Black Elite example essay topic

Cultural capital is specialized knowledge. They are symbols that you are given access to because of your upper class status. The children's club Jack and Jill is full of these symbols. It is believed that the original Jack and Jill nursery rhyme was French and written about the beheading's of King Louis XVI and his bride Queen Marie Antoinette.

The lyrics were changed to make the song more appealing to children. It later became a tale of sacrifice. In Our Kinds of People the children had to make sacrifices when in the club, and because of their association other children teased them (Graham, 1999, p. 35) On all the Jack and Jill chapter websites that we came across the first thing it states underneath the chapter name is, "Providing nurturing and guidance for our future leaders" (web). The phoenix chapter goes on to list their mission statement as follows; "Our mission is to provide an avenue for our children to develop bonds that will foster spirituality, strong leadership skills, achievement and lifelong friendships. These bonds will lead to strong, positive images, promote sharing and caring, and support our children as they participate in age appropriate community and educational activities" (web). Each year, the organization publishes an annual yearbook called Up the Hill, which features photos and reports from local chapters as they detail service, cultural, and social activities of the prior year.

(Graham, 1999, p. 34) The many different chapters, as well as the prestigious clubs for the men and women, portray cultural capital. They all must hold keys to get accepted into the groups. In Preparing for Power they needed to hold certain keys to be able to further their lives in the elite group. We think that the processes were very similar in both books. In Preparing for Power as well as the movie, Born Rich, it talked about living up to your family name and following in your parent's footsteps. In Our Kinds of People it is just as important, although the context differs slightly, in that with the blacks it was not only a class issue but a color issue as well.

In the book Lawrence Otis Graham even mentions that he had his nose altered and was instructed from his grandmother at a young age to stay out of the sun so his black skin didn't get any darker. We think that Graham's concerns about there being black elite are justified. Blacks have taken skin color to an extreme in labeling others and making fun of their own people on the same heritage. They even made up a rhyme to describe what color is appropriate. "If you " re light, you " re all right, If you " re brown, stick around But if you " re black, get back" (Graham, 1999, p. 378).

Not all black elite feel the same but many do pass, which means that they have been able to pass as a white person by changing their names, hair color and eventually all aspects of their lives. Segregation of lighter skinned blacks began back in the days of slavery when lighter skinned slaves were allowed to work inside the home of their owners receiving better food, working environment and treatment. "Not surprisingly, both whites and 'house niggers' came to consider the dark skinned 'field niggers' to be less civilized and intellectually inferior (Graham, 1999, p. 7). With the passing of the segregation and Jim Crow laws lighter blacks saw passing as a way of making a new life for themselves.

"The Jim Crow state not only forced men and women into semi autonomous and defiant communities, it also fixed boundaries around privilege and citizenship. The abilities and rights to vote, to provide one's children with a suitable education, to live in a paved and electrified neighborhood, to drink clean water from a clean facility, to check out a book from a lending library, to obtain a fair trial, and to ally one's self, psychically, with the ruling body, these were unquestionable tied to one's whiteness" (web). Passing did not always come easily and it was not without risks. The person that passed must always be on guard that someone in the black community might give away their secret.

Passing also meant the person must sever all ties with family and friends. Racism is described not only in color but also in intelligence. "Ideology racism is a broad viewpoint that (1) sees certain physical characteristics, such as skin color, to be unchangeable and to be linked in a casual way to cultural or intellectual characteristics and that (2) on the basis distinguishes between superior and inferior racial groups" (Social Problems, 1997, p. 113). Not all blacks are equal in the elite group.

It talks about a time when Graham went to a girlfriend's house and her father was very appalled that he did not go to Brown, a prestigious black college, and told him that he should be proud of his black heritage. There are black elite standing proud for the heritage that they represent, and then there's the black elite that are just being themselves and choosing the prestige college of their choice. The patterns in the two books we have read thus far are very similar in the extent that they are both members of the elite class. There are the obvious racial differences and the way each race deals with their class status. The similarity is that both the blacks and the whites are trying to raise their children to take turn to carry on the family name.

The whites choose to remain silent keeping to the motto that that your name should only be in the paper three times in your life. The blacks have children's clubs, and are very concerned with the social circle and giving elaborate parties like cotillions. As westerners living here on the Wasatch Front we feel that we should remember the information that we have learned from this book and apply it to our lives for future reference. If we are planning to stay in this valley we will most likely not associate with African Americans in our everyday lives. The racial issues will most likely not impact us directly because we have so little diversity here. However, as our diversity grows it will have more of an impact on us.

It is also important to note that as our children grow they will be more affected by the racial issues and we will need this knowledge to teach them. It is important to know the social structure of our country and the way our political leaders are groomed for office. As we learn about class and the social structure it is interesting to see how all of the politicians relate to each other and "scratch each others back". This practice is a bit clearer now knowing how they were raised. Reading this book, we were both surprised to find that there was a black elite in the 1800's and that the first self-made woman millionaire was non other than a black woman. We thought the reading about the slaves and the sexual abuse that was involved to produce lighter-skinned slaves was interesting.

It was also interesting to come to the realization of how important the prestigious clubs are to these women. The book talks about a woman who tried to get into a club called The Girlfriends. When she was rejected in her home town she was not allowed to be sponsored or voted in again so she and her husband bought a vacation home elsewhere so that she could have the opportunity to belong to the club and be given a chance for admittance by a vote once again. We were surprised to read about people that pass as white. We had never thought to look at people's facial features to see if they were white or not. We could not imagine sitting around doing that with our friends as they did in the book.

While we were doing research for this paper we found an interesting story about a woman named Anita Florence Hemmings. She passed for white for forty years. She entered Vassar College in 1893 and graduated in 1897, she was the first black to have graduated from Vassar. Vassar College had never admitted a black student, but believing she was white they allowed her admittance.

"Hemmings had proven herself an impressive student, mastering Latin, ancient Greek, and French, and as a soprano in the college choir she even had been invited to sing solo recitals at the local churches in Poughkeepsie. Her classmates described her as an 'exotic beauty,' and many believed her heritage was Native American" (web). We have known little about black elite, the knowledge that we do have is from what we have seen on television and now learned from this class. We had no idea that it is as broad or elite as it is, it was very interesting to read and learn about them.

Bibliography

Mancini, O. Passing for white; Vassar; The Alumni / I Quarterly. 17 July 2005.