A recent Washington Post article provided a glimpse into a recent fundraiser for Barack Obama held in Washington, DC. Sociologist Mary Pattillo was asked to weigh in on why young Black professionals have become so actively involved in fundraising for Obama.

“… ‘He is very familiar to them,’ says Mary Pattillo, a professor of sociology and African American studies at Northwestern University. ‘He’s done a great job of doing what middle-class blacks do, work in a predominantly white world but still maintain a sense of racial identity and groundedness.'”

“…College-educated African Americans remain an ‘elite’ group, said Pattillo, noting that just 17 percent of black adults ages 25 and over have undergraduate degrees. ‘They think it’s extraordinary that you have this eminently qualified man,’ said Candace Tolliver, a longtime Hill aide who now works as an Obama campaign spokeswoman. ‘They expect no less because that’s what they expect of themselves.'”