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Dual Consciousness, Social Mobility, and the Experiences of Middle-Income African Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era

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Abstract

This article examines how African Americans who grew up in middle-income households during the modern post-Civil Rights Era conceptualize their opportunities to get ahead and how they explain downward mobility. Drawing upon 70 in-depth interviews with African American men and women, it identifies a dual consciousness that shapes respondents’ understandings of who gets ahead and why. While the majority of respondents believe that African Americans face persistent structural inequality, they also believe that members of their group are responsible for their own outcomes. They emphasize the importance of employing individualistic mobility strategies for advancement. They also draw upon broad definitions of success to support an understanding that everyone can achieve some level of success if they work hard enough. When assessing their own mobility trajectories and the mobility trajectories of others they know, respondents tend to attribute individual-level factors to movement up and down the socioeconomic ladder.

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Notes

  1. I define the modern post-Civil Rights Era in the USA as the period from 1970 to present. This era follows the passage of major Civil Rights legislation (e.g., the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968) and marks the end of legalized racial discrimination in the USA (Alexander 2012; Bonilla-Silva 2001; Brooks 2009; Iton 2000).

  2. In this study, middle-income includes what I define as working middle-class and professional middle-class individuals. While the educational attainment rate of African Americans increased at the beginning of the twentieth century, prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, their educational opportunities were more restricted than whites’. Therefore, in an effort to include respondents who grew up in homes most representative of middle-income African Americans at the time they were growing up, I include working and professional middle-class, middle-income families. Working middle-class families were at or above the median income level while respondents were growing up. Parents generally held stable blue-collar jobs (e.g., police officer, fireman, factory worker) or low-status white-collar jobs (e.g., clerical, nurse’s aid). Ninety percent were also home owners. The professional middle-class includes individuals whose parents were college-educated and held white-collar jobs such as managers, nurses, and teachers.

  3. This paper draws upon the concept of dual consciousness as it has been used in sociological research on racial attitudes (see Hunt 2007). This concept is different than W.E.B. DuBois’ double consciousness theory. DuBois ([1903]2007) argues that double consciousness is “this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (p. 8). Both theories emphasize the multidimensionality of the African American experience and the complex set of factors that shape how they understand their circumstances in the USA. However, double consciousness theory focuses on the fact that blacks must constantly consider their lived experiences through the eyes of whites, while dual consciousness theory focuses on the simultaneously belief that individual level and structural factors contribute to persistent racial inequality (see Hunt 2007). Thus, double consciousness theory as defined by DuBois will not be explored in this paper as it is worthy of a separate analysis.

  4. Henry and Sears (2002) argue that symbolic racism includes beliefs by whites that African Americans are responsible for their own circumstances and that African Americans make unfair demands of society. Bobo and Smith (1998) argue that symbolic racism does not fully explain factors that have contributed to changing racial attitudes among whites in the USA. Instead, they develop the theory of laissez-faire racism which they argue “blames blacks themselves for the black-white gap in socioeconomic standing and actively resists meaningful efforts to ameliorate America’s racist social conditions and institutions” (Bobo and Smith 1998, p. 186). They argue that laissez-faire racism developed to maintain whites’ system of economic and political control after Jim Crow was formally abolished. Bonilla-Silva (2001) defines the post-Civil Rights Era shift in whites’ attitudes as colorblind racism, which he argues is supported by four frames: “abstract liberalism,” “bioligization of culture,” “naturalization of racial matters,” and “minimization of racism.”

  5. Hunt (2007) argues that motivational explanations for inequality include work ethic and effort. In contrast, structural explanations include racism and limited opportunities (Hunt 2007, p. 392).

  6. All respondents resided in the New York Metropolitan Statistical Area.

  7. Ninety-five percent of respondents’ parents were also born in the USA. The age range captures individuals at a time when I can expect them to have achieved a college degree if they are going to have had the opportunity to have more than one job. By using an upper age limit that corresponds to being born in the 1960s, it captures the outcomes of children of the modern post–civil rights generation, a generation that provided significant hope for the mobility prospects of blacks (see Wilson 1980).

  8. Respondents were asked to estimate their parents’ income when they were growing up. In addition, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates was used to develop an approximate estimate.

  9. Baum and Steele (2010) find that 27 % of black college students have what is categorized as “high” student loan debt, which means debt over $30,500. In contrast, only 16 % of white students have high student loan debt. Black students with parents at every income bracket have higher student loan debt than white students.

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Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank W. Carson Byrd, William Darity, Jr., Anthony Jack, Michèle Lamont, Cassi Pittman and Alford Young, Jr. for their feedback on various drafts of this paper. Previous versions were presented at the Harvard University Cultural and Social Analysis Workshop and the 2011 American Sociological Association meeting, where the author also received generous feedback. In addition, the author is grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their comments.

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Correspondence to Jessica S. Welburn.

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Human Subjects

This study draws upon in-depth interviews with human subjects. All participants signed a consent form before participation. The study was conducted while the author was a graduate student at Harvard University; the IRB number is F16616-103.

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This study was partially funded by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education Research Traineeship through the Harvard University Multidisciplinary Program on Inequality and Social Policy (Grant Number 9870661).

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The author declares that they have no conflict of interest.

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Welburn, J.S. Dual Consciousness, Social Mobility, and the Experiences of Middle-Income African Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era. J Afr Am St 20, 202–227 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-016-9328-2

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