Mary Pattillo Pattillo explores her research on Black middle-class communities and considers how it reconfi gured the boundaries of studying urban Black populations. She describes how moving into the neighborhoods she studies presented rich opportunities for data collection, as well as considerable challenges

As I read that question now, I immediately think-“now we know a lot about the Black middle class.” You are so right that my work is among that of many other youngish scholars in exploring the lives of middle-class Blacks. And as a result, I don’t think now-as much as I did when I began-that we know very little about this topic. Th is is amazing since I fi nished graduate school

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in 1997, and in just over 10 years there has been signifi cant scholarship in this area. I think Bart Landry’s Th e New Black Middle Class (1988) was really at the vanguard of this line of research, and since then the number of studies-both quantitative and qualitative-has swelled. Honestly, I think it became pretty obvious aft er the volumes of “urban poverty” research (read, “Black urban poverty,” for the most part) that something was missing; that this focus among sociologists on poor African Americans was misleading. I think it became especially frustrating for teachers to not have any books or articles to assign to students on any other facet of Black life aside from poverty. As a result, I am happy to say that we know a lot more about the Black middle class now than we did when I was fi rst starting the research for Black Picket Fences. Th ere is still a lot more to know, but there is no longer a vacuum.