Mary Pattillo-McCoy

Mary Pattillo does us all a service in writing this text. As central cities are becoming fashionable again and gentrification and neighborhood change become more and more a significant concern for the Black populations of these central cities, Pattillo investigates the varied layers of social interactions and how they influence the process of neighborhood change using the North Kenwood-Oakland Community of Chicago as a case study.

Pattillo positions 2 ideas in this text: 1) that class differences b/w black newcomers and old timers in a community complicate the project of racial solidarity due to concepts of respectability and how they structure space in terms thing like the presence of public housing vs mixed income housing and what is 'appropriate' land use as well as power and leverage in term of negotiation with other stakeholders in the case of North Kenwood-Oakland. The second idea is that despite the very critical difference race still operates as a unifying category with newcomer middle class and old timer working class Black folk both mistrustful of incoming whites and government institutions.

An excellent read.… (mere)