Black Visions Through Colorblind Frames: Opposition in the Obama Era – a Discursive Exploration of Black Urban Adolescent Ideology
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BLACK VISIONS THROUGH COLORBLIND FRAMES: OPPOSITION IN THE OBAMA ERA – A DISCURSIVE EXPLORATION OF BLACK URBAN ADOLESCENT IDEOLOGY by Alfred W. DeFreece Jr. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Sociology) in The University of Michigan 2011 Doctoral Committee: Professor Alford A. Young Jr., Chair Associate Professor Scott T. Kurashige Associate Professor Karyn R. Lacy Assistant Professor Stephen M. Ward © Alfred W. DeFreece Jr. 2011 DEDICATION To my kids for giving me faith to triumph over adversity. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to acknowledge the students who tried to let me see the world from their eyes. I hope I have done justice to their words and perspectives in this modest work. Dr. Al Young, without your guidance, patient commentary, and intellectual example, this work could never have come to fruition. Thank you. Dr. Karyn Lacy, I hope one day to provide for another the kind of critical and enlightening insights you offered me. To Scott and Steve, thanks for showing me how to wed my passions. Chavella, I cannot express how important your constant encouragement, advice, and example has been. Thank you. Shayla, for knowing when to turn it on, knowing your stuff, and knowing how to get the best out of me, I thank you. Dave, thanks for keeping your eye on the light at the end of the tunnel, even when it got dim. Jen, your (tough) love and support have been indispensable. Thanks for keeping me grounded. Rachelle, thanks for the piece of mind. To the Rosman family, thanks for allowing me to be part of the village. Nate, you continue to be an inspiration. I continue to work toward developing your type of work ethic and visionary impulse. Roxy, it’s your turn. Thanks for listening. Dumi, Thomas, Lumas – I am all out of excuses. I have never known a group with greater integrity, vision, promise, and drive. Let’s go! iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION.......................................................................................................................ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...................................................................................................iii LIST OF APPENDICES........................................................................................................v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2: RELEVANT LITERATURE .........................................................................46 CHAPTER 3: METHODS.....................................................................................................64 CHAPTER 4: WHAT’S REALLY GOOD: WHAT BLACKS LACK AND WHY IT MATTERS.............................................................................................................................106 CHAPTER 5: WHATTUPDOE: EXPLAINING RACIAL DISPARITIES .........................156 CHAPTER 6: CAN’T CALL IT: RACIAL STRATIFICATION 3.0...................................204 CHAPTER 7: DISCUSSION & CONCLUSION..................................................................227 APPENDICES .......................................................................................................................245 REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................262 iv LIST OF APPENDICES A: Sample Background Information on Selected Variables..................................................246 B: Head of HH Occupation, Average Income by Occupation, HH Size, and Title I Eligibility ...............................................................................................................................250 C: Demographic & Background Survey................................................................................251 D: Interview Guide ................................................................................................................259 v CHAPTER 1 Introduction Background This research project explores the formation of racial ideologies among a sample of black, Detroit-based, high school seniors. I focus specifically on views of racial stratification – the dimensions along which these black adolescents understand oppression to unfold, their explanations of how racial disparities are maintained, and how they envision the future of racial (in)equality in the US. While the questions driving this inquiry have society-wide and international implications, the ideas that I am interested in are indelibly shaped by immediate experiences and the local context; the broader discourses around these ideas are necessarily filtered through a socio-historically specific milieu. The youth in this study are working through understandings of the advantages and disadvantages associated with racial group membership, the ways in which hierarchical relations are maintained, and the durability of racial group positional arrangements, with what has been dubbed “the margins of the postindustrial capitalist order” as the backdrop (Boggs and Kurashige 2011). This project ultimately aims to explore how a sample of black urban adolescents in the post-secondary transition navigate competing views of racial stratification, as this process is intimately mediated by, and reflects the experience of, coming of age in early 21st century Detroit. 1 The Eye of the Storm In recent years, Detroit has been the subject of major national media attention. In addition to its political corruption, and the disintegration of its public schooling system, Detroit’s perilous economy has led many to wonder if the city is an “outlier or the epicenter” of late capitalist urban decay (LeDuff 2010). The national recession topped off a statewide economic slowdown that had been unfolding over several years (Yung 2011), evincing record unemployment rates (USDL 2011a) and increases in the Detroit’s poverty levels (Berube and Kneebone 2006). While deindustrialization has figured largely into the economic and social lows in Detroit, population loss and the erosion of the tax base has been ongoing since as early as the 1950’s (Sugrue 2005 page xvi). And while Michigan was one of the hardest hit when the housing bubble popped in 2006 (El Boghdady 2007), foreclosure rates in the Detroit metropolitan area led the nation at 1 in 124 houses (Aguila 2007). Detroit also led the nation in declining home prices, dropping 11% between June 2006 and 2007 (Tong 2007). Such macro-level crises could not bode well for the welfare of the city’s young. Between 2000 and 2009, child poverty increased by 6% (The Annie E. Casey Foundation 2010). Over the same time, youth homicides increased (AP 2009), while high school graduation rates plummeted. Even the recent rebound in graduation rates still finds the Detroit Public Schools at the bottom of the academic barrel. Education has been a particular sore spot, as low academic achievement not only bespeaks the failing of current political and educational leadership at the city and state levels, but also crystallizes 2 images of another generation being trapped in the decline that has racked the city for decades. Detroit is emblematic of the battles and scars that mark the nation’s racial legacy. Former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s “sexting” scandal was painted by some as a “high- tech lynching” a la Clarence Thomas (Detroit Free Press 2009). Attempts at regionalism still stir memories of a bombastic Coleman Young, Detroit’s first black mayor, whose vocal criticisms of racism and white flight still make him a polarizing figure. And calls to recognize the racial conflict of 1967 as a rebellion and not a riot are issued anew, even as many Detroiters - black and white – parrot the myth that black incivility catalyzed white flight, urban disinvestment, and population loss. Weathering the Storm Writing in 1969 on the ramifications of the Civil Rights Movement’s northern march, James Boggs asserted, These urban rebellions heralded the emergence of a new social force inside the black community itself: the street force of black youth. This force is made up of the new generation of young blacks who in the past would have been integrated into the American economy in the traditional black role of unskilled and menial labor. Now they have been rendered obsolete by the technological revolutions of automation and cybernation and driven into the military, the prisons, and the streets. Outcasts, castaways, and castoffs, they are without any future except that which Black Power can create for them (208). In the few years since this writing, many of Boggs’ assertions have come to pass: technological advance, globalization, and shifts on the demand side of the labor market have made for a growing group of “obsolete” labor – a group that is disproportionately black (USDL(b) 2011). Moreover, that the black middle class might be developed as a 3 buffer between this street force and the rest of America, largely through economic and political concessions by the government and US corporations, has also materialized (209). And while we can never foreclose on the possibility that a Black Power-inspired movement might mobilize America’s contemporary “street force”, the question of the political relevance and exigencies of those most left behind by the post-industrial political economy looms large. To be sure, the student-respondents in this project are not the “street force” of James Boggs’ era. That is, they cling with great tenacity to the hope that they will gain the requisite educational qualifications