| Popis: |
The Black middle class has been a subject of intense debate in the last twenty years. Much of the debate has centered on the existence of the Black middle class and whether their status is permanent. Using, J.G.A. Pocock's, concept of "political language," I plan to examine the Black middle class as part of a political discourse. The discourse concerning the Black middle class, which has its roots in Emancipation period, has changed since the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. This thesis attempts to examine this change in discourse.By examining the pre-civil rights era and the post-civil rights era, one can point to specific political language, such as the Moynihan Report, that begin to mark the Black middle class as different from the rest of the Black population. Through the process of political and intellectual isolation of the Black middle class in the period from 1965-1980,and partial and symbolic incorporation of this class from 1980-1998, there has been a rearticulation of "race" and the "Racial Contract." The rearticulation has shifted from the Black/White variant, exemplified by Jim Crow, to the multicultural middle classes and its negation of the Post-Industrial poor/jobless Black. It is because of this new articulation of the Racial Contract, that there is a need for a new version of uplift, one that mediates the day-to-day realities of the Post-Industrial poor/jobless and that address the cultural systemic causes of these realities. |
