This event will be featured on 98.7WMFT as part of Voices: A Collection of Illinois Stories.
Air times:
- Monday, November 26, 2007 at 6:50PM
- Saturday, December 1, 2007 at 6:05AM
Mary Pattillo is Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University. Her new book, Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City, documents the historic rise, alarming fall, and equally dramatic "renewal" of the North Kenwood–Oakland neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.
For Pattillo, North Kenwood-Oakland offers a "microcosm of boundary-making" within the African American community. As middle-class professionals move into the neighborhood, they resist the building of public housing and attempt to control the behaviors of their low-income neighbors. Many long-time residents have been displaced, and those that remain are supervised according to the new residents’ desires. This recent history of class tension in gentrifying areas begs the important question: For whom are we redeveloping these neighborhoods?
Join Pattillo and journalist Natalie Moore (moderator) for a lively conversation about the politics of race and class in contemporary urban America!
Copies of Black on the Block will be available for purchase at the event.
Listen up! Hear Richard Steele talk with Mary Pattillo about the issues that her new book raises in this interview from Chicago Public Radio’s Eight Forty-Eight .
PRAISE FOR BLACK ON THE BLOCK
"Pattillo and other newly-arriving homeowners…are caught between two motivations: the wish to live in an area with decent stores, well-maintained parks, and adequate city services; and the ethical pull of advocating on behalf of those poorer blacks who might be displaced if the neighborhood continues to gentrify."
– Boston Globe
ABOUT THE PANEL
Mary Pattillo received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago and is Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University. Her book, Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class won the Oliver Cromwell Cox Best Book Award from the American Sociological Association. She is also co-editor of Imprisoning America: The Social Effects of Mass Incarceration . Pattillo is a founding board member and active participant with Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men – Englewood Campus, the first all-boys public charter high school in Chicago.
Natalie Moore (moderator) is a reporter for Chicago Public Radio’s new satellitebureau in Englewood, where she covers news and issues in that community and surrounding areas.Moore has worked for the St. Paul Pioneer Press , the Detroit News , and the Associated Press. Her freelance work has appeared in Essence , the Chicago Tribune , the Chicago Sun-Times , the Chicago Reporter , Black Enterprise , and In These Times . She is a graduate of Howard University and has a Master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Moore is the co-author of Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation. She is an adjunct instructor at Columbia College.
This event is part of the Know More series is designed to bridge the gap between the arts and social issues that are of current concern to Chicago’s Englewood and Humboldt Park communities. The Know More series is made possible by a grant from The Joyce Foundation. Programming for the Know More series has included visits from hip hop scholar Jeff Chang; Africana Studies scholar William Santiago-Valles; journalist Laura Washington; performer Will Power; and poet Elizabeth Alexander.
Refreshments will be served. Reservations are not required. For more information, call 312.422.5580