rights policy regime, conservatives and others arguing for “color blindness” will usher in a new era of seclusionary policy. These would be policies—or nonpolicies—that diminish or eradicate civil rights policies in place since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Under seclusionary policies, the problems of discrimination and racial inequality will be ignored or “secluded” under the misnomer of a “color blind” society. Nevertheless, there is a basis for a legitimate debate about the defi nition and role of affi rmative action policies. Affi rmative action was not designed as a permanent program. President Clinton’s federal review of affi rmative action programs led to a policy of modified federal support for affi rmative action. Several Supreme Court decisions—including Bakke v. Regents of the University of California (1978); Croson v. Richmond (1989), and Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)—have modified the scope and legal enforcement criteria for affirmative action policies (particularly in college admissions and government contracting). 36

164 The Black Professional Middle Class The decision of the state to enact and enforce specific civil rights laws is based on legal and executive precedent but is essentially a political decision, just like the political decisions by the executive and judiciary branches in the pre–civil rights era not to enforce equality under the law for blacks and other racial minorities. Contemporary challenges to CRAA policies in California and elsewhere are based on ideas and principles in the abstract (including constitutional law) but are also given life by concrete political interests and actors. The future of affi rmative action as a policy, and even the viability of civil rights laws in general, is yet to be determined. The effects will be felt not only in higher education, employment, and government contracts; but also in voting rights, fair housing, criminal justice, and other areas of social policy. Just as political considerations shape the issues of racial inequality, so will racial inequality continue to shape political action. The outcomes will undoubtedly have an effect on the future of the black professional middle class, among other things. The color line has shifted somewhat, but it has not disappeared.

Notes

NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 1. Dan Clawson, ed., Required Reading: Sociology’s Most Infl uential Books. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998, pp. 157–166. 2. See Norman Fainstein, “Race, Class, and Segregation: Discourses about African Americans.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Vol. 17, No. 3, 1993. 3. Refer to two works by William Julius Wilson: The Truly Disadvantaged, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987; and When Work Disappears. New York: Alfred E. Knopf, 1996. 4. See Herbert Gans, The War against the Poor: the Underclass and Antipoverty Policy. New York: Basic Books, 1996. 5. Daniel P. Moynihan, “The Schism in Black America.” The Public Interest. No. 27, Spring 1972; and Richard Freeman, Black Elite: The New Market for Highly Educated Black Americans. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976. 6. Race-based constructs utilized by scholars in the internal colonial tradition include the now standard concept of “institutional racism” utilized initially by iconoclastic radical activist-theorist Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael). See Kwame Ture and Charles Hamilton, Black Power. New York: Vintage, 1992 [1967]. In the 1970s Bob Blauner tried to work out basic intellectual problems such as the necessary differentiation between ethnic vs. racial minorities and the concept of racial privilege, which are standard in the sociological literature today. See Bob Blauner, Still the Big News: Racial Oppression in America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001. 7. William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980, pp. 144–182. 8. Moynihan, 1972, and Wilson, 1980. 9. See Fainstein, 1993; Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995, pp. 137–155; and Mary Patillo-McCoy, Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Classes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999, pp. 13–30. 10. See Douglas Massey and Nancy R. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993; and Fainstein, 1993. 11. Dalton Conley, Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999; Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, Black Wealth, White Wealth: New Perspectives on Racial Inequality, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2006; and Thomas

166 Notes

12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

Shapiro, The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Joe R. Feagin and Melvin P. Sikes, Living with Racism: The Black Middle Class Experience. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994; and Sharon Collins, Black Corporate Executives: The Making and Breaking of a Black Middle Class. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997. See Greg Duncan, et al. “Whither the Middle Class: A Dynamic View,” in Dimitri Papadimitriou and Edward N. Wolff, eds. Poverty and Prosperity in the USA in the Late Twentieth Century. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993, and; Theodore J. Davis, Jr., “The Occupational Mobility of Black Men Revisited: Does Race Matter?” Social Science Journal. Vol. 32, 1995, pp. 121–135. Michael K. Brown et al., White-Washing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003; and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States, 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010. See Wilson, 1987; 1996. Of course DuBois’s work set the standard for the urban case study utilizing a truly multiple-method approach, including the major qualitative methods just discussed and also utilizing surveys and aggregate data from the census. Others—including those in the Chicago School—also made their living emphasizing the urban case study. See W.E.B. DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995 [1899]. Steven Gregory, Black Corona: Race, and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998, p. 12. Ibid., p. 145. Ibid., pp. 160–175. Ibid., pp. 181–247. Ibid., pp. 181–247. Mary Patillo-McCoy, Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999, pp. 47–60. See Massey and Denton, 1993, pp. 83–109. Patillo-McCoy, 1999, p. 15. Idem. Patillo-McCoy, 1999, pp. 72–82. Ibid., pp. 78–82. See Myron Orfield, American Metropolitics: the New Suburban Reality. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2002, pp. 9–61. Bruce Haynes, Red Lines, Black Spaces: The Politics of Race and Space in a Black Middle Class Suburb. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001, p. 14. Idem. Haynes, 2001, p. xx. Ibid., p. 96. Ibid., pp. 19–32. See Andrew Wiese, A Place of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Haynes, 2001, pp. 154–155. Ibid., pp. 94–108. Karyn Lacy, Blue-Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, p. 23. Ibid., pp. 39–42.

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39. See for example, W. Lloyd Warner and Paul S. Lunt, The Social Life of a Modern Community. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1941. 40. Lacy, 2007, pp. 56–71. 41. Indeed, most blacks who received “subprime” mortgages were actually eligible to get conventional market mortgages. See Michael Powell, “Bank Accused of Pushing Mortgage Deals on Blacks.” New York Times. June 6, 2009. 42. A Brookings Institution study sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts, utilizing a panel study of income dynamics data, has illustrated the problem of downward mobility for children of middle-class black parents. The study found that when controlling for income by quintile, middle-class blacks born in the late 1960s had lower real incomes (in 2006 constant dollars) than their parents. Whites in the same categories had higher real incomes than their parents. Blacks who grew up in families in the bottom two quintiles experienced slightly higher incomes than their parents. See Julia B. Isaacs, Economic Mobility of Black and White Families. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2007. 43. See Shapiro, 2004. 44. As Charles Ragin suggests, when aggregate data have been used to paint a particular analytic framework for a research problem, it may be necessary to utilize case studies or “in-depth” analyses of the research problem. This may require multiple studies by different scholars to establish important empirical findings. See Charles C. Ragin, Constructing Social Research: The University and Diversity of Method. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1994, pp. 81–103. 45. Lacy, 2007, pp. 30–41. 46. Erik Olin Wright, Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 149–168. 47. Charles Derber, Power in the Highest Degree: Professionals and the Rise of the New Mandarin Order. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 11–24. 48. See Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2000, pp. 58–67. 49. See the sociological and historical overview offered on the “dual society” and the long-term entrenchment of segregation in U.S. society. Benjamin Ringer, We the People and Others: Duality and America’s Treatment of Its Racial Minorities. New York: Tavistock, 1983. 50. The “ethnic niches” can vary locally. Waldinger found that blacks in New York never had much of a hold on the manufacturing sectors and were concentrated in the service economy early on. He found that working-class blacks were pushed out of hotel service and replaced by immigrants of color. Subsequently blacks became increasingly concentrated in the government sector. Black professionals are also relatively overrepresented in the public sector. See Roger Waldinger, Still the Promised City? African Americans and New Immigrants in Postindustrial New York. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995, pp. 240–253. 51. See Collins, 1997, pp. 17–27. 52. I discuss this phenomenon in Chapter 4 of this book. 53. Peter M. Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan. The American Occupational Structure. New York: The Free Press, 1967, p. 239. 54. Benjamin P. Bowser, The Black Middle Class: Social Mobility and Vulnerability. Boulder, CO: Lynn Reinner, 2007; E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie: The Rise of a New Middle Class. New York: The Free Press, 1957; and Landry, 1987. 55. See Frazier, 1957.

168

Notes

56. Refer to Joe R. Feagin, Anthony Orum, and Gideon Sjoberg, A Case for the Case Study. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. 57. This fi nding is similar to research indicating that despite substantial economic growth in the sun belt, increasing employment opportunities, and the ascendancy of local black political leadership in Atlanta, the substantive socioeconomic status of blacks locally remained notably poorer relative to their white peers. That is, general economic growth in and of itself doesn’t readily alter entrenched patterns of racial inequality. See Gary Orfield and Carole Ashkinaze, The Closing Door: Conservative Policy and Black Opportunity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. 58. Feagin, et al., 1991. 59. This is not to ignore the historic segregation and overt discrimination faced by other racial minorities historically. This includes the construction of Native American reservations, Chinatowns, Japanese American interment camps during World War II, barrios for different Latino groups, etc. In the current post-civil rights era, those groups tend to be subject less to the effects of segregation when it comes to residence, intermarriage, etc. 60. See Erica Chito Childs, Navigating Interracial Borders: Black-White Couples and Their Social Worlds. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005. 61. Joe T. Darden. “Residential Apartheid American Style,” in Robert D. Bullard, ed., The Black Metropolis in the Twenty-First Century: Race, Power, and Politics of Place. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007; Richard D. Alba, John R. Logan, and Brian J. Stults, “How Segregated Are Middle Class African Americans? Social Problems. Vol. 47, No. 4, 2000, pp. 543– 548; Massey and Denton, 1993. 62. See Gary Orfield and Susan E. Eaton, Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education. New York: New Press, 1997; Jonathan Kozol, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005. 63. For a discussion of the dynamics of black political interests and identity, see Michael C. Dawson, Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African American Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. For an overview of possible strategies open to black mayoral candidates in balancing black constituencies and larger publics in several cities see Richard A. Keiser, Subordination or Empowerment? African American Leadership and the Struggle for Urban Political Power. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 64. Natalie J. Sokoloff, Black Women and White Women in the Professions: Occupational Segregation by Race and Gender, 1960–1980. New York: Routledge, 1992, pp. 33–54; Leslie McCall, Complex Inequality: Gender, Class, and Race in the New Economy. New York: Routledge, 2001, pp. 3–30; Barbara F. Reskin et al., “The Determinants and Consequences of Workplace Sex and Race Composition.” Annual Review of Sociology. Vol. 25, No. 1, 1999, pp. 335–361; Donald Tomas-Kovic. Gender and Racial Inequality at Work: The Sources and Consequences of Job Segregation. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993, pp. 3–37. 65. Thomas Pettigrew. “Race and Class in the 1980s: An Interactive View,” Daedalus. Vol. 110, No. 2 1980, pp. 233–255. 66. Raymond Franklin, Shadows of Race and Class. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. 67. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States. New York: Routledge, 1994. 68. Intersectionality theory has been key in focusing contemporary research about inequality away from reductionist arguments. See Collins, 2000, pp.

Notes

69.

70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

83. 84.

85. 86. 87.

169

3–43. Additionally, neo-Weberian theorists have given attention to analyzing the relationship of class to varying forms of “status inequality.” These arguments mostly predate and parallel some of the concerns raised in the intersectionality tradition. Neo-Weberaianism obviously lacks a foundation in feminist theory, as such. See for example, Frank Parkin, Marxism and Class Theory: A Bourgeois Critique. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. For example, David Roediger has produced important work analyzing the development of white working class formation since the nineteenth century. This work has been central for bringing together the analyses of race and class formation in the history of the United States. See David Roediger, Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, rev. ed. London: Verso, 2007. Omi and Winant, 1994, p. 55. Idem. Omi and Winant, 1994, pp. 55-75. McAdam, 1999; Bloom, 1987. Wilson, 2007. Wright, 1997, pp. 52–55. Frazier, 1957, pp. 43–59. St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton. Black Metropolis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945, pp. 398–469. G. Franklin Edwards. The Negro Professional Class. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959, 23–25. Landry, 1987, pp. 50–51. Frazier, 1957, pp. 213–232. Morris, 1986; Bloom, 1987; McAdam, 1999. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has characterized “color blindness” as the dominant racial ideology of the post-civil rights era, utilized by both conservatives and liberals. Underlying color blindness are frames that mask the material benefits of white racial privilege. These frames form the basis of color-blind racism that preserves a structured system of racial inequality by promoting “racism without racists.” See Bonilla-Silva, 2010, pp. 1–49. Ellis Cose, The Rage of a Privileged Class. New York: HarperCollins, 1992, pp. 73–91; Feagin and Sikes, 1994, pp. 135–186. For example, Erik Olin Wright and other scholars have invested much intellectual effort in getting a grasp on the essential bases of the contemporary middle class—or middle classes. Wright has introduced analytic concepts like “contradictory class locations” (see Class, Crisis and the State. London: New Left Books, 1978) and later, the construction of models built around skills and credentials as exploitable assets (see Classes. London: Verso, 1985). More recently variables of skill, authority, and property have been analyzed by Wright, 1997. See Mary R. Jackman and Robert W. Jackman, Class Awareness in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Michael Zweig, The Working Class Majority: America’s Best Kept Secret. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001, pp. 9–38. Professionals are mostly unambiguously middle class for a number of conventional reasons. They tend to rate highly on the three key gradational criteria: occupational status, income, and educational attainment. They also fulfi ll the relational dimensions of middle-class position identified by Erik Olin Wright and others, including the categories of skill and authority (clear correlations with managers) in the postindustrial advanced capitalist class structure. See Wright, 1997, pp. 79–111.

