Black Picket Fences Quotes

“The black middle class displays a torn ambivalence toward the situation of the black poor. They sympathetically recognize the harms of racism and targeted inequality while simultaneously pointing an accusatory finger at the individual faults of their poor friends, relatives, and neighbors.”
― Mary Pattillo, Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class

“African Americans, like other groups, have always tried to translate upward class mobility into geographic mobility, but remain physically and psychically close to the poorer neighborhoods they leave behind.”
― Mary Pattillo, Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class