Narrating the 1980s and 1990s: Voices of Poor and Working–class White and African American Men

Abstract

Moving beyond our earlier analyses of secondary students' perspectives, we focus here on the voices of poor and working–class African American and white men and the ways in which they fashion social critique. What or whom does each group hold accountable for its current condition? Although the economy is choking both groups, their different vantages–their biographies of race–stimulate them to live out class and gender locations differently, encouraging African American men to blame the economy and racism, but white men to blame black males. This has serious implications for whether America can survive as “communities of difference.”