170 Notes 88. See Thierry Noyelle, Beyond Industrial Dualism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1987. 89. Roediger, 2007. 90. Frazier, 1957, pp. 43–59. 91. See David Gordon, Richard Edwards, and Michael Reich, Segmented Work, Divided Workers: The Historical Transformation of Labor in the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982. 92. See Joleen Kirschenman and Kathryn Neckerman, “’We’d Love to Hire Them but . . . : The Meaning of Race for Employers,” in Christopher Jencks and Paul E. Peterson, eds., The Urban Underclass. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1991, pp. 203–232. 93. Richard Edwards, Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century. New York: Basic Books, 1980, pp. 163–182. 94. Collins, 1997, pp. 73–98. 95. Bennett Harrison and Barry Bluestone, The Great U-Turn: Corporate Restructuring and the Polarizing of America. New York: Basic Books, 1988, pp. 21–52. 96. See Noyelle, 1987. 97. Robert Reich. The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991, pp. 171–224. 98. See Jeff Faux, The Global Class War. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2006, pp. 30–48; and Jody Heymann and Alison Earle, Raising the Global Floor. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010, pp. 46–69. 99. The classic statement promoting the concept of “reverse discrimination” was made by Nathan Glazer. See his Affi rmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy. New York: Basic Books, 1975. It should be noted that Glazer has since come to grudgingly question his earlier positions on affi rmative action and “multiculturalism” in Glazer, We Are All Multiculturalists Now. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997, pp. 122–161. 100. See the discussion in Terry H. Anderson, The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affi rmative Action. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 217–273. 101. The prototypical case of this process of northern urban residential segregation and its attendant effects is conveyed in empirical and analytic depth in Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Detroit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. 102. Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 17–59. 103. Marilyn Johnson, The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, pp. 83–112. 104. Eric S. Brown, “Black Ghetto Formation in Oakland, 1852–1965: Social Closure and African American Community Development.” Research in Community Sociology. Vol. 8, 1998, pp. 267–272. 105. William E. Nelson Jr. and Philip J. Meranto, Electing Black Mayors: Political Action in the Black Community. Columbus: Ohio State University, 1977, pp. 11–30. 106. See for example, Carol M. Swain, Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. 107. Katherine Tate. From Protest to Politics: The New Black Voters in American Elections. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, pp. 75–108. 108. Dawson, 1994, pp. 45–68. 109. Jeff rey S. Adler, “Introduction,” in David R. Colburn and Jeff rey S. Adler, eds. African American Mayors: Race, Politics, and the American City. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001, pp. 11–13.

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110. See Paul Kleppner, Chicago Divided: The Making of a Black Mayor. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1985, pp. 64–133. 111. Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles, rev. ed. London: Verso, 2006, pp. 99–144. 112. Chris Rhomberg, No There There: Race, Class, and Political Community in Oakland. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004, pp. 88–96. 113. Numerous scholarly and popular authors have written about the history of the Black Panther Party. At least three books provide stark and critical analysis of the Panthers and the intrinsic and external issues that they faced concerning organization, leadership, and ideology. See, among other works, Curtis J. Austin, Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2006; Charles E. Jones, ed., The Black Panther Party Reconsidered. Baltimore: Classic Black Press, 1998; and Hugh Pearson, The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994. 114. See the classic work by Clarence Stone, Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946–1988. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1989. 115. Roger Biles, “Black Mayors: A Historical Assessment.” Journal of Negro History. Vol. 77, No. 3, 1992, pp. 115–120. 116. These “new urban problems” can be seen primarily in coastal cities in the United States but are increasingly apparent. They correspond with larger demographic and economic changes related to immigration and globalization and changes in patterns of real estate investment. More work needs to be done on these interrelated topics seen as urban problems. See the incorporation of these themes in Robert Gottlieb et al., The Next Los Angeles: the Struggle for a Livable City. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, pp. 69–172. For a demographic overview see also William Frey, “Metro America in the New Century: Metropolitan and Central City Demographic Shifts Since 2000,” Brookings Institution, Living Cities Census Series. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2005. 117. Adolph Reed, Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999, pp. 79–110.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 1. I use the term ghetto in this chapter and elsewhere not as a trope but to acknowledge the entrenched nature of semiformalized residential and institutional segregation faced by blacks in cities in the United States, primarily since the Great Migration. Of course, formalized and semiformalized racial segregation experienced by African Americans has existed in different institutional and interpersonal forms in the United States historically, and these practices certainly precede the Great Migration. 2. For example, see Gregory D. Squires, Capital and Communities in Black and White: The Intersections of Race, Class, and Uneven Development. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994, especially pp. 65–89. 3. See William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. 4. See for example, Kenneth L. Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870–1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976; Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto-Negro New York, 1890–1930. New York: Harper and Row, 1968; Allan H. Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890–1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967; and Harold X. Connolly, A Ghetto Grows in Brooklyn. New York: New York University Press, 1977.

172 Notes 5. See Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940–1960. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 6. For example, the western states, including California, had to be captured by military conquest from Mexico in the mid-nineteenth century. Those new Americans of Mexican descent acquired the status of an internal colony. Chinese immigrants who came to California seeking opportunities in the Gold Rush were violently forced out of the competition for gold and forced to survive in the most dangerous railroad jobs and in the enclave economies of small segregated Chinatowns across California. Native Americans who had been pushed further and further west were still seen as a threat to the safety of white communities in the state. See Tomas Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994; and Benjamin B. Ringer, We the People and Others: Duality and America’s Treatment of Its Racial Minorities. New York: Tavistock, 1983. 7. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990 Census of Population and Housing, Population and Housing Characteristics for Census Tracts and Block Numbering Areas. Oakland, CA: PMSA. 8. Massey and Denton, 1993, pp. 64–77. 9. Beth Bagwell, Oakland: The Story of a City. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1982, p. 25. 10. Fisher A. Buckingham, Origins and Early Developments of Oakland. Master’s thesis. Berkeley: University of California, 1947, p. 39. 11. Ibid., pp. 50–52. 12. Bagwell, 1982, p. 61. 13. Lawrence P. Crouchett, Lonnie G. Bunch III, and Martha Kendall Winacker, eds., Visions Toward Tommorrow: The History of the East Bay Afro-American Community, 1852–1977. Oakland: Northern California Center for Afro-American History and Life, 1989, p. 3. 14. Ibid., p. 7. 15. See Victor G. and Brett de Bary Nee, Longtime Californ’: A Documentary Study of an American Chinatown. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986, pp. 30–56. 16. Bagwell, 1982, p. 82. 17. Ibid., p. 83. 18. Crouchett et al., 1989, p. 10. 19. Ibid., p. 9. 20. For example, see the discussion of blacks in late-nineteenth-century Philadelphia in W. E. B. Dubois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. New York: Schocken Books, 1967 [1899]. 21. See Stanley Lieberson, A Piece of the Pie: Blacks and White Immigrants Since 1880. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980, pp. 296–327. 22. Crouchett et al., 1989, p. 13. 23. Ibid., p. 14. 24. Edgar J. Hinkel and William E. McCann, eds., Oakland, California, 1852– 1938: Some Phases of the Social, Political, and Economic History. Oakland: U.S. Works Projects Administration and the Oakland Public Library, 1939. 25. Bagwell, 1982, p. 93. 26. Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996, p. 73. 27. Bagwell, 1982, p. 190. 28. Crouchett et al., 1989, pp. 18–19. 29. Bagwell, 1982, pp. 192–196.

Notes 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

173

Ibid., pp. 196–197. Ibid., p. 196. Crouchett, et al., 1989, p. 19. Idem. Charles Wollenberg, Golden Gate Metropolis: Perspectives on Bay Area History. Berkeley: Institute of Governmental Studies, 1985, pp. 144–149. Bagwell, 1982, p. 200. Ibid., p. 204. Ibid., p. 205. Cited in Douglas Henry Daniels, Pioneer Urbanites: A Social and Cultural History of Black San Francisco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, pp. 102–103. Crouchett et al., 1989, p. 22. Idem. Bagwell, 1982, p. 215. Ibid., p. 217. Crouchett et al., 1989, p. 35. Ibid., pp. 36–37. Ibid., pp. 42–43. Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Underminded the War on Poverty. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 19–24. Walton Bean, California: An Interpretive History. New York: McGraw Hill, 1973, p. 426. Mark S. Foster, Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the American West. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989, pp. 82–85. Kaiser Industries, The Kaiser Story. Oakland, CA: Kaiser Industries, 1963, pp. 27–28. Ibid., p. 31. Charles S. Johnson, The Negro War Worker in San Francisco. San Francisco: Young Women’s Christian Association, 1944, pp. 62–66. Kaiser Industries, 1963, p. 29. Gerald D. Nash, The American West Transformed: The Impact of the Second World War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985, p. 91. Johnson, 1944, pp. 66–74. Nash, 1985, p. 89. Daniels, 1991, pp. 165–166. Marilyn Johnson, The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay during World War II. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, pp. 60–82. Ibid., pp. 152–153 and 170. Crouchett et al., 1989, p. 45. Johnson, 1993, pp. 169–170. See Massey and Denton, 1993, pp. 26–59. Albert S. Broussard, Black San Francisco: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the West, 1900–1954. Abilene: University of Kansas Press, 1993, pp. 143–178. J. Harvey Kerns, A Study of the Social and Economic Conditions Affecting the Local Negro Population. Oakland, CA: Council of Social Agencies, 1942, p. 17. Lemke-Santangelo, 1996, pp. 135–136. Ibid., pp. 159–160. Crouchett et al., 1989, p. 53. Ibid., p. 56.

174

Notes

68. Edward C. Hayes, Power Structure and Urban Policy: Who Rules in Oakland. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972, pp. 111–119. 69. Crouchett et al., p. 56. 70. Idem.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 3 1. Going against more conventional studies of the black middle class, Sharon Collins has demonstrated insights garnered from a focus on more readily defi ned, credentialed middle class African Americans (read professionals and managers) rather than on the amorphous and catch-all grouping of all “white-collar” (including clerical and sales workers) and unionized blue-collar workers comprising a broad conception of the middle classes. She illustrates the particular circumstances of a relatively privileged and structurally distinguished black middle-class grouping—executive level managers—with their own attendant problems including issues of race in the workplace. See Sharon Collins, Black Corporate Executives: The Making and Breaking of a Black Middle Class. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997. 2. See George Wilson, “Pathways to Power: Racial Differences in the Determinants of Job Authority.” Social Problems. Vol. 44, No. 1, 1997 pp. 38–54. 3. See Philomena Essed, Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Theory. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1991. 4. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010. 5. Marc Benedict, Charles Jackson, and Victor Reinoso, “Measuring Employment and Discrimination through Controlled Experiments.” Review of Black Political Economy. Vol. 23, No. 1, Spring 1994, pp. 25–48; and James B. Stewart, “Recent Perspectives on African Americans in Postindustrial Labor Markets.” American Economic Review. Vol. 82, No. 2, May 1997, p. 315. 6. See Ian Haney Lopez, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race, rev. ed. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 7. See for example, David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness. London: Verso, 1994; and Tomas Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. 8. See the recent research by Darrick Hamilton, Algernon Austin, and William Darity, Jr., Whiter Jobs, Higher Wages: Occupational Segregation and the Lower Wages of Black Men. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute Briefi ng Paper #288. February 28, 2011. Also refer to Leslie McCall, Complex Inequality: Gender, Class, and Race in the New Economy. New York: Routledge, 2001, and Barbara Reskin, “The Determinants and Consequences of Workplace Sex and Race Composition.” Annual Review of Sociology. Vol. 25, No. 1, 1999, pp. 335–361. 9. This includes important contributions such as William J. Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980; Bart Landry, The New Black Middle Class. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987; Steven Gregory, Black Corona. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998; Mary Patillo-McCoy, Black Picket Fences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999; and Bruce D. Haynes, Red Lines, Black Spaces. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. 10. See E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie. New York: The Free Press, 1957.

