Fulfilling Middle-class Values

HighBeam Research

Title: Fulfilling middle-class values // Community is proud of work and education Series: MAKING IT: The story of Chatham Date: April 29, 1986 Publication: Chicago Sun-Times Author: William Braden ((PHOTO CAPTION CONTINUED)) And then some. Lee and Carolyn Nunery read to son David, 2, before bedtime. Lee and Carolyn are the kind of people Chatham is hoping to attract - young urban professionals. ((CAPTION ENDS)) Three decades ago, upwardly mobile blacks broke out of the ghetto to settle in the South Side community of Chatham. Chatham became a focal point for the emergence of a black middle class that currently represents half of Chicago's black population. It is a vibrant community of excellence that also is a community in transition. This is the second of four articles on the people, the values and the future of Chatham. Every Thursday night, comedian Bill Cosby appears on television screens in homes thoughout Chatham. If he could peer out into those homes, he would find himself being watched intently by curious mirror images of his make-believe household. "I like everything about that program," said Jean Harris. "It's really the first one that shows black families in a positive way. They're not jiving and silly and acting like fools. They love each other, and they act like normal people." Harris is a teacher at Ralph Bunche Elementary School. She watches the show with her husband, Lynwood, a detective who has served 31 years with the Chicago Police Department. "It's down to earth," said her husband. "Right," she said. "It might not be everything that happens every day in your own home. But you can see things that do happen. Or if they don't happen, you wish they had."

Their friends, Lee and Carolyn Nunery, also are devoted fans. The program is a family ritual, and 2-year-old David Nunery is kept up for the event. David is a leading candidate for World's Cutest Kid, and he watches in his dad's arms, sucking on his bottle. Lee and Carolyn are the kind of people that Chatham is hoping to attract now, young urban professionals. He's 30, an assistant vice president at the First National Bank - and president of the National Black MBA Association. She's 32 and a human resources officer at the Northern Trust Co. " `The Cosby Show' is interesting," said Lee, "because he never, ever, ever deals with the fact that, well, `we're black - and therefore we're stuck in this box that kind of moves around with us.' And he doesn't deal with poverty, which he grew up in." (It drives most Chathamites up the wall when social activists equate the word "black" with the word "poor.") "They're the kind of images I'd like our colleagues at work to have of the way we live," said Carolyn. "I'd like them to recognize that a black family exists like that, and this is the norm for a portion of black society." "I think," said Lee, "that people here really feel - maybe consciously, maybe subconsciously - that, you know, `we're going to be different - we're going to be normal, because this is the way we want it to be.' " The Harrises are textbook examples of black middle class: a cop married to a teacher. Because they are black, they are more solidly middle class than a comparable white couple. "There is a difference," said Jean Harris. "You take my husband's job, a policeman. Black policemen are middle class. They dress middle class. They act middle class. White policemen might be middle class. But they don't dress middle class. They don't act middle class. Nor do their wives. At affairs you go to, they will come in everydays. You might come a little more dressy. And you feel overdressed." "Blacks," said her husband, who was wearing a vested suit, "have always had to be just a little bit better than the average." "In order to be halfway accepted," she added. Being black and middle class can be a strain on the psyche, and the pocketbook.

Qualifying income levels generally are lower than they are for the white middle class. But lifestyles are similar (including winter vacations in Florida and summer homes in Michigan). So the blacks are often deeper in debt. And they must be extraordinarily circumspect. Said sociologist William A. Sampson: "The average black family looks up to them, and expects more of them. So they must be conservative in behavior, conservative in dress. They must not be loud or boisterous. If you used to bowl, you probably stop bowling and try to play golf or tennis. You stop going to footwashing Baptist churches, because they have too much emotion. You wanted to be lectured, not preached at." "There is a higher code of conduct," said Rosemary S. Bowen, executive director of South Central Community Services. "There is a self-pride. There is a consciousness that you are special. You are important. And you must conduct yourself in a manner that's acceptable as middle class." And maybe you overdo it just a little. "There's nothing as obnoxious as the black bourgeoisie," said journalist Michael Anderson, 33, who grew up in the Chatham area. "You've never been to a cotillion until you've been to a black cotillion. And there's nothing remarkable about that. Who are the strongest advocates of anything? The most recent converts. "Blacks have this reputation for being emotional and happy-go-lucky, but the middle class can seem uptight and joyless. Didn't Freud say, however, that neurosis is the price of civilization? You want to prove you belong, that you're part of the American mainstream. You get tired of feeling different all the time." But above all else, you believe in education - and hard work. Work hard, and you can and will make it. "The element of discrimination is still there," said Dennis Haynes, 37, an Avon Products office manager. "I don't care how much money you have, you're still black. That's the reality of it. But nobody gave me anything. I worked hard. I got my master's degree because I was ambitious, and I wanted to better myself. And there's not much excuse for not being able to do what you want to do today. A lot of obstacles have been knocked out of the way." "I don't know anybody who came up any harder than I did," said Lynwood Harris. "I have been on my own since the age of 17. My mother passed away,

