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Growing Up in the Black Bourgeoisie

Sociologist Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot has written a new book about the Black middle class, called "I've Known Rivers: Lives of Loss and Liberation." She follows the lives of six middle-aged, African American people on the "necessary losses" they paid for their privilege. Her book was written, in part, as a response to the 1957 book "Black Bourgeoisie," by the black sociologist Franklin Frazier. Lawrence-Lightfoot took issue with Frazier's portrait of middle class blacks as materialistic assimilationists, repressed and disconnected from the larger black community. Lightfoot is herself the product of the Black middle class.

14:20
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Other segments from the episode on September 15, 1994

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, September 15, 1994: Interview with Steve Lopez; Interview with Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot; Review of the album "Brain, Kell, Goossens Play Schumann & Beethoven."
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22:40

Journalist Steve Lopez on the "Badlands" of Philadelphia

Columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer Steve Lopez. He's just written his first novel, "Third and Indiana" about the hard life of North Philly. The origin of the story was a two-paragraph item Lopez read in the paper about a 14-year-old boy shot and killed on a drug corner. He was disturbed by the casualness and brevity of the report. Terry talks with Lopez about his new book, and about his popular columns.

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The Cultural Price of Assimilation for Middle Class Blacks

Professor of African-American studies, Gerald Early. He'll talk with Terry about the dilemma of being a middle-class African American intellectual, and how that kind of life can separate a person from the black community. His new book is "Lure and Loathing: Essays on Race, Identity, and the Ambivalence of Assimilation."

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