Notes

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11. See, for example, Joe R. Feagin, Anthony Orum, and Gideon Sjoberg, A Case for the Case Study. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. 12. By “larger” metropolitan areas I refer to Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Areas. In 2000, a total of 3,495, 883 professionals were found in the San Francisco Bay Area. They accounted for 43.6 percent of the regional labor force. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Ten Metropolitan Areas with the Highest Percentage of Civilians Employed in Selected Occupational Groups: 2000. Table 7. Summary File 3. Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, August 2003. 13. This fi nding is similar to research that indicated that despite substantial sunbelt economic growth, increasing employment opportunities and the ascendancy of local black political leadership in Atlanta, the substantive socioeconomic status of blacks locally remained notably poorer relative to their white peers. That is, general economic growth, in and of itself, doesn’t readily alter entrenched patterns of racial inequality. See Gary Orfield and Carole Ashkinaze, The Closing Door: Conservative Policy and Black Opportunity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. 14. For example, note the role of the black middle classes as “outsiders” in shaping the dynamics of school reform in the mostly poor and working class neighborhoods of West Oakland. Shawn A. Ginwright, “Classed Out: The Challenges of Social Class in Black Community Change.” Social Problems. Vol. 49, No. 4, 2002, pp. 544–561. 15. See the review of the literature in Chapter 1. 16. Talcott Parsons, “The Professions and Social Structure.” Social Forces. Vol. 17, No. 4, 1939, p. 457. 17. A. M. Carr-Saunders and P. A. Wilson, “Professionalism” in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 1933, pp. 476–477. 18. Magali Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977, pp. 9–18. 19. Charles Derber et al., Power in the Highest Degree: Professionals and the Rise of a New Mandarin Order. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 109–115. 20. Ibid., p. 6. 21. Larson, 1977, pp. 20–21. 22. Ibid., pp. 25–31. 23. Derber et al., 1990, pp. 98–108. 24. Ibid., p. 6. 25. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Selected Occupational Groups and Subgroups by Sex for the United States: 2000. Table 1. Summary File 3. Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, August 2003. 26. Larson, 1977, pp. 66–79. 27. Eliot Friedson, Professionalism Reborn: Theory, Prophecy, and Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, pp. 75–91. 28. Larson, 1977, pp. 178–207. 29. Robert Averitt, The Dual Economy. New York: W.W. Norton, 1968; and Peter Doeringer and Michael Piore, Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1971. 30. David Gordon, Theories of Poverty and Underemployment. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1972, and; Doeringer and Piore, 1971. 31. Edwards, 1979, and; Michael Reich, Racial Inequality: A Political-Economic Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981. 32. Edwards, 1979, pp. 163–199. 33. David M. Gordon, Richard Edwards and Michael Reich, Segmented Work, Divided Workers: the Historical Transformation of Labor in the United States. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

176 Notes 34. Ibid., p. 226. 35. Thierry J. Noyelle, Beyond Industrial Dualism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987, pp. 15–18. 36. Thierry J. Noyelle, “Toward a New Labor Market Segmentation,” in Thierry J. Noyelle, ed., Skills, Wages and Productivity in the Service Sector. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990, pp. 212–223. 37. Noyelle, 1987, p. 9. 38. Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. New York: Basic Books, 1973. 39. See such varied works as Andre Gorz, Farewell to the Working Class. Boston: South End Press, 1982; Fred Block, Postindustrial Possibilities: A Critique of Economic Discourse. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990; and Gosta Esping-Andersen. Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 40. See Jurgen Osterhammel, Neils Petersson, and Dona Geyer, Globalization: A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. 41. Gorz, 1982, pp. 66–74. 42. Robert Reich, The Work of Nations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991, pp. 171–240. 43. Michael J. Piore and Charles F. Sabel, The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity. New York: Basic Books, 1984, pp. 251–308. 44. Noyelle, 1987, pp. 108–117. 45. In 2010 the rate of unionization was only 6.9 percent in the private sector, but it was 36.2 percent in the public sector. U.S. Department of Labor. “Union Members Summary.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. January 21, 2011. Available at: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ 46. Idem. 47. Venise Wagner, “Blacks Still Rare in the Upper Reaches of Math, Science,” San Francisco Examiner. February 2, 1997. 48. Professor Blackwell spent his early academic years at HCBUs. He returned to Berkeley as a visiting professor in 1954, and was subsequently hired as a tenured professor in Berkeley’s newly established Department of Statistics where he remained until retirement in 1988, having received numerous academic awards in his discipline. 49. See Thomas Sowell, Markets and Minorities. New York: Basic Books, 1981. 50. Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995, pp. 179–180. 51. Jack M. Bloom, Class, Race and the Civil Rights Movement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987, pp. 221–224. 52. Even President Nixon, who was known for racist and anti-Semitic rants recorded in the privacy of the Oval Office, publicly extolled the growth of the black middle class in the early 1970s. He fi ltered his public views of the black middle class through a political prism that endorsed black job opportunity, affi rmative action, homeownership for blacks, and “black capitalism.” See Dean Kotlowski, “Black Power—Nixon Style: the Nixon Administration and Minority Business Enterprise.” Business History Review. Vol. 72, No. 3, 1998. 53. See Nathan Glazer, Affi rmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy. New York: Basic Books, 1975; Stephen L. Carter, Refl ections of an Affi rmative Action Baby. New York: Basic Books, 1991; and Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991. 54. Richard Freeman, Black Elite: The New Market for Highly Educated Black Americans. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976, p. 2.

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55. Peter M. Blau and Otis Dudley Duncan, The American Occupational Structure. New York: The Free Press, 1967, pp. 207–213. 56. David L. Featherman and Robert M. Hauser, “Changes in the Socioeconomic Stratification of the Races, 1962–1973.” American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 82, No. 3, 1976, pp. 621–651. 57. Michael Hout, “Occupational Mobility of Black Men, 1962–1973.” American Sociological Review. Vol. 49, 1984, pp. 308–322. 58. These two categories have the greatest relative representation of blacks in any professional field. See Statistical Abstract of the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2011. 59. Douglas Henry Daniels, Pioneer Urbanites: A Social and Cultural History of Black San Francisco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, pp. 165–166. 60. Marilyn S. Johnson, The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, pp. 60–82. 61. Eric S. Brown, “Black Ghetto Formation in Oakland, 1852–1965: Social Closure and African American Community Development,” Research in Community Sociology. Vol. 8, 1998, pp. 255–274. 62. Albert Broussard, Black San Francisco: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the West, 1900–1954. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993, p. 175. 63. Nationally, in 1940 over 70 percent of black women and about 15 percent of black men worked in such positions. In 1950 the comparable figures were 61 percent of black women and 14 percent of black men in domestic service occupations. See Census of the Population. Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1952. 64. Martin Carnoy. Faded Dreams: The Politics and Economics of Race in America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 150–194. 65. Blau and Duncan, 1967. 66. Landry, 1987, pp. 98–100. 67. In 1967, the amount of wealth possessed by the average black family was $4,000. For whites the average was $20,000. See Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, Black Wealth, White Wealth: New Perspectives on Racial Inequality. New York: Routledge, 1995, pp. 100–101. 68. Landry, 1987, p. 99. 69. The idea of a civil rights “policy regime” is borrowed from Gosta Esping Andersen and his discussion of “social policy regimes” connected with different types of welfare states in industrialized societies. See Gosta EspingAndersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. 70. T. H. Marshall discusses the historic and sequential rise of civil, political, and social rights in the industrialized Western democracies. See T. H. Marshall, Class, Citizenship, and Social Development. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1965. 71. See John D. Skretny, The Minority Rights Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002. 72. See Freeman, 1976, and William Bowen and Derek Bok. The Shape of the River: Long Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. 73. Karen Sacks. “How Jews Became White,” in Steven Greying and Roger Sanjek, eds., Race. London: Routledge, 1994, p. 89; and Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005, pp. 113–141. 74. See Bowen and Bok, 1998. 75. James Blackwell, Mainstreaming Outsiders: The Production of Black Professionals, 2nd ed. Dix Hills, NY: General Hall, 1987, p. 103.

178 Notes 76. Freeman, 1976, p. 56. 77. Eliot Friedson writes, “it is no accident that Wright, et al. (1982:719) found that by their ‘class location’ criteria, conventionally classified ‘professionals’ were ‘managerial’ in 52 percent of the cases.” See Eliot Friedson, Professional Powers: A Study of the Institutionalization of Formal Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986, p. 60. 78. Based on the 1990 Census, the state of California had a population that was 53 percent white and 47 percent “minorities” (African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos and Native Americans). By 2000 California achieved a “majority of minorities.” According to the 2000 Census, the state was only 46.7 percent (non-Hispanic) white. Latinos were 32.4 percent, Asian Americans 12.3 percent, blacks 7.4 percent, and Native Americans 1.9 percentof the state’s population. Accordingly, California is much more “multiracial” than any other state. 79. Collins, 1997, pp. 49–57. 80. Freeman, 1976, and James P. Smith, “Race and Ethnicity in the Labor Market: Trends Over the Long and Short Term,” in Neil J. Smelser et al., eds., America Becoming: Racial Trends and Their Consequences. Vol. 2. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2001, pp. 52–97. 81. Jonathan S. Leonard, “The Impact of Affi rmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Law on Black Employment,” Journal of Economic Perspectives. Vol. 4, 1990, pp. 145–174; and Harry J. Holzer, “Racial Differences in Labor Market Outcomes among Men,” in Neil J. Smelser, et al., eds., America Becoming: Racial Trends and Their Consequences. Vol. 2. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2001, pp. 98–123. 82. Carnoy, 1994; John Bound and Richard Freeman, “What Went Wrong? The Erosion of Relative Earnings and Employment Among Young Black Men in the 1980s.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics. Vol. 107, No. 1, 1990, pp. 201–232; Margery Austin Turner et al., Opportunities Denied, Opportunities Diminished: Discrimination in Hiring. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Press and Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1991; Bennett Jarrison and Lucy Gorham, “Growing Inequality in Black Wages in the 1980s and the Emergence of an African American Middle Class,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Vol. 11, 1992, pp. 235–253; Smith, 2001; Holzer, 2001; and Michael K. Brown et al., White-Washing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 83. Ellis Cose, The Rage of a Privileged Class. New York: Harper Collins, 1992; Joe R. Feagin and and Melvin Sikes, Living With Racism: The Black Middle Class Experience. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994; Collins, 1997; and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. Racism Without Racists: Color Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States, 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010. 84. Lauren B. Edelman, “Legal Ambiguity and Symbolic Structures: Organizational Mediation of Civil Rights Law,” American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 97, 1992, pp. 1531–1576. 85. Reskin, 1999. 86. Wilson, 1997. 87. Reskin, 1999. 88. Collins, 1997, pp. 73–77. 89. Ibid., pp. 99–111. 90. See Mark Granovetter. Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974. 91. Wilson, 1997, pp. 48–49. 92. Ibid., p. 39. 93. Collins, 1997, pp. 73–89.

