African American Elites

Black Elites in America:

Introducing Genteel Performance and Double Consciousness

Kanye West's music video for "All Falls Down" explores the concepts of performance and double consciousness today. Watch the video and keep it in mind as you read on.

Why is Kanye West self-conscious?

According to Kanye West, why do black people strive to appear wealthy?

Think about these lines before reading below:

"We'll buy a lot of clothes when we don't really need em
Things we buy to cover up what's inside
Cause they make us hate ourself and love they wealth
That's why shorties hollering "where the ballas' at?"

The real material conditions of black elites

Despite the difficult conditions that African Americans faced in the 1890s, there did exist a black middle/upper class. These people lived in relative comfort compared to the vast majority of black Americans, and mostly lived in major cities. It is important to note, though, that this class was still at a disadvantage when compared to white elites. In fact, many black people who were considered “middle class” performed semi-skilled labor (barbers, cooks, and waiters, for example) that would be considered “lower” or “working” class work for whites. Even those who occupied fully skilled professional positions were economically disadvantaged when compared to their white peers (14).

This is a diagram taken from Black Metropolis, a study of African American life in Chicago from the late 19th century through the early 1940s. This diagram shows information from 1930, but it is a useful tool for visualizing the different socieconomic scales that blacks and whites lived on.

Social class is achieved both through material wealth and the performance of a certain lifestyle. Because the material wealth of black elites was disadvantaged, their class status was especially based in performance, which was informed by the social norms of upper class white people. The characteristics of the black aristocracy, as described by historian William Gatewood, were “respectability, moral rectitude, social grace, education, proper ancestry, as well as wealth and color (15).” Even if one lacked material wealth, one could enter the black middle/upper class if they performed enough of these characteristics. This is what Gatewood calls “genteel performance.”

How did one perform things like respectability, moral rectitude, or social grace? Proper etiquette, manners, and dress were necessary, as well as compliance with domestic norms, which meant having a functioning nuclear, patriarchal family (16). Being properly “cultured” was also key to genteel performance, which meant being well-versed in European classical literature and music. Genteel performance was consciously used to differentiate black elites from the lower class “masses,” who, by the standards of genteel performance, were considered morally bankrupt, uncultured, and uncivilized (17).

The social norms embraced by genteel performance created problems for black elites interested in improving the conditions of the race as a whole. The African American upper/middle class often viewed themselves as evidence of racial progress, claiming that the “masses” needed to adopt their morals and general way of life. This outlook avoided the larger political and economic problems that faced poor blacks, and created class resentment (18).

Genteel performance

An upper/middle class African American family portrait, taken in the 1890s

Double consciousness

Genteel performance is an example of what W.E.B. DuBois called “double consciousness.” He used this term to refer to the two consciousnesses that black Americans had developed: seeing themselves from their own perspective as an historically oppressed group, and from the perspective of a judgmental white world. DuBois explains: “the Negro is….born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,--a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder (19).”

With genteel performance, black elites demonstrated their consciousness as black people by claiming that they represented the progress of the race, which they did in terms of wealth and power. But, they revealed their double consciousness, their “sense….of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” by explaining their progress through performed “respectability, moral rectitude, and social grace,” which appealed also to the sensibilities of white elites. Genteel performance allowed black elites to be conscious of the interests of racial improvement and white scrutiny and judgment, both at the same time.