What's class got to do with it? Community development and racial identity

This research documents the importance of class and racial identities to urban community development activities. It explores the symbolic meanings of class and the nature of inter-class relations within the black community. The research is based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork in a Philadelphia neighborhood with an active grassroots community development agenda. The author concludes that the residents most active in the neighborhood's redevelopment activities display a particular middle-class identity ("multi-class") that links them to lower-class blacks and structures their vision of the neighborhood as a micro-level racial justice project. The community development activities in this neighborhood are a product of the multi-class residents' attempt to articulate and affirm their racial identity and ideology. However, the unacknowledged class bias of these residents prevents them from creating the type of inclusive Black community that they envision.