Notes

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94. Larger companies that have contracts with the federal government tend to be core sector fi rms and also tend to provide higher wages, salaries and benefits. The primary labor market jobs they provide are most in demand from prospective employees. They are also the fi rms scrutinized more closely for patterns of discrimination and were most affected by affi rmative action policies during the heyday of civil rights enforcement. Between 1974 and 1980 in fi rms covered by the OFCCP, the employment growth rate for black men was 3.8 percent faster than in noncovered fi rms. For other minority men (e.g., Asian American and Latino) it was 7.9 percent faster. It was 13.2 percent faster for black women, and 2.8 percent faster for white women. By contrast, employment growth for white men was 1.2 percent slower for white men. See Jonathan S. Leonard, “What was Affi rmative Action?” The American Economic Review. May 1986, p. 359. 95. Bob Blauner, “Talking Past Each Other: Black and White Languages of Race,” The American Prospect. Vol. 10, 1992, pp. 55–64, and; Jennifer L. Hochschild, Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. 96. Allen R. Myerson. “Workers Unite, Take Job Bias to the Courts,” New York Times. January 12, 1997. 97. See Gary Becker, The Economics of Discrimination, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971. 98. Roger Waldinger and Howard Aldrich, “Trends in Ethnic Business in the United States,” in Roger Waldinger et al., eds., Ethnic Entrepreneurs. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1990, pp. 58–64; and Feagin and Sikes, 1994, pp. 164–180. 99. Raymond S. Franklin. Shadows of Race and Class. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991, p. 122. 100. Ibid., p. 73. 101. Harry Specht and Mark E. Courtney, Unfaithful Angels: How Social Work Has Abandoned Its Mission. New York: The Free Press, 1994. 102. Miriam Komaromy et al., “The Role of Black and Hispanic Physicians in Providing Health Care for Underserved Populations,” The New England Journal of Medicine. Vol. 334, No. 20, pp. 1305–1310. 103. Ibid., p. 1310. 104. McCall, 2001; and Bonilla-Silva, 2006. 105. Wilson, 1997. 106. McCall, 2001. 107. Bowen and Bok, 1998. 108. Freeman, 1976. 109. Greg Duncan et al., “Whither the Middle Class? A Dynamic View,” in Dimitri Papadimitriou and Edward N. Wolff, eds., Poverty and Prosperity in the USA in the Late Twentieth Century. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993, pp. 202–271. 110. Theodore J. Davis Jr., “The Occupational Mobility of Black Men Revisited: Does Race Matter?” Social Science Journal. Vol. 32, 1995, pp. 121–135. 111. Julia Isaacs, Economic Mobility of Black and White Families. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, pp. 3–6. 112. Freeman, 1976; and Gerald Jaynes and Robin Williams Jr., eds., A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1989, pp. 272–277.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 4 1. Leonard P. Curry, The Free Black in Urban America, 1800–1850: the Shadow of the Dream. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981, pp. 37–48.

180

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2. For example, the great abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass was once a “runaway slave” who had skills as a blacksmith and during childhood was covertly offered opportunities to develop his literacy by the slaveowner’s wife. See Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. New York: Penguin, 1986 [1845]. 3. Leon F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790– 1860. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961, pp. 154–159. 4. Curry, 1981, pp. 40–45. 5. One author details his “insider” experience and links his personal biography with the historical and contemporary legacies of this privileged group of African Americans. See Lawrence Otis Graham, Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class. New York: HarperCollins, 1999, pp. 1–18. 6. Bart Landry, The New Black Middle Class. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987, pp. 23–25. 7. See F. James Davis, Who Is Black? One Nation’s Defi nition. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991. 8. Allan H. Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890–1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 51–70. 9. Verna M. Keith and Cedric Herring, “Skin Tone and Stratification in the Black Community.” American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 97, pp. 760–778. 10. See Cedric Herring et al., eds., Skin Deep: How Race and Complexion Matter in the “Color-Blind” Era. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. 11. See W.E.B. DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press [1899] 1996, pp. 99–116; David M. Katzman, Before the Ghetto: Black Detroit in the Nineteenth Century. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973, p. 128; and Kenneth L. Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870–1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976, pp. 73–90. 12. E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie: The Rise of a New Middle Class. New York: The Free Press, 1957, pp. 146–149. 13. Douglas S. Massey and Nancy R. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 26–42. 14. See Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge, 1995; and David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, 2nd ed. London: Verso, 2007. 15. Kusmer, 1976, pp. 76–78. 16. Richard W. Thomas, Life for Us Is What We Make It: Building Black Community in Detroit, 1915–1945. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992, pp. 14–15. 17. Landry, 1987, pp. 37–41. 18. Frazier terms this Great Migration to civil-rights-era middle class the “black bourgeoisie.” Many subsequent scholars such as Bart Landry refer to them as the “old” black middle class. See Frazier, 1957, pp. 43–52; and Landry, 1987, pp. 18–66. 19. See Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005, pp. 91–123. 20. See Thomas, 1992; and Joe William Trotter, Black Milwaukee: The Making of a Black Industrial Proletariat, 1915–1945, 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006. 21. Jack M. Bloom, Class, Race, and the Civil Rights Movement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987, pp. 59–73.

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22. In the case of Chicago, see Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940–1960. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. 23. See Stanley Lieberson, A Piece of the Pie: Blacks and White Immigrants since 1880. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. pp. 296–320. 24. St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945, pp. 437–445; and Landry, 1987, pp. 43–53. 25. This term is taken from Landry (1987). See Chapter 1. 26. See Drake and Cayton, 1945, pp. 430–469. 27. Landry, 1987, p. 51. 28. Frazier, 1957, pp. 44–53 and pp. 124–129; and Drake and Cayton, 1945, pp. 527–531. 29. These insights come from a now obscure but classic work. See Carter G. Woodson, The Negro Professional Man and the Community. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1934, p. 33. Cited in Landry, 1987, p. 52. 30. Frazier, 1957, pp. 87–90. 31. Woodson, 1934, pp. 96–99. 32. Frazier, pp. 50–53. 33. Darlene Clark Hine, Speak Truth to Power: Black Professional Class in United States History. New York: Carlson Publishing, 1996, p. 155. 34. Beth Bagwell, Oakland: The Story of a City. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1982, p. 259. 35. See Michael Fultz, “The Displacement of Black Educators Post-Brown: An Overview and Analysis.” History of Education Quarterly. Vol. 44, No. 1, 2004, pp. 11–45. 36. Richard Freeman, Black Elite: the New Market for Highly Educated Black Americans. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976, pp. 175–183. 37. Linda M. Perkins, “The History of Blacks in Teaching: Growth and Decline within the Profession,” in Donald Warren, ed., American Teachers: Histories of a Profession at Work. New York: Macmillan, 1989, pp. 351–359. 38. For an insightful discussion of the historical development of “ghetto schooling” in Newark, see Jean Anyon, Ghetto Schooling: A Political Economy of Urban Educational Reform. New York: Teacher’s College Press, 1997. 39. Shawn A. Ginwright, Black in School: Afrocentric Reform, Urban Youth, and the Promise of HipHop Culture. New York: Teachers College Press, 2004, p. 50. 40. Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991, pp. 221–222. 41. Noguera cites census data that indicates that in 1990 the percentages of white households with school children is 59.2 percent in Berkeley, 31.2 percent in Richmond, 49.7 percent in San Francisco, and 31.3 percent in Oakland. See Pedro Noguera, City Schools and the American Dream. New York: Teachers College Press, 2003, p. 30. 42. Ibid., p. 27. 43. Ginwright, 2004, pp. 108–118. 44. Woodson, 1934, pp. 190–194. 45. Ibid., pp. 234–239. 46. This point was emphasized by Clinton White in my interview with him. 47. Woodson, p. 240. 48. Frazier, 1957, pp. 47–52; Drake and Cayton, 1945, pp. 527–531. 49. G. Franklin Edwards. The Negro Professional Class. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959, p. 137.

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50. Henry K. Lee, “Clinton White, Champion of the Underdog.” San Francisco Chronicle. May 24, 2001. 51. Anecdotally, in the late 1990s, while I was in graduate school and living in Oakland, one of my summer jobs was working for a temporary employment agency that contracted with a large law fi rm. Our job was to code thousands of legal documents that would be available to defense attorneys in a massive legal dataset. I met one of the clerical staff at the fi rm, a black woman, who told me that the fi rm had more than 300 attorneys in its two offices (Los Angeles and Oakland) but that only two of these attorneys were African Americans. 52. Allen E. Broussard, A California Supreme Court Justice Looks at Law and Society, 1964–1996. An Oral History conducted in 1991, 1992, 1995, and 1996 by Gabrielle Morris, Regional Oral History Office, the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1994. Berkeley: Regents of the University of California, 1997, p. 41. 53. This racialized graduate and professional school policy of “one black at a time” was an effort by public institutions to stay technically within the law of being “integrated.” It was reinforced by the Supreme Court decision of 1950, Sweatt v. Painter. The court ruled that Herman Sweatt had to be admitted to the University of Texas Law School because the state of Texas did not provide “separate but equal” facilities for would-be black law students. This decision was based on earlier decisions by the court in the 1930s involving Maryland and Missouri. The 1964 Civil Rights Act eventually made these admissions policies legally redundant.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 5 1. It should be noted that following the critique of the flawed conception and usage of the term underclass, Wilson and others dropped its usage. See Herbert Gans, The War against the Poor. New York: Basic Books, 1996, pp. 58–73. 2. See Daniel P. Moynihan, “The Schism in Black America.” The Public Interest. No. 27, Spring 1972. 3. William Julius Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980, pp. 144–154. 4. See two of William Julius Wilson’s books: The Truly Disadvantaged. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987; and When Work Disappears. New York: Alfred E. Knopf, 1996. 5. See Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 6. Thomas F. Pettigrew, “Race and Class in the 1980s: An Interactive View.” Daedalus. Spring 1981. 7. Raymond S. Franklin, Shadows of Race and Class. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991, pp. 117–135. 8. See Norman Fainstein, “Race, Class, and Segregation: Discourses about African Americans.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Vol. 17, No. 3, 1993; Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993; Gary Orfield and Carole Ashkinaze, The Closing Door: Conservative Policy and Black Opportunity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991; and Mary Patillo-McCoy, Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Classes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

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9. Massey and Denton, 1993, pp. 6–8. 10. Ibid., pp. 148–185. 11. See Nancy A. Denton, “Are African Americans Still Hypersegregated?” in Robert Bullard et al., eds., Residential Apartheid: The American Legacy. Los Angeles: Center for African American Studies Publications, 1994. 12. Fainstein, 1992, p. 387. 13. Ibid. 14. E. Franklin Frazier, The Black Bourgeoisie: The Making of a Middle Class. New York: Free Press, 1957. 15. This “contradiction” echoes W.E.B. DuBois’s concept of “double consciousness” in that blacks are divided between their “black” (read “”segregated”) and “American” (read “integrated” or “mainstream”) selves. Relatively privileged blacks such as members of the professional middle class might have a closer glimpse through to the other side of the “veil” than most other African Americans. See W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999 [1903]. 16. Wilson’s most recent book, coauthored with Richard Taub, corrects this assumption. His revised thinking is apparently influenced by his former graduate student Mary Patillo-McCoy and her book, Black Picket Fences (1999). See William Julius Wilson and Richard Taub, There Goes the Neighborhood. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. 17. See Henry Louis Taylor Jr., “Social Transformation Theory, African Americans, and the Rise of Buffalo’s Postindustrial City,” Buffalo Law Review, No. 39, 1991, pp. 587–600; and Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996, pp. 181–207. For an analysis of this process under the terms of suburbanization, see Andrew Wiese, Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, pp. 159–163 and 269–292. 18. Eric S. Brown, Black Ghetto Formation in Oakland, 1852–1965: Social Closure and African American Community Development.” Research in Community Sociology. Vol. 8, 1998, pp. 267–271. 19. Patillo-McCoy, 1999, pp. 13–25. 20. Historians have made notable contributions on African Americans in West Coast cities. For example, see Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005; and Quintard Taylor, The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle’s Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994. 21. This finding is similar to research that indicated that despite the substantial sunbelt economic growth, increasing employment opportunities and the ascendancy of local black political leadership in Atlanta, the substantive socioeconomic status of blacks locally remained notably poor relative to their white peers. That is, general economic growth doesn’t readily alter entrenched patterns of racial inequality. See Orfield and Ashkinaze, 1991, pp. 45–68. 22. See Joe R. Feagin, “A House Is Not a Home: White Racism and U.S. Housing Practices,” in Robert D. Bullard, et al., eds., Residential Apartheid: The American Legacy. Los Angeles: Center for African American Studies Publications, 1994. 23. Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, Black Wealth, White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality. New York: Routledge, 1995, pp. 108–111. 24. Hayward Derrick Horton, “Race and Wealth: A Demographic Analysis of Black Ownership,” Sociological Inquiry. Vol. 62, No. 4, November 1992, p. 488.

