Segmentation

I think the idea's that Dan brings up are of particular importance to the text as well as to the development of class and race within post WWII consumer capitalism. Lets take a look first at the examples of housing segregation and black middle and upper class mobility. As we've already pointed out on the blog, "black newcomers to formerly all-white neighborhoods had views shaped by the "politics of respectability (205)."" Which resulted in some "black pioneers" in white neighborhoods distancing themselves from the inner city African-American communities. Sugrue, makes it a point to tell us that much of this distancing was ideological, that the restaurant owners, a young affluent couple, a lawyer and his law student wife, all moved to distance themselves from "vulgar" people that were invading their once "respectable" neighborhoods (205-206). These individuals identified with belonging to the middle class, or as Sugrue states, "shared a common set of aspirations with white middle-class Detroiters," rather than identify with other African-Americans (206). The result was that middle class bourgeois ideology was able to segment the African American populace. These class divisions within Detroit's black population made the work of black reform, as well as revolutionary groups, near impossible (12). Within Sugrue's work it is easy to see the result of segmentation; whether it is the segmentation of different black workers or the segmentation of white industrial workers from black industrial workers (through the use of cultural conservatism and racism), the result is the creation of conflict between groups of individuals who, if they were able to cooperate, could subvert the standard capitalist paradigm.