Analyzing the Intersections of Race and Class

Abstract

In England, we might say that “the Empire has come home.” This means that while racism and the processes of racialization are indeed extraordinarily powerful, there will not only be strong similarities between say the United States and England but also significant differences in how these things play out both now and in the past. This is one of the reasons that The Colour of Class is important reading for U.S. researchers.What The Colour of Class gives us is a creative rearticulation and use of theories that when put together illuminate how race and class interact. In the process, it simultaneously presents us with a much more detailed and clear understanding of how the Black middle class creatively uses its various resources, and works assiduously to gain legitimacy for the resources it possesses, as it creatively seeks in education and the larger society to “make its own history in conditions it hasn’t chosen.”