Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community

In this study, Steven Gregory examines political culture and activism in an African-American neighbourhood in New York City. Using historical and ethnographic research, he challenges the view that 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 neighbourhood quality of life. With its emphasis on the lived experiences of African Americans, the book provides a fresh contribution to the study of the dynamic interplay or 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 been often 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 of politics of identity and community life that we come to appreciate this complexity.