“‘I hate that Jack and Jill Club mentality that some people have,” she said, explaining: “Jack and Jill is essentially a mothers’ club and it is elitist. You have to be voted in, and it’s supposed to be for black families that make over a certain income. It’s basically just another little self-segregation pool, which perpetuates that whole crabs-in-a-barrel, no we’re not going to support each other, paper bag club type of ideology. It’s awful, really awful . . . I hate that our community gets branded like.’”
Elizabeth Gates, daughter of Henry Louis (“Skip”) Gates Jr. and a writer for the Daily Beast responding to an article written in New York Magazine about the Black elite in Martha’s Vineyard.
What was said in the article that got folks cranking up the culture-based PR machine.
“Even if the Obamas do choose West Chop, they’ll surely spend considerable time in Oak Bluffs, a town known for attracting most of the upper-class black professionals who stay on the island. As liberal as it is, the Vineyard is about as racially integrated as a college dining hall—blacks and whites get along fine, but they generally don’t socialize. “There’s not a lot of overlap between black and white,” says radio executive Skip Finley, who started vacationing in Oak Bluffs in 1954 and has been living there full-time for the past decade. “I don’t think anybody’s insulted by it. I’m certainly not.” It’s an arrangement that springs largely from the self-segregating impulse among black Vineyarders, who have come to the island to connect with each other. “We have people here who are black and upscale and racist,” Finley continues. “They don’t want to be around white folks, and they don’t have to.” By choosing to vacation in and around Oak Bluffs, the Obamas would be throwing a spotlight on one of the most demographically unusual towns in America.”
