A Gentle Invitation into the Challenging Topic of Privilege The notion that some might have it better than others, for no good reason, offends our sensibilities. Yet, until we talk about privilege, we’ll never fully understand it or find our way forward. Amy Julia Becker welcomes us into her life, from the charm of her privileged southern childhood to her adult experience in the northeast, and the denials she has faced as the mother of a child with special needs. She shows how a life behind a white picket fence can restrict even as it protects, and how it can prevent us from loving our neighbors well. White Picket Fences invites us to respond to privilege with generosity, humility, and hope. It opens us to questions we are afraid to ask, so that we can walk further from fear and closer to love, in all its fragile and mysterious possibilities.

Behind the White Picket Fence: Power and Privilege in a Multiethnic Neighborhood

Growing up, Krista Kathleen followed all the rules... She went to church every Sunday, got straight A's in school, found a high paying job, and married her college sweetheart at the age of 26. From the outside looking in? Life looked picture perfect. But inside? She couldn't shake this nagging feeling that something was missing...that she was meant for so much more. Then, at the age of 30, Krista tragically got fired AND divorced within the span of a week. Though on one level, these events were totally catastrophic, they were also the energetic wakeup call Krista needed from the Universe to leave her former life behind so she could start over again. This book holds the answers she found as she put the pieces of her life back together in a bold and daring way that TRULY fit Part memoir, part "how-to" guide, Beyond the White Picket Fence is a battle cry for the woman who wants to blaze her own trail in a world desperate to keep her on the well-trodden path. You're going to walk away looking at your relationships, health, purpose, and connection to humanity in new ways and start asking yourself some really powerful questions maybe for the first time ever. At the end of the day, there are two kinds of women in this world: Those who follow the rules, and those who write their own. Beyond the White Picket Fence is for the latter.

Growing up in the seventies, our family appeared perfect to the residents of our small community. My mother was determined to have her Camelot on the North Dakota prairie. My father was an unwilling participant in her goal of perfection; the children were props in the setting she was determined to create.

First published in 1999, Mary Pattillo’s Black Picket Fences explores an American demographic group too often ignored by both scholars and the media: the black middle class. Nearly fifteen years later, this book remains a groundbreaking study of a group still underrepresented in the academic and public spheres. The result of living for three years in “Groveland,” a black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, Black Picket Fences explored both the advantages the black middle class has and the boundaries they still face. Despite arguments that race no longer matters, Pattillo showed a different reality, one where black and white middle classes remain separate and unequal. Stark, moving, and still timely, the book is updated for this edition with a new epilogue by the author that details how the neighborhood and its residents fared in the recession of 2008, as well as new interviews with many of the same neighborhood residents featured in the original. Also included is a new foreword by acclaimed University of Pennsylvania sociologist Annette Lareau.