SLIM'S TABLE

by Duneier, Mitchell

• ISBN13: 9780226170305
• ISBN10: 0226170306
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1992-08-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

At the Valois "See Your Food" cafeteria on Chicago's South Side, black and white men gather over cups of coffee and steam-table food. Mitchell Duneier, a sociologist, spent four years at the Valois writing this moving profile of the black men who congregate at "Slim's Table." Praised as "a marvelous study of those who should not be forgotten" by the Wall Street Journal, Slim's Table helps demolish the narrow sociological picture of black men and simple media-reinforced stereotypes. In between is a "respectable" citizenry, too often ignored and little understood. "Slim's Table is an astonishment. Duneier manages to fling open windows of perception into what it means to be working-class black, how a caring community can proceed from the most ordinary transactions, all the while smashing media-induced stereotypes of the races and race relations."--Citation for Chicago Sun Times Chicago Book of the Year Award "An instant classic of ethnography that will provoke debate and provide insight for years to come."--Michael Eric Dyson, Chicago Tribune "Mr. Duneier sees the subjects of his study as people and he sees the scale of their lives as fully human, rather than as diminished versions of grander lives lived elsewhere by people of another color. . . . A welcome antidote to trends in both journalism and sociology."--Roger Wilkins, New York Times Book Review

Table of Contents

The Caring Community

Slim and Bart

Black Men: Transcending Roles and Images

The Moral Community

Valois as a ""Black Metropolis""

The Standard of Respectability

Membership in Society

Openness

The Need for Contact with Society

A Higher Self

You're White, He's Black, I'm a Sociologist: Who's Innocent?

The Underclass and the Middle Class

The Stereotype of Blacks in Sociology and Journalism

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.