Between Class Lines: Examining the Intimate Lives of College-Educated Black Men

• In Event: 390 - Section on Race, Gender and Class Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Race, Gender, and Class: Post Collegiate Experiences

Abstract

This working paper presents a case study of the intimate lives of college-educated Black men. What we know about the Black middle-class is limited to the purview of the sexual choices of working-class and poor Blacks through which they have also been constructed. And, while scholars have alluded to the effect of these intra-racial ties between working-class/poor and middle-class Blacks, few have actually examined them. Mary Pattillo-McCoy’s influential work on the Black middle-class evidenced the strains these continued ties have on the social outcomes of Black middle-class youth in the neighborhood context. However, we know less about how this works for intimate relationships, particularly among adults. Instead, a lower-class Black sexuality continues to serve as the paramount image of Black intimate deviance. More recently middle-class Blacks' relationship patterns have been highlighted as deficient—in which Black middle-class men, in particular, have been scapegoated as the undoing of the Black marital fabric. Through in-depth interviews, I examine the intimate lives of Black middle-class men about their perceptions of, relationship to, and experiences with dating and relationships amidst the backdrop of a monolithic, lower class Black sexuality which they are also constructed through.

Author

• Joy Hightower, University of California-Berkeley