Information About This Excerpt and the Authors

Charisse, a sixteen-year-old girl from Chicago, is in many ways, a typical teenage girl. But as sociologist Mary Pattillo-McCoy reveals in the ethnography, Black Picket Fences, Charisse's social development has been shaped by her race, social class, and unique home environment.

Title: Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class
Author: Mary Pattillo-McCoy
Copyright: 1999
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226649296

Mary Pattillo-McCoy is an Associate professor of sociology and African American studies and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. Her areas of interest include race and ethnicity, urban sociology, culture, and qualitative methods. She is currently conducting a three-year ethnography examining low-income housing construction, and gentrification in a black Chicago neighborhood.

Links to Related Topics

"Frontline: The Two Nations of Black America"
This site offers a summary, audio excerpts, visual references, and a discussion board in response to a recent Frontline/PBS documentary on the class divide in black America.

"Gentrification: Black and White Middle-Class Blacks also Bring Change to the 'Hood"
This link is an article discussing the impact middle-class African Americans have made on working-class neighborhoods. The author notes that the revival of the city's African-American middle class has helped to stabilize poor and working-class neighborhoods.

Poverty, Race and Inequality Program
Created by the Institute for Policy Research, this site discusses the sociological impact of public housing in Chicago.