The broad blade and the little hump in the top edge are the identifying signs. It goes inside the soup spoon and outside the dinner knife.
Posted on 08/21/2009 6:31:51 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
As the first family departs for Martha’s Vineyard, Patricia Williams says the trip illuminates their delicate relationship with the black upper class—a clubby world of debutantes and BMWs.
When President Barack Obama appointed Valerie Jarrett as his senior advisor and Desiree Rogers as White House social secretary, there was, among the mainstream media, a bit of muffled gasping about from where on earth such designer-clad doyennes might have emerged. In what hidden universe do black people exist who can actually distinguish a fish knife from a shoe horn? And are there more of them?
| In what hidden universe do black people exist who can actually distinguish a fish knife from a shoe horn? |
The phenomenon of a black upper class has always been complicated, ambivalent. Often the descendents of “house slaves,” some significant percentage grew up imitating the manners, mores, and various condescensions of white plantation society—including setting up private clubs and exclusionary networks. More recently, the ranks of the black upper middle class have been increased with beneficiaries of the civil rights movement–with people such as Barack and Michelle Obama, who represent a generation able to take advantage of increased access to jobs and schools once off limits. This new mobility has not altogether erased some of the clubbishness and snob appeal of older black organizations, however. There are still fault lines and hidden hierarchies within black social life.
For those whose only exposure to upper class African American social organizations may be the black student organization on one’s college or grad school campus, well, brace yourselves: there’s a world of black debutantes out there, and they mean to do serious, social-climbing business, the wheels of their black BMWs and silver Mercedes Benzes sinking up to their plantinum hubcaps in the soft white sand of the beaches on Martha’s Vineyard, the North Fork of Long Island, and the islands off the coast of South Carolina.
Colson Whitehead’s novel, Sag Harbor, reveals a glimpse of this Cosby-inflected world of strivers, arrivistes and “black boys with summer houses.” These relatively well-off African Americans come largely from the ranks of what the novel’s narrator describes as “the magic seven”: doctors, dentists, lawyers, preachers, teachers, nurses, and undertakers. This is the world that those African Americans not part of such networks sometimes refer to, with a dismissive sad sigh, as “boogie, ” which is a class reference seemingly unknown to most white people. The New York Times, writing about Whitehead, spelled the word, with utter, and utterly cringe-worthy, uninitiated innocence: “bourgie.”
So, a little background for those terrified that the ship of state is about to be steered toward the shoals of Rush Limbaugh’s wildest fears : it may come as a surprise that the black middle class is just that, middle class. It is conformist, pleasantly centrist, relatively conservatively Christian, overweeningly upwardly mobile and generally better (if more anxiously) dressed than its white counterparts.
The media often speaks of “the black middle class” as though it were a solid singularity that includes any dark-skinned person with a job or an education—from bicycle messengers to Oprah Winfrey. Likewise, any black person without a permanent 9-5 job is tossed into “the underclass.” This is in stark contrast to the way “middle class” is applied to white citizens, where it connotes a specific income level lodged above the “temporarily unemployed” and the working class and just beneath the upper-middle class, with the wealthy and the super-rich above that. In other words, popular depictions frequently suppress the political presence of a large black working class, as well as a black upper-middle class, to say nothing of those wealthy African Americans who are bankers or industrialists or computer geeks rather than just movie stars or sports figures.
Hard as it might be to imagine if your head is filled with the Hollywood haze of Gone With the Wind, whatever Miss Scarlett yearned for, so did succeeding generations of her ex-slaves—who in real life were as resolute and deeply ambitious as she was. And so, after the Civil War, African Americans arranged themselves into all manner of self-help groups patterned upon the gilded hierarchies of Tara.Most Americans are at least aware of the role of the black church in this effort at uplift, as well as of the NAACP, of the Tuskegee Institute, and of the Urban League. Thanks to Spike Lee’s movie, School Daze, perhaps a few more are even aware of the contribution of historically black colleges—as well as the function of segregated Greek fraternities and sororities—in coalescing fairly conservative, life-long networking circles.
As with white fraternities, hazing rituals can be snobbish, or bullying. And as with white country clubs, exclusivity can have its ugly edge: some black social groups have the reputation of discriminating based on “connections” of ancestry or education or income, or, in the not-so-recent past, skin color (must be “lighter than a brown paper bag”) and texture of hair (a comb would have to move flowingly through smooth and therefore presumptively not-kinky hair). As for those debutante cotillions…well, what can I say?
Oh brother.
do they also say “wee-wee’d”?
This is stupid - we know plenty of blacks that live in upper middle and high class society. We go to church with several black doctors, lawyers and business owners. Things are more equal then Jesse and Al want the world to believe.
Another arrogant racist twit commenting with significant envy about other buppie racist twits.
i’m not really following this thread but that quote is a hoot.
These circles are no secret to most people with the least bit of social awareness. On some levels, the social-climbing classes of black and white cross . . . even in the South. And the authoress is dead wrong when she surmises that the black socially aware class is descended from house slaves. Nonsense. One of the most polished set of siblings I knew (a dentist, a teacher, and a nurse) were the children of a laborer at Chattahoochee Brick Company and the daughter of a sharecropper from Troup County.
But most of those who are well bred -- black or white -- don't have the TIME to mess with all the social climbing nonsense. When my daughter went to the local prep school (which is a good school but has way too many of the social climbers haunting its halls) she was worried because so many of the girls came from much more wealthy families than ours. I reminded her that she was as well bred as ANYONE at the school, and that she had my permission if any of the BMW set gave her a hard time to remark (with a smile) that the one thing that money can't buy is a grandfather.
Shuts 'em up every time, at least in the South, I don't know if it would work elsewhere.
If one wants to meet the black upper class, it is not necessary to travel to Martha's Vineyard, you have only to come to the Atlanta area, Roswell, Alpharetta etc. I don't know if they are familiar with fish knives, but they are well-educated and carry Blackberries and drive lots nicer cars than I do. I have never, ever heard the class-warfare term "boogie" used to describe them. It sounds like a Chicago term that community organizers might use to whip up the projects.
Tuskegee Institute is one of the most EXPENSIVE (outrageously) unis in the US.
This is a fascinating article. Ms Williams should use caution since publicity of a long established black upper class does tend to tamp down the “African American as the proverbial victim” stereotype.
I looked quickly through the article and didn’t see a mention of the exclusive beaches the upper-crust blacks have carved out in Oak Bluffs on Marthas Vineyard. The New York Times did an article on this a few weeks ago and mentioned Inkwell Beach, the beach that is for the exclusive use of the black affirmative-action Wall Street elite and Harvard professors, such as Henry Louis Gates, the friend of 0 who threatened the Cambridge cop who behaved “stupidly”.
The broad blade and the little hump in the top edge are the identifying signs. It goes inside the soup spoon and outside the dinner knife.
Who would those be? They certainly aren't the Obamas!
Patricia J. Williams, a professor of law at Columbia University, was born in Boston in 1951 and holds a BA from Wellesley College and a JD from Harvard Law School.
A law critic and a proponent of critical race theory, an offshoot of 1960s social movements that emphasizes race as a fundamental determinant of the American legal system.
The relationship between planters and free blacks in ante-bellum South is fascinating sociology. Planters would sign complicated contracts with free black women to keep them as mistresses, providing support for children and frequently sending the offspring from "placage" to France to be educated.
BTW they do cut fish quite excellently. I generally place them outside of the beer and inside of the Cholula :)
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