ABSTRACT
Gladyse Taylor has a hypothesis that when the black bourgeoisie meets the truly disadvantaged it is more amicable than an encounter between the white gentry and the black poor. One possibility is that the discrepancy noted by Juan Battle and Earl Wright between the objective measures of college-educated blacks' activism and their subjective evaluation of the adequacy of black middle-class helping behaviors is a reflection of the intensity of their sense of responsibility. Black professionals' arrival back on the block has good motives and highlights the role of racial identity in unifying this otherwise disjointed neighborhood. The saving graces of the middle class constitute the link that brings together two otherwise disparate literatures, one on black politics and leadership and the other on the theories behind and practices of addressing urban poverty. Mixed-income communities as cures to urban poverty represent a decidedly nonstructural policy intervention, relying on the prospect of cross-class affiliation to combat the existing forces of systemic stratification.