and I had nobody. But I worked. I sent myself through school. I went to college. I went to night school, and I worked in a restaurant because I figured I could at least eat two meals a day. "I never asked anybody for anything. I never took anything from anybody. And I made it. I think you have to have that get-up about you, rather than say the world owes you a living. For what? What have you done for the world? I could be on Skid Row tomorrow, and I think my pride would prevent me from going out begging. As long as I had my health and strength, I would go out and work and get it myself." "I've always said it," said Jean Harris. "If I needed a job, I would find me one, some kind of way. I know I would. That's all there is to it. I would find a job." These are hardheaded people. They have paid their dues, they will tell you. And they don't like welfare. During the last recession, said Bowen, some Chathamites who had given money to her community center found themselves coming to the center for help. "It had an impact on their pride and self-esteem," she said. "They were eligible for unemployment compensation. But they felt like it was welfare. And they didn't want to go. We had clients who would drive up to the unemployment office and couldn't get out of the car. We had to get a social worker to go with them and help them get up the courage to go in and ask for what was rightfully theirs." "By the time you get through paying taxes to subsidize everybody else," said Clementine Skinner, a 70-year-old widow, "you hardly have anything left for yourself." Most Chathamites seem to favor some form of workfare for the poor. At the same time, they will express great empathy for the underclass, and accept an obligation to help people they see trapped in a hopeless cycle of dependency. In short, they have mixed emotions. "There's enormous class antagonism in the black community," said political scientist William J. Grimshaw. "Our usual perception is of white flight - of poor whites being driven out of neighborhoods by poor blacks. But middle-class blacks have had the same problem. They were forced to live with the poor until 30 years ago. Then they'd move first into a community like Woodlawn, and - bang - the poor would come right along after them. They go to South Shore and the same thing happens. "People who have been poor themselves - and pulled themselves up by their bootstraps - have a very realistic perception of the -underclass. They can

recognize a lot of self-destructive behavior. It's people like the Kennedys who tend to take a more sympathetic view. These people in Chatham are realists. They're willing to place some blame not only on social restrictions but also on lack of character and effort. "But they're less hardnosed than whites. There's both a class barrier and a cultural bond. That's where you get the tension. They think, `Those are my brothers and sisters on 43rd Street.' At the same time, they think, `God damn those people. I sure wish they'd try harder.' The first is a cultural attitude, and the other is a class attitude." "To be middle class is to have a stake in the status quo," said David G. Roth, national ethnic liaison for the American Jewish Committee. "It means you don't want the rules changed. `The system is working for me. I'm on my way. And I want more. Yes, I want to help the underclass. But their advocates say the rules have to be changed. That plays into my vulnerabilities as a middleclass person. I may fall back.' The middle class always is afraid of falling back. "The reality is, they don't. But middle-class blacks are subject to crazy, whacky demands by poor blacks who come up to them saying, `Hey, Bro, I need a ten. I need this. I need that.' And they have to draw a self-protective line." But culture prevails over class when Chathamites are reminded of a brother like Edward Gardner. Gardner is a self-made man whose Soft Sheen Products company is located just across Chatham's eastern border in Avalon Park and who lives just across the southern border in West Chesterfield. He's been described as "a national treasure" and is respected in Chatham as a businessman who puts back into the community what he takes out of it. And then some. His good works are legend, ranging from imaginative programs to benefit the residents of the Robert Taylor housing project to a "Black-on-Black Love" campaign to replace black-on-black crime. And he's convinced the plight of Chicago's black underclass is the responsibility of middle-class blacks. "The federal government is not going to do it," he said. "But we now have a sufficient number of blacks in the middle class to alleviate the problem. They've had the opportunity to receive in this great country a lot of professional know-how. Now they have to be shown creative examples of specific programs to help in a coming together of the haves and have-nots. And the leadership is going to come primarily from Chatham and West Chesterfield. Very few suburban blacks who have escaped and are way out there will come back and share what they can with those who need so much."

Many Chathamites will tell you that they overcame poverty because they were fortunate enough to grow up in homes that stressed work and family values. They'll also tell you that those values are being taught today with the same dedication by good people in housing projects and impoverished areas throughout Chicago. And there's an admonition they try to remember when class collides with culture: "Don't forget where you came from." Next: Kids with a future.

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