My Discovery of the Black Bourgeoisie

I have been called bougie for most of my life. It was a term that meant an African-American who was stuck up or thought they were better than other African-Americans. Often times, I felt that it had more to do with my light skin tone than it had to do with my family’s status. If people would have done some research back then, they would have discovered that I was in the lower class, just like most of them.

I hated the word bougie and never knew where it came from. At the age of 34, I discovered its origin. My research had nothing to do with a discovery of the word. I was writing a story and wanted to use the word in the story. I needed to know how to spell it. It was a slang term derived from the word bourgeois. The definition of bourgeois was “relating to or belonging to the middle class of society,” (Bourgeois). The definition that made sense to me was, “too concerned about wealth, possessions, and respectable behavior,” (Bourgeois). After examining both words, I knew that neither of them fit me. I did no further research to understand the word or its origin, doing a true disservice to myself, as well as the word.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels have a different definition of bourgeois. The Marxists term bourgeois refers to the richest of the rich; the capitalists, (Marx 658). In Marx’s day, the bourgeoisie was more than just rich people. They were the people who ruled society and had control over wealth, production, and politics. They were the people who subjugated the classes under them. They were the people who “stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers,” (659). In Marxists terms, the bourgeoisie was much more than the word meant to me. In Marxists’ term, one might not want to be called bourgeois because of its harsh history, but, in terms of the Black bourgeois, it is a term that means something positive.

In modern day terms, the Black bourgeoisie is much more than the cruel children in my day used the term to mean. “The roots of the black bourgeoisie are different than the black middle class, which evolved after the civil rights movement,” (Butler). The Black bourgeoisie has a history of respect and shame. The Black bourgeoisie has been accused of “…acting differently because we were intergenerational college graduates, belonged to fraternities and sororities, started businesses, generated wealth, built big houses, and were elitist snobs. But our greatest trait is that long before desegregation, a strong tradition of college matriculation and excellence had been established. We stand on the shoulders of black merchants, some without formal education like Gaston, and visionaries such as Booker T. Washington,” (Butler). The Black bourgeoisie was something to be proud about. Educated black men and women worked hard to elevate their race and to become people who controlled their own destiny. They created a legacy of wealthy people who were able to influence the wealth of their race, the media, production, and even politics.

The Black bourgeois has created communities, major companies, major associations, and private colleges and universities that continue to enhance current and future generations. Reading Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ work caused me to want to know more about the Black bourgeois. I am not sure if Marx or Engels would have included Blacks, who for the most part were considered the lowest of the lowest class, in the bourgeois of his day, but I now know that there is a Black bourgeois that all people, in particular, African-Americans can and should be very proud of.

Works Cited

"Bourgeois." Bourgeois. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 03 Oct. 2014. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bourgeois>.

Bulter, John. "Celebrating the Black Bourgeoisie." Celebrating the Black Bourgeoisie. Cox Media Group, 15 Feb. 2014. Web. 01 Oct. 2014. <http://www.statesman.com/news/news/opinion/celebrating-the-black-bourgeoisie/ndLYP/>.

Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. The Communist Manifesto. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent Leitch et al. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2010. 657-660.