In Black Corona, Steven Gregory examines political culture and
activism in an African-American neighborhood in New York City. Using
historical and ethnographic research, he challenges the view that black
urban communities are "socially disorganized." Gregory demonstrates
instead how working-class and middle-class African Americans construct
and negotiate complex and deeply historical political identities and
institutions through struggles over the built environment and
neighborhood quality of life. With its emphasis on the lived experiences
of African Americans, Black Corona provides a fresh and innovative
contribution to the study of the dynamic interplay of race, class, and
space in contemporary urban communities. It questions the accuracy of
the widely used trope of the dysfunctional "black ghetto," which, the
author asserts, has often been deployed to depoliticize issues of racial
and economic inequality in the United States. By contrast, Gregory
argues that the urban experience of African Americans is more diverse
than is generally acknowledged and that it is only by attending to the
history and politics of black identity and community life that we can
come to appreciate this complexity.
This is the first modern ethnography to focus on black working-class and
middle-class life and politics. Unlike books that enumerate the ways in
which black communities have been rendered powerless by urban political
processes and by changing urban economies, Black Corona demonstrates
the range of ways in which African Americans continue to organize and
struggle for social justice and community empowerment. Although it
discusses the experiences of one community, its implications resonate
far more widely.