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25. Massey and Denton, 1993, pp. 84–88; see also, Joe T. Darden, “African American Residential Segregation: An Examination of Race and Class in Metropolitan Detroit,” in Robert Bullard et al., eds., Residential Apartheid: The American Legacy. Los Angeles: Center for African American Studies Publications, 1994. 26. See Laura Counts, “Brown’s Newest Cause Close to Home.” Oakland Tribune, August 22, 2003. 27. Bart Landry, The New Black Middle Class. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987, pp. 67–93. 28. Marilynn S. Johnson, The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, pp. 60–112. 29. Douglas Massey and Eric Fong, “Segregation and Neighborhood Quality: Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians in the San Francisco Metropolitan Area.” Social Forces. Vol. 69, 1990, pp. 15–32. 30. John Yinger, Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost: The Continuing Costs of Housing Discrimination. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1995, pp. 187–188. 31. Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 214. 32. Clarence Y. H. Lo, Small Property versus Big Government: Social Origins of the Property Tax Revolt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, pp. 121–122. 33. This incident is indicative of the aggregate process found in Cleveland during the 1970s. See George C. Galster, “White Flight from Racially Integrated Neighborhoods in the 1970s: The Cleveland Experience.” Urban Studies. Vol. 27, No. 3, 1990, pp. 385–399. 34. Chris Rhomberg, No There There: Race, Class, and Political Community in Oakland. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004, pp. 50–62. 35. Joe R. Feagin and Robert Parker, Building American Cities: The Urban Real Estate Game. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990, pp. 129–153. 36. George Galster, “Racial Steering by Real Estate Agents: Mechanisms and Motives.” Review of Black Political Economy. Vol. 18, 1990, pp. 39–63. 37. John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987, pp. 116–134. 38. Fainstein, 1992, p. 387. 39. Oliver and Shapiro, 1995, pp. 136–150. 40. See Bruce D. Hyanes, Red Lines, Black Spaces. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001. 41. Wiese, 2004, pp. 116–122. 42. This is a concept employed by Joe R. Feagin in several works. He applies it specifically to the black middle class in his work coauthored with Melvin Sikes, Living with Racism: The Black Middle Class Experience. Boston: Beacon, 1994, p. 100. 43. Thomas Shapiro links the significant differences in transgenerational wealth to these advantages for middle-class whites. See his The Hidden Cost of Being African American. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 87–154. 44. See the discussion of views of the “American Dream” that divide and overlap among poor and middle-class blacks and whites in Jennifer L. Hochschild, Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. 45. See Massey and Denton, 1993; and Fainstein, 1992.

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46. William Bowen and Derek Bok, The Shape of the River: Long Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998, pp. 155–192. 47. See Landry, 1987. 48. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Refl ections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. London: Verso, 2006.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 6 1. Massey, Douglas, Jonathan Rothwell, and Thurston Domina, “The Changing Bases of Segregation in the United States. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 626, No. 1, 2009, pp. 74–90. 2. By “racialized urban problems” I mean social problems that become popularly cast as problems specific to the “black community” when they are in fact problems shared by all citizens, although arguably experienced disproportionately by African Americans. This designation serves to defi ne these problems as being “created” in the black community and needing to be “solved” in the black community rather than through public policy. 3. Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 130–162. 4. Mary Patillo, “Black Middle Class Neighborhoods.” Annual Review of Sociology. Vol. 31, 2005, pp. 305–329. 5. This conceptual distinction is discussed in Chapter 5. 6. See Michael C. Dawson, Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African American Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 45–68. 7. For an insightful perspective on the manifestation of racialized problems and intersectional divides see Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. New York: Routledge, 2005. 8. Katherine Tate, From Protest to Politics: The New Black Voters in American Elections. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, pp. 1–19. 9. An interesting example is Mia Love, the conservative black Mormon mayor of Sarasota Springs, Utah. According to the 2010 Census, the small city of Sarasota Springs, has a total population of about 17,781 and includes a black population of 0.5 percent. Many of Love’s political positions seem designed specifically to emphasize her own contradistinction to the liberal consensus positions of most black politicians and voters. This may be one approach to being elected as a black mayor in a very conservative city that is 93 percent white. While campaigning in the Republican Primary for Congress in Utah’s Fourth District, Love exclaimed that if elected she would join the Congressional Black Caucus and “try to take that thing apart from the inside out.” And, “It’s demagoguery. They sit there and ignite emotions and ignite racism when there isn’t. They use their positions to instill fear. Hope and change is turned into fear and blame. Fear that everybody is going lose everything and blaming Congress for everything instead of taking responsibility.” See Dennis Romboy. Salt Lake City Deseret News. “Love Would ‘Take Apart’ Congressional Black Caucus if Elected in Utah’s 4th District.” January 5, 2012. 10. Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997, pp. 65–116.

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11. See Bayard Rustin, “From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement.” Commentary. Vol. 39, No. 2, 1965, pp. 25–31. 12. The classic example of research on the black urban regime remains the study of Atlanta by Clarence M. Stone, Regime Politics: Governing Atlanta, 1946–1988. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1989. 13. Adolph Reed Jr, Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999, pp. 97–98. 14. Rustin, 1965. 15. See the discussion in David R. Colburn, “Running for Office: African American Mayors from 1967 to 1996,” in David R. Colburn and Jeff rey S. Adler, eds., African American Mayors: Race, Politics, and the American City. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001, pp. 24–29. 16. See for example, Robert L. Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History. New York: Anchor Books, 1970. 17. For this line of argument see William E. Nelson Jr. and Philip J. Meranto, Electing Black Mayors: Political Action in the Black Community. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1977, pp. 11–32. 18. Colburn, 2001, pp. 29–32. 19. John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place, 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, pp. 50–98. 20. The dynamics of “racial moderation” in black local politics can be seen in the case of the practice “coalitional-incrementalism” in Philadelphia. See Richard A. Keiser, Subordination or Empowerment? African American Leadership and the Struggle for Urban Political Power. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 112–130. 21. For example, see Beth Bagwell, Oakland: The Story of a City. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1982; and Charles Wollenberg, Golden Gate Metropolis: Perspectives on Bay Area History. Berkeley: Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California at Berkeley, 1985. 22. See especially the excellent work by Chris Rhomberg, No There There: Race, Class, and Political Community in Oakland. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. See also, Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. 23. Stone, 1989, p. 6. 24. Gerry Stoker, “Regime Theory and Urban Politics,” in David Judge, Gerry Stoker, and Harold Wolman, eds., Theories of Urban Politics. London: Sage, 1995, p. 54. 25. See for example, Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. 26. For the example of New York City, Kim Moody, From Welfare State to Real Estate: Regime Change in New York From 1974 to the Present. New York: New Press, 2007. 27. Stoker, 1995, p. 55. 28. Stone, 1989, p. 227. 29. Logan and Molotch, 2007, pp. 17–49; Joe R. Feagin, The Urban Real Estate Game: Playing Monopoly With Real Money. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 1983. 30. Reed, 1999, p. 79. 31. For example, controversial former Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry was an early leader of SNCC during the 1960s. 32. See Table 6.1.

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33. In the case of Black Panther electoral campaigns in Oakland, see Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story. New York: Anchor Books, 1994, pp. 314–327. 34. The classic example of this is Harold Washington’s victories in both the Democratic primary and in the general election over suddenly competitive Republican candidate Bernard Epton in Chicago in 1983. The Washington victory was a major blow to the Daley machine, but not the end of it. See Paul Kleppner, Chicago Divided: The Making of a Black Mayor. DeKalb: Northern Illinois Press, 1985, pp. 186–239. 35. Sharon M. Collins, Black Corporate Executives: The Making and Breaking of a Black Middle Class. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997, pp. 29–72. 36. DuBois prefigures his arguments about the “talented tenth” in his classic study of the problems of life in the pre-Migration black urban community. He argues for the importance of the leadership of the “better class of Negroes” in Philadelphia, by which he primarily meant the small class of black professionals. See W. E. B. DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996[1899], pp. 392–397. 37. The Men of Tomorrow, Constitution and Bylaws. Oakland: The Men of Tomorrow, Incorporated, 1959, p. 1. 38. Idem. 39. Ibid., p.2. 40. Men of Tomorrow, Directory of Members—1961. Oakland, CA: Men of Tomorrow, Inc., 1961, pp. 1–5. 41. Allen E. Broussard, A California Supreme Court Justice Looks at Law and Society, 1964–1996. An Oral History conducted in 1991, 1992, 1995, and 1996 by Gabrielle Morris, Regional Oral History Office, the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1994. Berkeley: Regents of the University of California, 1997, pp. 96–97. 42. See William Byron Rumford, “D. G. Gibson as I Knew Him,” in Harriet Nathan and Stanley Scott, eds., Experiment and Change in Berkeley: Essays on City Politics, 1950–1975. Berkeley: Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California at Berkeley, 1978, pp. 8–15. 43. See Evelio Grillo, Black Cuban, Black American: A Memoir. Houston: Arte Publico Press, 2000, pp. 131–133. 44. Norvel Smith, A Life in Education and Community Service. An Oral History conducted in 2002 and 2003 by Nadine Wilmot. Regional Oral History Office, the Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley, 2004. Berkeley: Regents of the University of California, 2004, pp. 38–44. 45. See Rufus P. Browning, Dale Rogers Marshall, and David H. Tabb, Protest Is Not Enough: The Struggle of Blacks and Hispanics for Equality in Urban Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, pp. 75–120. 46. Gayle B. Montgomery, James W. Johnson, and Paul G. Manolis, One Step from the White House: The Rise and Fall of Senator Knowland. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998, pp. 213–276, and; Rhomberg, 2004, pp. 96–172. 47. See for example, Thomas J.Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, 2nd ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005, pp. 259–271; and Robert Gottlieb et al., The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, pp. 11–66. 48. See especially Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change. New York: Free Press, 1986.

188

Notes

49. The late Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael) is generally given credit for the fi rst public utterance of the term “black power.” He and his coauthor sought to develop this political slogan into both theory and practice for the analysis and promotion of black political activism as the civil rights movement faded. See Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: the Politics of Liberation in America. New York: Vintage, 1967. 50. Robert L. Allen illustrated the problems of these political fragmentations in his early critical assessment of black power ideology and practice. See Allen, 1970, pp. 246–273. 51. On the growing literature on black power, see Manning Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America, 1945–2006, 3rd ed. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007, pp. 84–145; Thomas J. Sugrue. Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. New York: Random House, 2008; and Peniel E. Joseph, “The Black Power Movement: A State of the Field.” Journal of American History. December, 2009, pp. 751–776, 52. Jeff rey L. Pressman, Federal Programs and City Politics: The Dynamics of the Aid Process in Oakland. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975, pp. 58–83. 53. A few key studies for our consideration here include Jeff rey L. Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky, Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973; Frank S. Levy, Arnold J. Meltsner, and Aaron Wildavsky, Urban Outcomes: Schools, Streets, and Libraries. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974; and Pressman, 1975. 54. Many conventional scholars, policymakers, and politicians in many places were, indeed hostile to the idea of promoting community participation in the implementation of federal antipoverty programs. They were particularly critical of the logic of seeking the advice and consent of poor people themselves. This sentiment was of course amplified by the irrepressible Daniel Patrick Moynihan who was an original key architect of the War on Poverty in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. See his often cited work Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty. New York: Free Press, 1969. 55. Judith V. May, “The Politics of Growth versus the Politics of Redistribution: Negotiations Over the Model Cities Program in Oakland,” Paper presented at the meeting of the American Orthopsychiatric Association, San Francisco, March 24, 1970, pp. 5–7. 56. See Judith V. May, Struggle for Authority: A Comparison of Four Social Change Programs in Oakland, California. Ph.D. Dissertation. Berkeley: University of California. 1973, pp. 311–318. 57. Idem. 58. Houlihan was charged with, and convicted of, embezzlement in a case concerning the management of a client’s estate in which he had been involved as a private attorney. 59. Lionel Wilson, Attorney, Judge, and Oakland Mayor. An oral history conducted in 1985 and 1990 by Gabrielle Morris, Regional Oral History Office, the Bancroft Library, University of California. Berkeley: Regents of the University of California, 1992, pp. 46–49. 60. Self, 2003, p. 235. 61. For a general overview of Model Cities programs see Bernard J. Frieden and Marshall Kaplan, The Politics of Neglect: Urban Aid from Model Cties to Revenue Sharing. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975. For a discussion of Model Cities in Oakland see Judith V. May, “Two Model Cities:

Notes

62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68.

