the "impersonal and mechanical city"

Gilbert Osofsky's 1962 study of Harlem.

Since W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1899 study  “Philadelphia Negro,” an abundance of scholarship has been produced on the subject of  African Americans in cities.Unlike in previous weeks when  students taking this course typically learned via case studies by various scholars, last week they were introduced to three issues on which historians, sociologists and political scientists often focus when studying black urban life: race, ghettos and class. In doing so, the students discovered now-classic writings. Tiffany, one member of this class, was especially drawn to Richard Wright’s introductory essay in St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton’s classic 1945 ground-breaking study of the Chicago, the “Black Metropolis.” Wright, as she wrote, was well aware of the sociological issues affecting people of African descent in the "impersonal and mechanical city." By the 1960s, Gilbert Osofsky looked  at Harlem and observed a “tragic sameness” about black urban life. Osofsky's position was critiqued by later researchers who were more attentive to the ruptures and richness of black life in urban spaces. Their ideas and others, among them, William Julius Wilson's "underclass" arguments, or his generally greater concentration on class and not race,  were juxtaposed against clips from Spike Lee’s “Jungle Fever.” Most students saw the ways in which debates about race, ghetto and class figured into this 1991 American drama concerning Flipper (Wesley Snipes), a successful African American architect who commits adultery with Angie (Annabella Sciorra), his white administrative assistant. Their moments of indiscretion are placed alongside Flipper's life in Harlem, and Angie's  life in a white Italian Brooklyn community. Thinking of Osofsky's work, Lauria, one student, was struck by how white immigrants “participated in [racism] in [order to] ...become more ‘Americanized.'" Raven, another student, thought about how race figured into a white cop’s thoughtless behavior toward Flipper after responding to a 911 call about an "Afro"-American assaulting a white woman (Flipper and Angie were actually just play-fighting). Shariyah also thought about race when she observed that for many whites,  “a black man must be committing a crime when hanging [with] or communicating with [a] white woman.” Christin lamented how no matter their individual accomplishments, “black men were viewed [negatively] by society as a whole.” Also thinking of Osofsky, Roosevelt observed the more difficult aspects of black “ghetto” life in scenes of the Taj Majal, a crack den frequented by Gator (Samuel L. Jackson), Flipper’s older brother. Interestingly, after watching this film, Alexis,  recalling a not often evoked stance by Osofsky, observed how ghettoes were “not just a place filled with trouble, but a community.”