History of Black Middle Class in The United States
African Americans had limited opportunities for advancement to middle class status prior to 1961 because of racial discrimination, segregation, and the fact that most lived in the rural South. In 1960, forty-three percent of the white population completed high school, while only twenty percent of the black population did the same. African Americans had little to no access to higher education and only three percent graduated from college. Those blacks who were professionals were mainly confined to serving the African American population. Outside of the black community, they worked in unskilled industrial jobs. Black women who worked were almost all domestic servants.
Economic growth, public policy, black skill development, and the civil rights movement all contributed to the surfacing of a larger black middle class. The civil rights movement helped to remove barriers to higher education. As opportunity for African Americans expanded, blacks began to take advantage of the new possibilities. Homeownership has been crucial in the rise of the black middle class, including the movement of African Americans to the suburbs, which has also translated into better educational opportunities. By 1980, over 50% of the African American population had graduated from high school and eight percent graduated from college. In 2006, 86% of blacks between age 25 and 29 had graduated from high school and 19% had completed a bachelor's degrees. As of 2003, the percentage of black householders is 48%, compared to 43% in 1990.
Read more about this topic: Black Middle Class
Famous quotes containing the words united states, history of, history, black, middle, class, united and/or states:
“Vanessa wanted to be a ballerina. Dad had such hopes for her.... Corin was the academically brilliant one, and a fencer of Olympic standard. Everything was expected of them, and they fulfilled all expectations. But I was the one of whom nothing was expected. I remember a game the three of us played. Vanessa was the President of the United States, Corin was the British Prime Minister—and I was the royal dog.”
—Lynn Redgrave (b. 1943)
“Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It’s an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.”
—Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“You can’t be what you don’t see. I didn’t think about being a doctor. I didn’t even think about being a clerk in a store—I’d never seen a black clerk in a clothing store.”
—Joycelyn Elders (b. 1933)
“Bow, bow, ye lower middle classes!
Bow, bow, ye tradesmen, bow, ye masses!”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)
“It is my conviction that in general women are more snobbish and class conscious than men and that these ignoble traits are a product of men’s attitude toward women and women’s passive acceptance of this attitude.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“An ... important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality. Superficial observers have long criticized the United States for making a fetish of youth. This is unfair. Uniquely among modern organs of public and private administration, its national legislature rewards senility.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)