69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

189

Negotiations in Oakland.” Politics and Society. Vol. 2, No. 1, January, 1971, pp. 57–88. Edward C. Hayes, Power Structure and Urban Policy: Who Rules in Oakland. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972, pp. 151–161; Pressman and Wildavsky, 1973, pp. 51–53. Self, 2003, pp. 238–239. Pressman, 1975, pp. 77–83; Rhomberg, 2004, pp. 166–167. See Bobby Seale, Seize the Time. New York: Vintage, 1968, pp. 59–112. These endemic problems for the Black Panther Party are highlighted by Hugh Pearson in his The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1994. They are also discussed candidly in the autobiographical works of former Black Panthers Elaine Brown, David Hilliard, and others mentioned elsewhere in this chapter. The ten-point program can be found in Huey P. Newton, To Die for the People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton. New York: Random House, 1972, pp. 3–6. Marx considered the lumpenproletariat to be the “refuse of all classes” and a group that would not play a role in the progress of the workingclass struggle. The Black Panthers noted the signifi cant unemployment facing African Americans and argued that the “lumpen” segment of the larger society would grow in size as capitalism developed and they would have to be organized along with the working class. See Newton, 1972, pp. 26–30. See Curtis J. Austin, Up Against the Wall: Violence in the Making and Unmaking of the Black Panther Party. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2006, pp. 189–248. The shootout is described in a news article written by Tribune staff, “One Killed, 4 Shot in Gun Battle Here,” Oakland Tribune. April 7, 1968. Brown, 1994, pp. 208–225; see also David Hilliard and Lewis Cole, This Side of Glory: The Autobiography of David Hilliard and the Story of the Black Panther Party. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993, pp. 295–332. Tate, 1994, pp. 151–163. Pearson, 1994, pp. 251–292. Brown, 1994, pp. 320–327. Gayle Montgomery, “Reading Beats Seale Decisively in Runoff.” Oakland Tribune. May 16, 1973; Brown, 1994, pp. 324–327. See Lionel Wilson, Attorney, Judge, and Oakland Mayor, 1992, pp. 20–22 and 39–40. Rod Bush, “Oakland: Grassroots Organizing Against Reagan,” in Rod Bush, ed., The New Black Vote: Politics and Power in Four American Cities. San Francisco: Synthesis Publications, 1984, p. 326. Mike McGrath, “The Assault on Pax Wilsonia.” East Bay Express. January 23, 1987. Browning, Marshall, and Tabb, 1984, pp. 66–67. Dashka Slater, “The Life and Times of Mayor Wilson.” East Bay Express. October 9, 1998, p. 16. City of Oakland Code of Ordinances, The Charter of the City of Oakland. Article III: The Council, Section 203. Oakland, CA: November 2008. Bill Martin, “Wilson Tells Plans.” Oakland Tribune. May 19, 1977. Bush, 1984, p. 325. McGrath, 1987, pp. 10–11. See Stone, 1989. McGrath, 1987, pp. 11–12.

190 Notes 87. Wilson had about a four-to-one advantage in campaign funds. John Lynn Smith, “Wilson’s Funds Pour In; Riles’ Donations Trickle,” Oakland Tribune, April 5, 1985. 88. Jim Herron, “Voter Apathy May Doom Progressive Oakland City Council Challengers.” San Francisco Bay Guardian. April 8, 1987. 89. In this case, political incorporation refers to which group interests are represented in the local policy making process. This in turn is shaped by the degree to which minorities are part of coalitions that represent minorityrelated issues in city politics. See Rufus P. Browning Dale Rogers Marshall, and David H. Tabb, Racial Politics in American Cities, 3rd ed. New York: Longman Publishers, 2003, pp. 17–48. 90. Logan and Molotch, 2007, pp. 50–98. 91. Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, “Deindustrialization, Urban Poverty, and African American Community Mobilization in Oakland, 1945–1995,” Unpublished manuscript, nd., pp. 1–36. 92. The term redevelopment is used in both popular and policy circles. It is an effort to rebuild or remake built areas of a city in new designs, uses, and structures that produce new forms of use and exchange value for investors, property owners, and consumers, often against the needs and wants of current residents. Such efforts involve intervention by private and public sector actors in the real estate market. See Joe R. Feagin and Robert E. Parker, Building America Cities: the Urban Real Estate Game. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990, pp. 129–148. For an analysis of the example of the massive and ongoing redevelopment of Manhattan, see Moody, 2007. 93. Mark Gelfand, A Nation of Cities: The Federal Government and Urban America, 1933–1965. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975. 94. Hayes, 1972, pp. 75–127; Rhomberg, 2004, pp. 124–137. 95. Of course, activists involved in the OECDI board and certainly the WOPC were highly critical of the City Center project and other redevelopment projects in downtown and in West Oakland deemed to benefit business interests over those of neighborhood residents. Bobby Seale and Elaine Brown were also critical of the project in their Panther-based electoral campaigns during the 1970s. 96. Bush, 1984, p. 327. 97. Stephen Maita, “Oakland Pushes City Center.” San Francisco Chronicle. December 1, 1986. 98. In their rejection of a 1949 report by the Oakland City Planning Department that declared West Oakland a “blighted” area, top executives from major fi rms in the Bay Area formed an organization called Oakland Citizen’s Committee for Urban Renewal (OCCUR) in 1954. This informal group played a key role in establishing the Oakland Redevelopment Agency (ORA) as an official city agency. The ORA began planning for a series of urban renewal projects in the city of Oakland. See Hayes, 1972, pp. 110–115. For an example of a “redevelopment” plan in Oakland, see Oakland Redevelopment Agency. Oakland: A Demonstration City Report. Oakland, CA: Oakland Redevelopment Agency, 1966. 99. Brian Johns and Craig Staats, “Wilson Graceful in Defeat.” Oakland Tribune. June 7, 1990. 100. Paul Raber, “The Undertaker’s Son vs. the Lonely Warrior.” East Bay Express. November 2, 1990. 101. Brian Johns, “Miley, Harris First New Council Faces Since 1983.” Oakland Tribune. November 8, 1990. 102. Pearson, 1994, p. 319. 103. Raber, 1990.

Notes

191

104. Elihu Harris Campaign for Oakland. Issues for 1990. Oakland, CA. n.d. 105. Robert Reinhold, “Fire in Oakland Ranks as Worst in State History.” New York Times. October 22, 1991. 106. Michelle Quinn, The Sound and the Fury. San Francisco Examiner Magazine. Vol. 6, No. 13, 1992. 107. University-Oakland Metropolitan Forum, Oakland’s Economy in the 1990s: A Sourcebook of Planning and Community Development Issues Facing the City, its Neighborhoods, and the Region. Berkeley: University of California, October 1990, p. 69. 108. Ibid., pp. 69–70. 109. Wendy Tanaka, “Sears and Robust,” San Francisco Examiner. October 26, 1996. 110. Quinn, 1992; see also City of Oakland. Restoring the Dream: 1993 Annual Report to the People of Oakland. Oakland, CA: City of Oakland, 1994. 111. Martin Halstuk, “Mixed Reviews for Oakland’s Mayor.” San Francisco Chronicle. April 4, 1992. 112. Allen R. Wastler, “Feelings Run Deep Over Oakland Port Dredging—Environment, Jobs at Odds in Battle Over Shipping Center.” Seattle Times. May 28, 1992; City of Oakland. The Best of Oakland: 1994 City of Oakland 1994 Annual Report. Oakland, CA: City of Oakland, 1995; Dashka Slater, “Oakland’s Once and Future Port,” East Bay Express. Vol. 21, No. 1, 1998. 113. Annual Report; 1994 Annual Report. 114. Ibid. 115. Bill O’Brien, “Oakland’s New City Council Takes Office.” East Bay Express. January 8, 1993. 116. Cited in Sheila Muto, “The Oakland Mayoral Contest: The Ghost of Politics Future.” California Journal Weekly. October 3, 1994. 117. Emelyn C. L. Rodriguez, “Deconstructing Harris,” California Journal. Vol. 30, No. 5, 1999. 118. Dashka Slater, “The Race for Second Place,” East Bay Express. Vol. 20, No. 34, 1998. 119. Peter Waldman, “As Mayor of Oakland, Jerry Brown Woos Business and Trumpets Order.” Wall Street Journal. August 10, 1999. 120. Gary Delsohn, “Downtown Jerry Brown,” Planning. February, 1999. 121. Chris Thompson, “Brown versus Board of Education.” East Bay Express. Vol. 24, No. 6, 2001; Meredith May, “State’s Take Charge Guy Walks and Talks in Oakland.” San Francisco Chronicle. June 3, 2003. 122. Joan Walsh, “Brown’s Town.” The New Republic. August 30, 1999. 123. Waldman, 1999. 124. See Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books, 2002. 125. David Kurapka, Mayors in the Middle.” Blueprint. Vol. 15, 2002. 126. Waldman, 1999. 127. Chris Thompson, “Grading Jerry.” East Bay Express. Vol. 29, No. 13, 2007. 128. See Ronald V. Dellums and H. Lee Halterman. Lying Down with Lions. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000. 129. In my interview with him, Pastor J. Alfred Smith conveyed the sense of betrayal by Jerry Brown felt by the black pastors, and the black community in Oakland. He thought that hard fought black political power had been disrespected and “called out” by Brown rather than cooperated with. Many black pastors were going to support De La Fuente for mayor but felt that they had to try to draw Dellums into the race to project a progressive black political agenda back into the political life of the city.

192 Notes 130. Chris Thompson, “Anybody Seen Hizzoner?” East Bay Express. Vol. 29, No. 35, 2007. 131. See Rhomberg, 2004.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 7 1. See, for example, Douglas S. Massey, Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007, pp. 158–210. 2. Theda Skocpol, Social Policy in the United States: Future Possibilities in Historical Perspective. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. 3. See Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002; and Ian Haney Lopez, White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race, rev. ed. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 4. Claude Fischer et al., Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 129–157. 5. This theme is explored in depth in Ira Katznelson, When Affi rmative Action Was White: An Untold Story of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. 6. During the early 21st century, plans promoted from the political right and the Republican Party for “privatizing” Social Security, significant cuts in Medicare, and efforts to dismantle public sector unions have generated substantial and mostly successful political resistance from organizing efforts among the middle and working classes, with some support from the mainstream of the Democratic Party. 7. See Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 8. See Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, pp. 60–102; and Kenneth J. Neubeck and Noel A. Cazenave, Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card against America’s Poor. New York: Routledge, 2001. 9. See the discussion in Chapter 3. 10. Stephen Steinberg argues that federal changes that abolish affi rmative action may occur, and this would most likely lead to less recourse for racial minorities to address discrimination and blocked opportunity in the workplace. With reference to his intellectual nemesis Paul Starr, Steinberg characterizes the “color blind” liberal project on race as one of opportunism and accommodation. Steinberg writes, “Not content with arguing that affi rmative action has been ineffective as antipoverty policy, Starr goes on to argue that affi rmative action policies have helped to perpetuate racism. Why? Because they taint all blacks as lacking in qualifi cations, which arouses the ire of whites and leaves blacks feeling “embattled, angry, and resentful. The whole atmosphere of race relations is poisoned, writes Starr, in overtones reminiscent of southern segregationists who used to argue that there would be harmony between the races if only the civil rights workers would pack their bags and go home. For the sake of good race relations, Starr is asking blacks to forgo opportunity and to withhold their demands for access to job sectors where they still confront pervasive racism.” See Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreat From Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995, pp. 172–173.

