The Office for Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunity’s Power of Diversity Lecture Series will feature Assistant Professor of Sociology Cassi L. Pittman, who will give the talk “Race, Class & Place: Rethinking Middle-Class Blacks’ Residential Preferences and the Consequences of Minority Suburbanization.”
Pittman’s lecture will be held Thursday, Sept. 29, at 3 p.m. in the Toepfer Room in Adelbert Hall.
Pittman joined the Case Western Reserve University faculty in the fall of 2014. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her PhD from Harvard University. Her scholarship examines issues of race, economics and inequality.
In her upcoming book, tentatively titled Black Privilege, she paints a picture of the everyday lives of middle-class African-Americans, examining their experiences and consumption preferences as displayed where they work, live and socialize.
To date, she has published articles on black consumers’ experiences navigating the mortgage market and examining middle-class blacks’ attitudes about social mobility and racial progress after the election of President Barack Obama.
She is initiating new research on the black middle class, racial residential segregation, and neighborhood preferences in Cleveland, focusing on the Forest Hill Neighborhood of East Cleveland, the city where she grew up.