Alan Takeall

Alan Takeall received his PhD in Sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2017. His research focuses on the intersection of race and class among African Americans, urban education, inequality, and social mobility. Dr. Takeall’s dissertation, ​Culture and Class in Marginalized Minority Educational Attainment ​(2017), was a quantitative study of demographic and cultural predictors of educational attainment for a nationwide sample of Black and Latinx high school students. Specifically, he analyzed the differences in future educational outcomes for poor marginalized minority students compared to their non-poor counterparts, and found that socioeconomic status significantly shapes the context in which demographic and cultural factors operate to produce those outcomes.

Currently, Dr. Takeall is developing a qualitative study of middle-class Black adults who volunteer with youth mentoring programs for “at-risk” adolescent Black kids. This project examines the adults mentors’ perspectives regarding the young people’s prospects for upward mobility and navigating the contemporary urban racial terrain. Research on intra-racial class politics and racial uplift strategies such as youth mentoring programs is of heightened importance in the wake of Obama’s supposedly “post-racial” presidency coupled with the apparently increased precariousness of Black life in the 21s​ t​ Century United States.

While Queens College is Dr. Takeall’s primary campus, he has taught courses in Urban Sociology and African American Studies at several New York City colleges, including The CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, The City College of New York, and Columbia University.