Black Corona

by Gregory, Steven

• ISBN13: 9780691017396
• ISBN10: 0691017395
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-05-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

In Black Corona, Steven Gregory examines political culture and activism in an African-American neighborhood in New York City. Using historical and ethnographic research, he challenges the view that black urban communities are "socially disorganized". Gregory demonstrates instead how working-class and middle-class African Americans construct and negotiate complex and deeply historical political identities and institutions through struggles over the built environment and neighborhood quality of life. With its emphasis on the lived experiences of African Americans, Black Corona provides a fresh and innovative contribution to the study of the dynamic interplay of race, class, and space in contemporary urban communities. It questions the accuracy of the widely used trope of the dysfunctional "black ghetto", which, the author asserts, has often been deployed to depoliticize issues of racial and economic inequality in the United States. By contrast, Gregory argues that the urban experience of African Americans is more diverse than is generally acknowledged and that it is only by attending to the history and politics of black identity and community life that we can come to appreciate this complexity.

Author Biography

Steven Gregory is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Africana Studies at New York University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix	(2)
Acknowledgments	xi
PART ONE	1	(106)
Chapter One Introduction	3	(17)
Chapter Two Making Community	20	(35)
Chapter Three The Movement	55	(30)
Chapter Four The State and the War on Politics	85	(22)
PART TWO	107	(72)
Chapter Five Race and the Politics of Place	109	(30)
Chapter Six A Piece of the Rock	139	(40)
PART THREE	179	(74)
Chapter Seven Up Against the Authority	181	(37)
Chapter Eight The Politics of Hearing and Telling	218	(30)
Chapter Nine Conclusion	248	(5)
Notes	253	(14)
References Cited	267	(12)
Index	279