Notes

193

11. See Jeff rey Rosen, “Affi rmative Action and Public Opinion.” New York Times. September 6, 2011. 12. The use of affi rmative action as a racial “wedge issue” is not new. The strategy was pioneered by Richard Nixon, whose administration developed the “Philadelphia Plan.” In 1969 the Labor Department ordered local construction contractors to implement the method of “goals and timetables” to increase the hiring of minorities. On the one hand it made him appear sensitive to the demands of minorities to open historically up jobs from which they had historically been excluded. On the other hand, it exacerbated the political divide between two Democratic Party constituencies, the trade unions and civil rights organizations. Publicly, Nixon could declare his opposition to “quotas.” See Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960–1972. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 438–448. 13. Thomas and Mary Edsall argue, in reference to affi rmative action, that, “Racially preferential policies are claimed as a ‘right’ by one side and denounced as a fundamental violation of democratic principle by the other. Confl icts over such policies have created an intractable dilemma that overrides shared interests.” Cited in Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991, p. 284. 14. See William J. Wilson, The Declining Significance of Race, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980, p. 19. He writes, “With the passage of equal employment legislation and the authorization of affirmative action programs the government has helped clear the path for more privileged blacks, who have the requisite education and training, to enter the mainstream of American occupations. However, such government programs do not confront the impersonal economic barriers confronting members of the black underclass, who have been effectively screened out of the corporate and government industries. And the very attempts of the government to eliminate traditional racial barriers through such programs as affirmative action have had the unintentional effect of contributing to the growing economic class divisions within the black community.” See also Wilson’s more recent work with a more explicit emphasis on policy. William Julius Wilson, The Bridge Over the Racial Divide: Rising Inequality and Coalition Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. 15. This point is emphasized in Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy. Boston: Beacon, 1995, pp. 179–204. 16. See Paul Starr, “Civil Reconstruction: What to Do without Affi rmative Action.” The American Prospect. Winter 1991; and Paul Starr, “The New Politics of Diversity.” The American Prospect. May 23, 2002. 17. See Richard Kahlenberg, “Class, not Race,” New Republic. April 3, 1995; and also Richard Kahlenberg, “Colorado’s Affi rmative Action Experiment.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. September 17, 2010. 18. See Nathan Glazer, Affi rmative Discrimination. New York: Basic Books, 1975. 19. See Stephen L. Carter, Refl ections of an Affi rmative Action Baby. New York: Basic Books, 1991, pp. 62–69. 20. Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990, pp. 150–165. 21. See John McWhorter, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America. New York: Harper Perennial, 2001. 22. Shelby Steele, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era. New York: Harper Perennial, 2007.

194

Notes

23. Thomas Sowell, Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality. New York: William Morrow, 1984, pp. 37–60. 24. Thomas Sowell, Affi rmative Action around the World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. Sowell seems to mix and match the industrialized United States with a number of postcolonial societies whose boundaries were artificially drawn and in which ethnic, civil, and political conflict preceded the introduction of affi rmative action. 25. Gertrude Ezorsky. Racism and Justice: The Case for Affi rmative Action. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991, p. 48. 26. See David Harvey. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 64–86. 27. See Fred L. Pincus, Reverse Discrimination: Dismantling the Myth. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner Publishers, 2003. 28. See Allen R. Myerson, “Workers Unite, Take Job Bias to the Courts.” New York Times. January 12, 1997; Greg Winter, “Coca-Cola Settles Racial Bias Case.” New York Times. November 12, 2000, and; Steven Greenhouse, “FedEx Agrees to Pay $3 Million to Settle a Bias Case.” New York Times. March 21, 2012. 29. This was demonstrated in the vote on Proposition 209 in California. The proposition passed with only 54 percent of the vote. White men supported the proposition by 69 percent. White women offered support with 56 percent of their vote. Racial minorities opposed the proposition overwhelmingly. African Americans (74 percent), Latinos (76 percent) and Asians (61 percent) voted against it. Even Jews, a group historically wary of “quotas” because they were used against them in college admissions in 1920s and 1930s, voted against the proposition (58 percent). Connie Rice, “Toward Affi rmative Reaction.” The Nation. January 13, 1997, pp. 22–24.. 30. Ibid. 31. The American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI) is an organization fronted by the black conservative and Republican Party politico Ward Connerly. The ACRI is mostly known for well-funded efforts to abolish race and gender-based affi rmative action policies at the statewide level across the United States. 32. California Statewide Special Election. Official Voter Information Guide. Official Title and Summary, Proposition 54. California Secretary of State. 2003. Available at: http://vote2003.sos.ca.gov/propositions/2–3-prop-54. html 33. Rebecca Trounson and Nancy Vogel, “Both Ballot Measures Go Down in Defeat.” Los Angeles Times. October 8, 2003. 34. Adam Liptak, “Justices to Revisit Voting Act in View of a Changing South.” New York Times. November 9, 2012. 35. As this book goes to press, Fisher v. University of Texas is a major “reverse discrimination” case to be decided by the Supreme Court in 2013. In it, a legal victory by the plaintiff might undermine the constitutional underpinnings of affi rmative action in college admissions. 36. For discussion of the Croson decision and the difficulty of legally or politically preserving affi rmative action “set aside” contracts, see W. Avon Drake and Robert D. Holsworth, Affi rmative Action and the Stalled Quest for Black Progress. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996, pp. 138–183. For an overview of the genesis of affi rmative action and the key Bakke and Gruttinger decisions, see Terry H. Anderson. The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affi rmative Action. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 150– 160 and pp. 268–284.

Index

A Affi rmative action, 18, 50, 54, 58, 63–64, 90, 95, 116–117, 140, 157–164 African Americans. See blacks African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), 29 Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), 2, 68, 106, 115, 157 Alameda, 34, 106 Alameda County, 99, 106, 130, 147 Alameda County Board of Supervisors, 139 Alameda County Municipal Court, 138 Alameda County Superior Court, 85 American President Lines, 147 Amtrak, 147 Arab Americans, 14 Arkansas, 36, 52, 77, 104 Army Corps of Engineers, 147 Asian Americans, 14, 24, 55, 64, 78–79, 82, 148, 152 assets. See wealth Atlanta, 77 attorneys, 29, 42, 52, 61–63, 75–76, 84–94, 105, 119–120, 128, 138 auto industry in Oakland, 30

B Baake v. Regents of the University of California (1978), 163 Babe Ruth leagues, 119–120 bankers, 60–61 Bank of America, 125, 150 Bates, Tom, 139, 141 Bay Area, 13–14, 25, 35, 43, 78, 92, 99–100

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), 39, 125, 132 Bay Bridge, 34, 43 Bazile, Leo, 144 Bechtel, 125, 143 Becker, Gary, 66 Bell, D., 47 Berkeley, 32–33, 36–37, 80, 101, 104, 107 South Berkeley, 33, 37, 52, 107 Berkeley High School, 144 Berkeley, Tom, 86–88, 91, 140 bilingualism and multiculturalism in Oakland schools, 82–83 black business, 16, 27, 29, 73–75, 123, 128, 140 black chuches, 29, 37–38, 77, 118–119 black community in Oakland as a research problem, 10 concrete and local vs. symbolic and national communities, 117–122 historical development, 25–39 interracial confl ict, 4 intraracial (class) confl ict, 2, 99, 105, 132–134 multiclass, 10, 98 racial identity, 8 service to 66–70, 117–120 black middle class. See also black professional middle class; class in the research literature, 1–9, 41–42 new, 6 old, 18, 74–76, 97 prehistory of, 72–73 Black Panther Party, 23, 107, 123, 128, 130–131, 134–139 black politics, 22–23, 121–124 black power, 130–131, 134–138

196

Index

black professional middle class as a research problem, 10, 13, 50 clientele, 66–70, 74–77, 84, 93, 97–98, 113, 122, 128 defi ning, 10, 50 early black professionals in Oakland, 28–29, 31 hiring, 18, 42, 54–60 mainstream, 10, 18, 42, 54–71, 88, 97–98, 113, 115–118 political leadership, 122, 127, 132, 138, 150 promotion, 18, 42, 60–66 recruitment, 18, 42, 54–60 traditional, 10, 16, 42, 76–94, 97–98, 113, 115–120, 128 black urban regime, 23, 122, 125–128, 138–150 black women, 29, 37–38, 41 black working class and the black poor, 1–2, 8, 21, 101, 103, 131–138, 147–148 Blackstone Rangers, 128 Blackwell, David, 49 Blau, Peter, 51 blockbusting, 7, 108–109 Boalt Law School (UC Berkeley), 56, 85, 90 Bobb, Robert, 149 Bock, Audie, 148 Bok, Derek, 115 Bowen, William, 115 Bromalea Limited, 143 Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 28 Broussard, Allen, 88–89, 129 Brown, Elaine, 137 Brown, Jerry, 104, 148–151 Brown, Willie, 144 Brown v. Board of Education (1954), 77 Buffalo, 99 Burton, John, 144 Bush, Rod, 139

C Cain, Bruce, 148 California, 21, 26–27, 31, 100, 130 California Court of Appeals, 85 California State Assembly, 129, 139, 144, 148 California State University, East Bay (Hayward), 144 Campbell Village, 105 Capitol Records, 87–88

case studies, 3, 9, 11, 13, 99–100 Chicago, 4–5, 14, 31, 99, 109–110 Chicago Defender, 86 Chicago School of Sociology, 14 Chinese Americans, 32, 37, 89, 148 Chinese immigration, 27 Chinatown, 27 City Center project, 132, 142–143, 146–147 civic activities, 29, 33–34, 99, 115–120 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 1, 13, 16–18, 20, 42, 54–55, 58, 71, 77, 123 Civil Rights Act of 1991, 66 civil rights and affi rmative action policies (CRAA), 157–164 civil rights era, 2, 16, 54, 97 civil rights laws, role of. See Civil Rights Acts; civil rights policy regime civil rights movement, 15, 85 civil rights policy regime, 2, 17–18, 20, 52, 54, 153, 157–164 class capitalist class, 16 class formation, 15 gradational approaches, 8, 10–11 Marxist theory of, 4, 9, 19 relational approaches, 10–11 structure, 16 class action lawsuits, 65–66, 161 class-determined racial inequality theory, 1–2, 14, 95–96 clergy, 17, 42, 51, 75–76, 97, 118, 128, 140, 149 Clinton, Bill, 160 Clorox, 125, 140, 142 Collins, Sharon, 58, 128 color blind racism, 20, 158–160 Communist Party, 107 community action agency, 132, 137 community activism, 80, 107, 131– 134, 138 conservatism, 16, 139 Contra Costa county, 99, 106 Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), 136 country club, 112 covenants, 32–33 crime and safety issues, 108–115, 121 Croson v. Richmond (1989), 163 Cypress freeway, 147

D Dang, Ted, 148

Index Danville, 81, 111 deindustrialization, 38, 142 De la Fuente, Ignacio, 148 Dellums, C.L., 150 Dellums, Ron, 139, 141, 147, 150 Democratic Party, 23, 129–130, 139, 144, 158 dentists, 75 Denton, N., 96 Department of Housing and Urban Development, 134 Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, 57, 63 Derber, Charles, 11, 44 Detroit, 30–31, 99, 141 developers, 108, 140–143, 150 discrimination institutional, 1–2, 97, 131 employment, 6, 41, 49–50, 57, 62–67 housing, 6, 111–112 doctors. See physicians downtown interests versus the neighborhood interests, 141–143, 147 DuBois, W.E.B., 129 Duncan, Otis Dudley, 51 Dymally, Mervyn, 79

E East Bay as a region of the Bay Area, 12, 21, 43, 51–52, 61, 76, 100–101, 106, 130, 139, 146 East Bay Democratic Club, 129, 133, 140 East Bay Express, 150 East Oakland Redevelopment Center, 116 education, 18, 48, 54–55 Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), 55 Elihu M. Harris State Office Building, 147 Emporium Capwell, 143, 146 engineers, 57–58, 65–66 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), 57, 63 ethnography, 3–5 exclusionary policy, 17, 54, 163 Executive Leadership Council, 116 Executive Order 8802

F Fair Housing Act, 17, 54

197

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 130, 136 Federal Housing Administration, 107 Filipinos, 37 Fisk University, 92 Florida, 21 Ford Foundation, 132 Frazier, E. Franklin, 1, 97 Freeman, Richard, 1, 50 Fremont, 38

G Gardner, Henry, 140 General Services Adminstration, 146 gentrification, 7, 23, 104, 149 George, John, 139, 141 ghettoization, 21, 25–26, 34–40, 52, 74–75, 98–99, 113, 142 Gibson, D.G., 129–130 GI Bill, 55 Glazer, Nathan, 159 globalization, 48, 151 Gold Rush, 26–27 Golden Gate Bridge, 34 Gordon, David, 47 government employment, 18, 31, 58, 64–65, 88, 133–134 Great Depression, 33–34, 74 Great Migration, 20, 34–38, 51–52, 73–74, 84, 104 Great Recession, 150 Great Society, 132–133, 157 Gregory, Steven, 3–4 Grillo, Evelio, 130 Grubb and Ellis, 143 Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), 163

