Our kind of people : inside America's Black upper class
Title:
Our kind of people : inside America's Black upper class
Author:
Graham, Lawrence.
ISBN:
9780060984380
Personal Author:
Edition:
First HarperPerennial edition.
Physical Description:
xviii, 422 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), portraits ; 21 cm
General Note:
Originally published in hardcover in 1999. Reprinted in paperback in 2000 with a new introduction.
Includes index.
Contents:
Origins of the Black upper class -- Jack and Jill: where elite Black kids are separated from the rest -- Black child experience: the right cotillions, camps, and private schools -- Howard, Spelman, and Morehouse: Three colleges that count -- Right fraternities and sororities -- Links and the girl friends: for Black women who govern society -- Boulé, the guardsmen, and other groups for elite Black men -- Vacation spots for the Black elite -- Black elite in Chicago -- Black elite in Washington, D.C. -- Black elite in New York City -- Black elite in Memphis -- Black elite in Detroit -- Black elite in Atlanta -- Other cities for the Black elite: Nashville, New Orleans, Tuskegee, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia -- Passing for White: when the "brown paper bag test" isn't enough.
Abstract:
Debutante cotillions. Million-dollar homes. Summers in Martha's Vineyard. Membership in the Links, Jack & Jill, Deltas, Boule, and AKAs. An obsession with the right schools, families, social clubs, and skin complexion. This is the world of the black upper class and the focus of the first book written about the black elite by a member of this hard-to-penetrate group. The author, a television commentator and one of the nation's most prominent spokesmen on race and class, spent six years interviewing the wealthiest black families in America. He includes historical photos of a people that made their first millions in the 1870s. He tells who is in and who is not in the group today with separate chapters on the elite in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, Detroit, Memphis, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Nashville, and New Orleans. A new Introduction explains the controversy that the book elicited from both the black and white communities when it was first published in 1999.
Genre:
