Sunday, November 09, 2008
Black middle class is in spotlight
Read Shanna's blog
Shanna Flowers is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
Shanna Flowers
Recent columns
Remember the golf commercial a few years back featuring young people of all races and ethnicities? As the camera closed in, they uttered the famous line:
"I am Tiger Woods."
Imagine another similarly styled commercial. It would include cameos from people such as Roanoke schools administrator Asia Jones; the Rev. Adrian Dowell of Shiloh Baptist Church in Salem; Donald Burnette, a laborer who is the American dream; City of Roanoke employee trainer Gwen Ellis; Carilion Vice President Modena Henderson or lawyer Malik Shareef.
The commercial would have them peering into the camera and saying:
"I am the black middle class."
The ascendancy of Barack Obama to president-elect has cast a spotlight on race in this country. From reading some of the comments on my blog, it's obvious the election of the first black president will not change some racial perceptions.
But it has exposed the achievements of a seldom-recognized but substantial group of people in this country: the black middle class.
The acknowledgement of a robust black professional class should make it easier to take race out of discussions about social ills that hinder all Americans. It will, for example, be harder to point to this group of folks and automatically link poverty with race.
Obama, a graduate of Harvard Law School, reflects many progressive black Americans in that he came from modest beginnings and saw the pursuit of education and hard work as a way to rise to a higher station.
"People think he is the exception to the rule ... more so than he represents black folks in general," said Terry Kershaw, an associate professor of sociology at Virginia Tech.
"Values, beliefs, attitude -- most black folks do see things in that way," Kershaw said.
In the Roanoke metro area, blacks disproportionately are mired in poverty, according to the U.S. Census. In 2007, the poverty rate for blacks was 22 percent compared with 8.7 percent for whites. That ratio mirrors the national rates. But as others have pointed out, most black people are not poor.
Like Obama, a lot of black Americans have benefited from the opportunities won in the civil rights struggle.
Too many people characterize blacks by the negative images they see on TV rather than by the person working in the next cubicle, teaching in the classroom next door or, now, moving into the Oval Office.
Kershaw emphasized that Obama's success will have a trickle-down effect for other educated, ambitious blacks.
"Even in terms of local organizations, people will be looking and seeing the possibility of talent ... among this group of people who hasn't been tapped," Kershaw said.
Obama's success serves as an inspiration.
"He can do this, which means we can do this," Kershaw said. "And check this out, y'all, we got more coming."
