Student Number: 0104318V - MA research report - School of Social Sciences - Faculty of Humanities / The corporate middle class, or managers, occupies a contradictory class location in capitalist relations of production. While they do not own the means of production, this class stratum is not exploited like the working class. This class position, however, is bound to be different for a black manager whose advancement in the workplace may be due to government attempts to economically empower black people to redress the injustices imposed by the racially dominated social structure of the past. Through a Weberian understanding of social stratification as based on class, social status and power, this research aims to unearth how members of the African corporate middle class understand their position and roles in South African workplaces and communities. It also goes deeper to scrutinise the impact of this structural position on their agency. It is shown that their contradictory class location is exacerbated by their race. African managers constantly negotiate their positions and roles in their workplaces and communities. Indeed, while their managerial position affords them spaces that they could not have occupied during the apartheid era, their racial character lessens their ability to manoeuvre within these spaces. This can be identified both in workplaces and communities. It is shown that their middle-class status cannot be consolidated because of their perceived lower social status and less power to influence decision making in their organisations. Furthermore, it is shown that, although not all of the interviewees moved to middle-class areas, there is an indication of alienation in previously white-only residential areas. This is further exacerbated by expectations from their former communities and members of their extended families. As a result of high levels of unemployment in African communities, members of this group are actively contributing to uplift members of their extended families.

Since the start of the 20th century, the Black Middle Class (BMC) has been a creation of both direct and indirect government policy and action. More importantly, had it not been for government action directed towards blacks, the BMC that is visible today would not exist. During the time period of the great migration, blacks prospered from increased economic demand along with policy targeted both directly and indirectly at employing millions of blacks. During the 1960’s and 70’s, the BMC became a viable entity with civil rights laws that forced black men and women into higher education institutions as well as public and private employment. The policy implemented during this time sought to end discrimination by making it illegal and tightly monitoring it. As a result, the BMC saw accelerated growth in both educational attainment and wage. However, this immediate progress was brought to a standstill starting with a wave of conservatism sparked and led by the election of Ronald Reagan. Since that time, the BMC has made gains both educationally and economically, but the growth has been much less apparent. Also, many in the BMC have sought careers in the public sector due to discrimination that may exist because of a lack of governmental regulation and oversight in the private sector. There are many perils that face the BMC today, but most importantly the threat to massive reductions in the public sector federally and locally.

This dissertation explores the ways in which black single mothers in the Washington, DC metropolitan area use material goods and consumption practices to inform their identities as members of the middle class. Black middle class women are challenging stereotypes surrounding single mother households, the idea of family, and class status in the United States, as more women overall are having children while single, delaying or deciding against marriage, and are entering the middle and upper-middle classes as a result of advanced education and career opportunities. Because of these demographic and sociocultural shifts, the romanticized “nuclear family” which consists of a married heterosexual couple and their children is becoming less authoritative as a symbol of middle class status. Instead, the middle class is represented through lifestyle options such as home ownership, neighborhood selection, fashion choices, education, and leisure activities. In the Washington, DC metro area, black women are asserting their single status while employing strategies to raise their children and excel professionally in order to maintain a middle class lifestyle. In this dissertation I examine black women, who are both single mothers and nonpoor, as an understudied, but constructive group in the DC metro area. Through ethnographic field research, I explored their experiences in the home, workplace, and greater community by employing a mixed methods approach including participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups. I demonstrate the ways material goods and experiences shape their complex identifies against and in support of various stereotypes. This research is unique in its focus on the black middle class from a new perspective and contributes to scholarly literatures on class and identity formation, black womanhood and motherhood, and material culture.