Class warfare much?

Nothing's changed since the days of E. Franklin Frazier. G.D. over a Postbourgie goes after Veronica Miller's musings over Stuff Educated Black People Like:

The site resonates with me and most of--okay, all of my friends. To the point where now, Lynnette and I decide which gatherings to attend based on whether they'll be "EBP events" or not. (Howard alumni happy hour? Of course. A club where sagging jeans and waist-long weaves are the fashion of choice? Not so much.) Yes, the site is funny, and yes, it teases us for some of our most pretentious habits (i.e. No. 20, "Correcting Others"), but really, we like the site because it lets us know it's okay to be...well... bourgie.

G.D. retorts:

What grates about these bourgie treatises is that they always seem to be zealous celebrations of normativity. And as the kicker illustrates, there's often an awkward elevation of certain consumerist choices to the level of bold and necessary political statement -- even equating those choices with personal integrity. It's like some goofy world full of class markers where no affinity is organic (sans the food in the fridge!); what really matters is what those affinities Say About You.

Basically. In much the same way as brothers on the corner confuse street knowledge with all knowledge, some of us confuse credentials with education. But you can be bourgie in the projects, and stuck on stupid in the 'burbs. Knocking someone for pronouncing asked as "axed" is no better than knocking a kid for "talking white."

The hood and the bourgeoisie have more in common than they'd like to admit. Miller approvingly cites a modern twist on an old black aphorism--"Conversate is not a word." Heh, except that it kinda is. And it's a beautiful one at that. Which is why I've always enjoyed Stuff Educated Black People Like. From the very title itself, the site mocks the pretensions of those of us who think ignorance is confined to the projects, and that a bachelor's degree and a plate of baked chicken is some sort of vaccine.