RATIONALIZING RACE IN THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE - THE CASE OF LOW-INCOME BLACK-MEN

This paper reports on the views held by four low-income African Americ an men concerning how mobility operates in American society, their sen se of their personal life-chance prospects, and how they believe that being African American relates to each matter. The central finding was that the extent of social isolation experienced in life (e.g., lack o f direct interracial exposure, lack of intimate exposure to institutio ns of social power and authority) shaped the capacity to articulate an importance for race in these issues. This paper also argues that an i nvestigation of how low-income Black men made sense of race in their c onstructions of social reality moves academic and popular consideratio ns of them beyond a preoccupation with the behavioral attributes that are subsumed under the ''crisis of the Black male'' scaffold. Thus, wh ile each of the men maintained some of the attributes associated with this crisis (e.g., lack of consistent employment, involvement in illic it activity, incarceration), their capacity to form contrasting concep tions of the importance of race indicated a crucial dimension of varia bility in what might initially appear to be a cluster of similar indiv iduals. Lastly, this paper argues that an acknowledgment of the bases for such variability is critical for any attempt at remedial intervent ion in their lives.