John Jackson
Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America

Barker Center (Room 133)
12 Quincy street, Cambridge

Our Friday Forum on the 22nd will be with John Jackson, postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University's Society of Fellows, discussing his book Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America.

Many experts believe that black America consists of two geographically distinct populations: a neglected underclass living in hopeless urban poverty, and a more successful suburban middle class of college graduates and thriving professionals. Through extensive fieldwork and interviews with denizens of Harlem, Jackson explodes these presumptions. Harlemworld probes the everyday interactions of African Americans with their black coworkers, acquaintances, friends, neighbors, and relatives. Jackson shows how their social networks are often more class stratified and varied than many social analysts believe. He proves that a socially and geographically bifurcated class model no longer works as the only guide to understanding black America.

Ultimately, Harlemworld demonstrates how African Americans embody and interpret different class identities through their own behaviors and their assessments of others' actions. For the men and women of Harlem, racial identities are not simply inhabited, but enacted. At any given time, the way Harlemites speak, dress, walk, or even stand can be linked to particular class positions within a hierarchy of socioeconomic possibilities. In Harlem, intraracial differences, be they embodied through dialect or fashion, striding gaits or slouching postures, are largely defined in folk theories that link social identities to everyday activities. Jackson argues that race in black America is something that African Americans practice--sometimes purposefully, sometimes inadvertently--as they navigate the class-variegated landscapes of their worlds.

John Jackson's forum will be held in the Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge on Friday the 22nd at 3:00. No tickets are required.