Blue-Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class

Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Oct 18, 2007 by Angela P. Dodson

Blue-Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class (George Gund Foundation Imprint in African-American Studies) by Karyn R. Lacy, $21.95, University of California Press, (July 2007), ISBN-10: 0520251164, ISBN-13: 978-0520251168, 280 pp.

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An assistant professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, Dr. Karyn R. Lacy, studied Blacks in three middle-class suburbs of Washington, D.C., to see how they choose or switch social identities depending on situations. She describes the ways in which they navigate through the intersections and blockades of race, class and geography.

Lacy conducted in-depth interviews with 30 couples (all given fictional names) and mingled extensively in their communities: one that was predominantly White middle-class, one that was pre-dominantly Black middle-class and one that was majority-Black and upper-middle-class. She includes an appendix on her methods.

Research on poor Blacks, working-class Blacks and lower-middle-class Blacks may be extensive, but work on understanding more affluent African-Americans is scant. As such, this is useful background and a springboard for more research across a number of disciplines.