Episode 19 | Candice M. Jenkins on the Black Middle Class

Candice M. Jenkins, Professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the author of the recently released and critically-acclaimed

Black Bourgeois: Class and Sex in the Flesh (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), joined Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal to consider the precocious existence of Black bodies in our society, even if educated and middle-class. Professors Jenkins and Neal discussed the speculative nature ofAfro-pessimism, getting arrested at Starbucks, and the numerous works of Black authors and artists that heavily influenced Jenkins’ latest publication.