Up the Hill with Jack and Jill
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UP THE HILL WITH JACK AND JILL: THE SOCIAL REPRODUCTION OF INTERSECTIONAL COMMUNITIES A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by CiAuna F. Heard May 2020 Examining Committee Members: Matt Wray, Ph.D., Advisory Chair, Sociology Michelle Byng, Ph.D., Sociology Judith Levine, Ph.D., Sociology Patricia A. Banks, Ph.D., External Reader, Mount Holyoke College © Copyright 2020 by CiAuna F. Heard All Rights Reserved ii ABSTRACT This study is an investigation into the ways that intersectional social actors conceptualize their position as raced, classed, and gendered, and how they seek to pass down identity categories, cultural frames, and behavioral habits to their children. In particular, it is an examination of Jack and Jill of America, Inc. (“Jack and Jill”) as an intersectional social club, which seeks to socialize upper-middle class black youth into the habits that this community sees as legitimate and productive in modern society. Using interview, archival, and focus group data, this project analyzes the discursive frames of current club members, former child participants, and documentary evidence from historical correspondence. This project seeks to respond to racial formation and social reproduction scholarship by interrogating the ways that parents articulate the meanings of race, class, and gender, the ways such meanings are engaged by Jack and Jill, as a legitimating organization, and the absorption or internalization of such meanings by young people. It asks three questions to examine such mechanisms: 1) How do intersectional social actors talk about race, class and gender? 2) How do such community members engage social reproduction strategies that highlight their unique race and class positions? 3) How do recipients (children) rearticulate those messages and indicate their absorption or rejection of those norms? I find that discourse around race frames blackness as a salient social stigma, despite socioeconomic privilege. Mothers engage race explicitly, having frank discussions about their hopes and fears around their child’s racialized bodies. Therefore, messages about race are illuminated in organizational discourse and are well-absorbed by children. Secondly, the study finds that discourse around class obscures the ways that cultural and social capital is accumulated and activated in the larger social world. While iii discourses about class are largely silenced, Jack and Jill serves as a location for capital accumulation, developing ease with elite cultural forms, and cultivating dense social networks saturated with resource-rich nodes. Members talk very little about the role of class stratification in their lives. Finally, this project finds that parents articulate gender expectations according to the bimodal demands of black respectability politics. Whether mothers seek to protect children from state violence or sexual derogation is fundamentally tied to their children’s gender. Further, the aspirational desires that they have for children, particularly for their children’s future spouse, differed for sons and daughters in marked ways. Ultimately, I argue that the substance of norms around race, class, and gender, as well as the processes of socializing such norms and discourses, serve to reproduce this intersectional community over time. Because of their intersectional positionality, discourses about race are saturated with simultaneous messages about gender or class, and vice versa. Not only do mothers perform mastery of such intricate narratives, but though individual work and the efforts of the social club, they enjoy success in socializing these frames into their children. These narratives are more than identification markers; they serve as strategies to minimize the effect of racial stigmatization experienced in their neighborhoods and at work, teaching children the behaviors and codes that are most useful in navigating away from the worst effects of a marginalized position. As the next generation grows up to develop their own native ideological frames, I predict that we will continue to see persistent meanings about racial marginality, socioeconomic privilege, and gender respectability as part of the vocabulary of these intersectional actors. Mastery of these meanings allows individuals access into this iv private community and also serves as protection from the worst effects of local discrimination. v DEDICATION For Theodore and Addie B. For Paul and Mildred. For Robert and Rhonda. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe a deep debt of gratitude to all those who supported me, listened to my complaints, and kept me full of encouragement during this process. First and foremost, I would not be anywhere without the family who brought me here, both physically, but also symbolically. The great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts and uncles who saw potential in me as a little one, and believed that I could make something of myself; my mother and father, who made countless sacrifices, so that I could explore, express, and develop myself. I am privileged to have been surrounded by such deep, thick, unconditional love. Your love literally propelled me forward when I was sure I could go no further. It feels like my life’s work is to be worthy of that precious investment. I am eternally grateful to my chosen family; my dear friends and loved ones who have excelled in their roles as cheerleaders, members of the whining committee, and last- minute-editors. You have been gentle on my drafts, which might have well been my bleeding heart. You have held me up when the pressure of graduate school threatened to break my will. You have cheered my accomplishments, graciously letting me borrow your confidence whenever I had an application to submit. My thanks go to my dissertation committee, Matt Wray, Michelle Byng, and Judith Levine, who have been motivating and patient. They have encouraged me to take intellectual risks, pushed me to deepen my conceptual rigor, and have offered guidance and feedback that has been immensely helpful. My work is far better because I have been mentored by you. To the Sociology Department: thank you for giving me a place to grow. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii DEDICATION ................................................................................................................... vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................ vii LIST OF TABLES………………………………………………………….…….………x CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………. 1 2. METHODS OF INQUIRY: COLLECTION STRATEGIES, ANALYTICAL APPROACHES, AND REFLEXIVITY…………………………………………..... 12 Site..……………………………………………………………………………... 13 Data Gathering ……………………………………………………………….…. 17 Interviewing………………………………………………………….….. 21 Focus Groups……………………………………………………….…… 23 Archives………………………………………………………………… 24 Analysis…………………………………………………………………………. 27 Reflexive Methodological Considerations……………………………………… 29 Limitations……………………………………………………………………… 32 3. (RE)PRODUCING RACE: NAVIGATING STIGMA, FACILITATING ESTEEM, SOCIALIZING BLACKNESS……………………………………………………... 35 Changing Status, Persistent Alienation: The Black Middle Class Post-Civil Rights……………………………………... 37 Forming Race, Socially Constructing Stigma………………………....... 42 (Re)Producing Race…………………………………………………………….. 54 Understanding Stigma, and the Changing(?) Meaning of Blackness……………………………………………………………….. 54 Socializing Blackness, Facilitating Esteem....………………..………… 61 Affective Networks, Productive Networks………………...…………… 78 Conclusion …..…………………………………………………………………. 87 4. CONCEPTUALIZING CLASS: ABSORBING AND ADAPTING AMERICAN DISTINCTION…………………………………………………………………...… 90 Reproducing Class……………………………………………………………… 93 Engaging Class Privilege via Stigma………………………………….. 105 Conceptualizing Class: Discursive Denial Alongside Concerted Cultivation… 106 Morals and Skill …...………………………………………………….. 111 Performing Omnivorousness, Practicing Strategic Distinction..……… 121 viii Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….. 130 5. JACKS AND JILLS: STRATEGIC NARRATIVE IN MAKING RESPECTABLY GENDERED COMMUNITY MEMBERS……………………………………….. 133 Intersectional Projects………………………………………………………… 137 Respectability……………………………………………………….… 141 Respectable Children and Respectable Families………………………….…... 152 Jacks and Jills: Bimodal Concerns and Protections for Gendered Children……………………………………………………………….. 153 Sexual Purity and Disciplining Deviance……………………………... 162 Marrying Black, Marrying Rich………………………………………. 170 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….. 179 6. CONCLUSION ..........................................................................................................182 REFERENCES CITED…………………………………………………………………192 LIST OF TABLES 1. Table 1 Study Design...……………………………………………………29 ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION I interviewed Danielle and asked what she thought her parents wanted her to know about the world. She said that she believed that her parents were seeking to teach her a set of skills that she would need to navigate in the world. When I asked her to elaborate, she offered: some of it was learning how to navigate different identities. I don't know if you've experienced any of this, but we were upper middle class, depending on the time period, and my parents are both educated, which set them apart from a lot of the parents of our black classmates that were lower class. We weren't