STUDY GUIDE – THIRD EXAM
SOCIAL INEQUALITIES
The exam will be essay question format.
You may bring your copy of The Black Middle Class to the exam to use for any essay questions related to this book.
Materials Covered:
1. Worlds Apart, C5 (Race & Class); C9 (Education & Mobility); C11 (Reversing the Race to the Bottom)
2. The Black Middle Class, Cs 1-8
3. All class lecture/discussion since 2nd exam
Worlds Apart
Race and Class
Be prepared to discuss what Sernau means when he says that immigrant groups in the United States know they have truly arrived and succeeded “when they become white.”
Be able to discuss why race is both myth and reality and what makes it a social construction rather than a biological division (as was discussed in lecture). According to Blauner, immigrants of the late 20th century are people of color, in that they never become white. What factors may account for this?
Be able to explain Blauner’s elements of Internal Colonialism. Do African Americans fit the criteria for a group subjected to Internal Colonialism? Be able to support your answer.
Be able to explain the analytical debate between “cultures of poverty” and “structures of poverty.” What were William Julius Wilson’s arguments on this topic? How does the evidence support or negate his arguments?
Reversing the Race to the Bottom
Be able to discuss:
Contributory factors (including changes in public policy) to a general trend of declining poverty indicators from 1933 to 1970 – this would include, but not necessarily be limited to, The New Deal and The War on Poverty
Contributory factors (including changes in public policy) to a general trend of increasing inequality and poverty indicators from 1970 to the present
How post-WWII migration and deindustrialization contributed to worsening poverty in rural and urban America
The problems of extreme poverty, including the factors that contribute to homelessness
Poverty on a global scale, including differences across nations and across the developed and developing regions of the world
Be able to compare and contrast:
Rural poverty/the rural poor and urban poverty/the urban poor
New Deal Keynesian economics with its successor, supply-side Reaganomics – and the groups, entities, and categories of people that seemed to come out ahead and behind in each economic era
The industrial workforce with the postindustrial workforce, and how the transformation from one to the other might have contributed to growing inequality, increased wealth, and increased poverty
The welfare state of the US with the welfare states of European and Scandinavian countries
The Black Middle Class
Be able to identify and discuss the 3 black middle classes (when/how they emerged, why/how the first two disappeared).
Chapter 1 - Introduction
What were the author’s objectives in writing “The Black Middle Class”?
What does the author mean when he says that black Americans are “the miner’s canary”? (if you are not familiar with the term, “miner’s canary,” look it up) Why are black Americans the “miner’s canary”?
How does the author depict the analytical relationship between the black and white middle classes?
In what principal ways does the black middle class differ from the white middle class?
Chapter 2 – Putting Class in Context
Historically, what were the origins of the middle class (where did it come from, and when)?
How do Weber’s and Marx’s definitions of class differ?
What economic problems “necessitated” the importation of slave labor to the US colonial South?
Chapter 3- The Emergence of a Black Middle Class
In what way did colonial slavery impact the emergence of the first black middle class?
What did the early social hierarchy of the slave population look like?
What groups formed the white middle class in the 19th C? How did the white middle class emerge in the 19th C?
Was there a pre-Reconstruction black middle class? If not, why? If so, what did it look like?
What was Reconstruction? What kinds of changes took place in the South with Reconstruction?
How were the post-bellum Reconstruction blacks stratified?
How and why did Reconstruction allow for the emergence of a new black middle class?
What were the defining characteristics of the Reconstruction era black middle class? How did they differ from the larger US middle class of that time?
According to Bowser, is the middle class a necessary element of a functioning social system? If so, why? If not, why not?
Chapter 4 – The Class that Jim Crow Built
What was the fate of blacks in the South after Reconstruction ended? What were some of the changes that took place?
What is Plessy v Ferguson (1896)? What precedent did it establish?
What is Jim Crow? What was its purpose/s? Where did it emerge in its most extreme forms?
Why was the black middle class particularly impacted by post-Reconstruction Jim Crow?
How did blacks respond and adapt to the Jim Crow era?
Why was southern economic development negatively impacted by Jim Crow?
What did the black middle class look like in the Jim Crow era? What characteristics defined the Jim Crow era black middle class?
How did the Jim Crow era black middle class differ from the white middle class of that time?
Chapter 5 – Comparability…Not
What were the major factors contributing to the growth of the black middle class in the 2nd half of the 20th century?
What factors contributed to the end of Jim Crow?
What were some of the structural (economic problems) facing the post-WWII black working class that inhibited their upward mobility?
Chapter 6 – From Affirmative Action to Diversity
What factors does Bowser cite as contributing to the growth of the “new black middle class” (that is, the third, or current, black middle class)?
What is affirmative action? In what ways was it implemented after the 1960s? Why/how did it end?
Explain the difference between integration by affirmative action versus integration based on diversity?
Be able to summarize the continuing social, economic, and political disparities between blacks and whites in US society.
Chapter 7 – Anatomy of Today’s Black Middle Class
Bowser identifies several vulnerabilities facing blacks in general, and the black middle class in particular, in US society today. Be able to identify and discuss these issues.
Bowser is highly critical of the commercialization of the black underclass as a subculture. According to him, what are the consequences of this phenomenon?
Bowser argues that there is no black upper class in the United States. Be able to present his argument.
Chapter 8 – The Future of Race, Economic Inequality, and Class
What are the “three myths [about the black middle class that] replace reality”? Why are they myths?
Based on chapter 8, what is Bowser’s assessment of the future of the US middle class in general, and the black middle class in particular?
What steps need to be taken, in Bowser’s opinion, to protect the integrity of the US middle class?