H Harris, Elihu, 143–148 Hastings School of Law (UC San Francisco), 86, 138 Havenscourt Junior High School, 119 Haynes, Bruce, 6–7 Hayward, 38, 106, 114 Henderson, Rickey, 119 hiring and promotion criteria formal, 59–60 informal, 59–60, 62–65 historical-archival methods, 3–4, 9, 12, 100 Holiday, Billie, 86 home ownership issues, 4–8, 108, 114–115 Houlihan, John, 132–133

198

Index

Houston, Charles Hamilton, 76, 85 Howard University, 49, 85 human resources, 57 Hunter, Ivory Joe, 87–88 Hunter’s Point, 52 Hutton, Bobby, 136

I inclusionary policy, 17, 54, 163 income, 8, 13 insitutionalism, 156 internal colonial theory, 1, 124 intersectionality, 96, 121, 137 interview research, methods, 3, 9, 12, 42, 100 subjects, 12–13, 42 Irish Americans, 31, 85 Italian Americans, 31–32

J Jack London Square, 147, 149 Japanese Americans, 32, 89 Jewish Americans, 85 Jim Crow. See segegation, formalized Johnson adminstration, 132–134 Johnson, Charles S., 35 judges, 85, 90

K Kahlenberg, Richard, 159 Kaiser Industries (shipbuilding), 35–38, 51 Kaiser Permanente, 125 Karenga, Ron, 136 Keynesianism, 132 King, Martin Luther, 55 Kirkham Court, 105 Knowland, Joseph, 130 Knowland machine, 23, 130 Kozol, Jonathan, 78 Ku Klux Klan, 108

L labor market external, 47 internal, 20, 46–47 primary, 20–21, 45, 47, 50, 57 secondary, 46, 60 segmentation, 45–48 Lacy, Karyn, 7–8 Landry, Bart, 54 Latinos, 14, 55, 64, 69, 78–79, 82, 130, 148, 152 lawyers. See attorneys

liberalism, 16 Lieberson, Stanley, 28 life chances, 1–2, 14, 51 Little Leagues, 119–120 Loma Prieta earthquake, 143, 145 Los Angeles, 23, 31, 79–80, 99, 136, 147 Louisiana, 36, 51, 77, 104 lumpenproletariat, 136

M mainstream vs. racialized jobs (Collins), 58–59 Malcolm X, 131, 135 managers, 20, 57, 59, 62–66, 116 manufacturing in Oakland, 30 Maoism, 135 Marcus Foster Education Institute, 116 marginality, 112–113 Massey, Douglas, 96 Maynard, Robert, 140 mayors, 123–124, 128 McClymonds High School, 82, 90, 138 McColl, Tom, 150 McCullum, Don, 133 McWhorter, John, 160 Measure D, 149 Measure X, 149 Medicaid, 69, 157 Men of Tomorrow, 128–131, 133 Merritt College, 90, 105, 144 Mexican Americans, 24, 79 middle class. See also black middle class debates about, 18–19 operationalization, 19 minority equity, 140 mobility geographic, 52 social 9, 51–52, 54–55, 61–66, 104, 117 Model Cities, 132–134 modern liberalism, 160 Moore, Percy, 134, 137 Moraga, 111 Morgan, Joe, 119 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 1–2, 95–96, 98 multiple methods, 4, 9

N Nashville, 92

Index National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 34, 65, 76, 115, 117, 130, 132–133 Native Americans, 14, 24, 55 Neighborhood Advisory Committees (NAC), 133 neighborhoood types. See also Oakland multi-class black, 10, 22, 98–99, 103, 113–115 race and class segregated black middle class, 22, 99, 103, 109–113 predominantly white, 22, 104, 106–109 neoliberalism, 148, 160–163 New Deal, 34 new immigration, 23, 151 New Orleans, 80, 106, 138 New Ways Leadership Forum New York city, 14 Newton, Huey P., 135–136, 144 Niagara Democratic Club, 144 Nichols, Jess, 87 Nimitz Freeway, 39, 145 Nixon, Richard, 163 No Child Left Behind, 78 Noguera, Pedro, 78 Not for Profits, 116 nurses, 55, 69

O Oakland as a local research setting, 10, 12–14, 43, 98–102 East, 21, 38, 61, 69, 81–82, 103, 105–106, 108, 113–115, 118–120, 137, 139–141, 151 flatlands, 21, 30–31, 38, 103, 113–115, 132, 136–137, 141, 143, 151 Fruitvale, 148 Havenscourt, 119 hills, 31–32, 103, 110, 112–113, 145 Lakeshore, 32 Montclair, 32 North, 21, 31–33, 38, 104, 106, 137, 139, 145 Northwest, 21, 103 Rockridge, 32 Sequoyah Hills, 103, 112 Temescal, 31, 106 Trestle Glen, 32

199

West, 21, 28–29, 31–33, 38–39, 52, 81–82, 90, 104–106, 108, 119, 131–139, 141, 145 Oakland Army Base, 105 Oakland Chamber of Commerce, 145 Oakland City Council, 38, 134, 139–141 Oakland City Hall, 137, 147, 149 Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, 147 Oakland Economic Development Council (OEDC), 132–134, 138 Oakland Economic Development Council Incorporated (OEDCI), 134–135, 137 Oakland Ecopolis, 149 Oakland “fi restorm”, 145 Oakland International Airport, 34, 132 Oakland Museum, 133, 140 Oakland Naval Supply Center, 34, 52–53 Oakland Police Department, 31, 131, 136 Oakland Port Commission, 30 , 140 Oakland Progressive Political Alliance (OPPA), 141 Oakland Project, 132 Oakland Raiders, 147 Oakland School Board, 149 Oakland Sunshine, 32 Oakland Symphony, 140 Oakland Tribune, 130, 140, 144 Oakland Unified School District, 76–78, 82–83 Obama, Barack, 122 occupation. See also professionals status, 19, 50–51 Office of Economic Opportunity, 132–134 Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, 63 Ogawa, Frank, 141 Old boys network, 62, 65 Omi, M., 15

P Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), 140 pastors. See clergy Patillo-McCoy, Mary, 4–5 Peters, Raymond, 88 Pettis, Gary, 119 physicians, 17, 28–29, 42, 55, 68–70, 75–76, 107, 119, 128 Piedmont, 31, 78

200 Index Pinson, Vada, 119 Pittsburgh Courier, 86 politicians. See politics Port of Oakland, 30, 125, 132, 137, 145, 147 Portland, 25, 34 Portuguese Americans, 31 post-civil rights era, 16, 20, 41, 71, 98, 122 postindustrial society, 45–47, 142 poverty, 13, 39, 66–70, 74, 83–84, 95–96, 98, 101, 113–115, 118–120–121, 133–138, 142, 147–148 pre-civil rights era, 16, 41, 54, 98 Prince Hall Masons, 86 proactive policies, 54 professionals employees, 18, 45, 97 knowledge, 11, 44 preindustrial society, 44–45 postindustrial society, 19, 45 professionalization, 18, 48 self-employed, 18–19, 31, 63, 77, 97 professors, 48–49, 59 progressives, 49, 107, 121, 124, 130, 137–139, 141, 150 property as a basis of the middle class, 72–75, 153 Proposition 14, 107 Proposition 54, 162 Proposition 209, 70, 161–162 public health professionals, 105 public housing projects, 38, 105 Pullman porters, 27–28

Q Queens, NY, 6–7

R race concious, 158–160 race neutral, 158–160 racial formation, 15 racial inequality, 14 racial projects, 15 racialization, 15–16, 18 racialized class consciousness, 123 racialized class formation, 11–12, 14–17, 41–42, 51, 54, 70, 76, 93, 96–97, 153 racialized class interests, 128, 133–135 racialized class politics, 122–123 racialized policy regimes, 153–157 racialized urban problems, 121–123

racism, 15–18, 20–23, 62–66 Randolph, A. Phillip, 34 Reading, John, 133–134, 140 Reagan, Ronald (as governor), 16, 134 realtors, 107–109, 111, 140, 150 redevelopment policies, 138, 141–142, 145–148 Republican Party, 23, 134, 139–141, 158 residential segregation. See segregation reverse discrimination, 21, 50, 64, 159–161 reverse migration, 23 Richmond, 33–34, 36–37, 51–52, 101 Riles, Wilson Jr., 139, 141, 144, 148 Robinson, Frank, 119 Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building, 146 Roosevelt administration, 34 Rose, Joshua, 129, 137 Rouse, James, 145 Rumford, Byron, 129 Rustin, Bayard, 122

S Safeway, 125 Saint Mary’s College of Law, 86 Samuels, Joseph, 149 San Francisco, 25, 31, 52, 104, 146–147 San Leandro, 21, 38, 105–106, 114 San Lorenzo, 21, 105 schools, 77–79 Seale, Bobby, 23, 135, 137–139 Sears, 146 Seattle, 25 seclusionary policy, 17, 163 Section 8 Housing, 114 segregation de facto, 14, 77, 98 formal, 13–14, 18, 52, 73, 85, 92, 131 occupational, 11, 20–21, 41, 50, 58, 74–75 political, 22–23, 122, 151 residential, 2, 9, 11, 21–22, 25, 36, 73–74, 96, 108–109, 121 Shelby County v. Holder, 162 Shorenstein, Douglas, 150 Shorenstein, Walter, 150 sites, 10 slavery, 72–73 Smith, J. Alfred, 149 Smith, Norvel, 130, 133–134, 140 snowball sample, 12–13, 42

Index social workers, 67–68, 75, 150 Southern Pacific Railroad, 27–28 Sowell, Thomas, 160 spatial inequality, 96 Spees, Dick, 141 Starr, Paul, 159 state (role of the), 15 Steele, Shelby, 159–160 Steinberg, Stephen, 49 Stewart, Dave, 119 Stone, Clarence, 125 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 123, 135 Sugrue, Thomas, 98 suburbanization, 6–8, 38–39, 103, 106–107, 110 Sweeney, Wilmont, 88, 129

T targeted policies, 2, 157 Taylor, Henry Louis, 98 teachers, 42, 51–52, 75–84, 97, 108, 114, 118–119, 128 Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), 2 Texas, 21, 36, 51, 77, 104 Toney, Robert, 145 Traynor, Roger, 89 Treasure Island, 34 Treasure Island Naval Base, 92 Truman, Harry S., 34 Tucker, Dave, 139

U underclass, 1, 3, 16, 47, 95 unionization, 19, 48 unions, 20, 49 United Negro College Fund (UNCF), 116 United States Supreme Court, 61–62 universal policies, 2, 156–157 University-Oakland Metropolitan Forum, 146 University of California at Berkeley, 49, 56, 64, 85, 90, 132, 143, 146 University of California at Davis, 144 University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), 80, 86 University of Tennessee urban enclaves, 29–33 urban planners, 64–65

201

urban renewal, 38, 142

V Vaughns, George, 86 Veterans Administration, 107 Vietnamn War, 92 Voting Rights Act, 17, 54, 162–164

W Wall Street Journal, 149 Walnut Creek, 111 War on Poverty, 134 Warner, W. Lloyd., 8 Washington, D.C., 7–8, 42, 133–134 Washington state, 21 wealth, 2, 9, 54, 103 Weaver, Robert C., 35 Weber, Max, 103 West Coast, 10, 24–25, 43, 99, 104, 141, 147, 151 West Oakland-Downtown Corridor Project, 142 West Oakland Planning Committee (WOPC), 134, 137 White, Clinton W., 85–89, 133 whites business, 23, 27, 36, 74–75, 133– 134, 137 fl ight, 21, 38–39, 78, 108 privilege, 1, 49, 59, 64, 67, 81, 107, 145 relations to blacks 13, 36, 107 Wilson, Lionel, 23, 129, 133–134, 138–145, 151 Wilson, William J., 1–2, 95–96, 98, 159 Winant, Howard, 15 women discrimination against, 59, 62 working class blue collar jobs, 20, 33, 36 job loss, 20, 38–39, 47 World War I, 30–31, 73, 85 World War II, 30, 52, 74, 104, 106 Wright, Erik Olin, 9, 19

Y Yonkers, 6–7

Z “Zebra” killings, 88