Black Class Over Racial Affinity
Where it breaks down
Q. Is it true that there's a huge difference between rich black Americans and poor black Americans with regard to their politics, tolerance, character, etc.?
A. It is absolutely true.
One of the saddest aspects of the lame mainstream media is its inability to convey any authentic detail of black American life in anything more than stereotypical fashion. The result is that anything that doesn’t appear ordinary gets interpreted as ‘white’. Right now I’m thinking about movies. There’s nobody in my family that doesn’t love The Princess Bride or Woody Allen movies, and none of us like Tyler Perry. Just a simple example.
When I paid a lot more attention to this subject I looked at class, particularly class differences within black America. I came up with five categories. {Sticks/Projects, Ghetto, Hood, Burbs, Hill}. If you ask black academics, they will talk a lot about ‘hypersegregation’ which specifically means how poor blacks live in both very poor and very racially segregated places[1]. Such people have very particular difficulties in that advice that works for the average American does not work for them. However some of this is made confusing by the actions of many black folks across the spectrum to make the classic liberal stand in solidarity with their plight. For example, Spike Lee will make movies about the displaced from Katrina, and the gangs of Chicago, and sell these movies to people who are from neither place. Wealthy music producers will seek out hypersegregated kids who want to rap, mostly gangsta rap about being rich and dangerous and sell those records to youth across the country who are neither rich or dangerous. This is actually a worldwide phenomenon. So there is that fraction of ‘authentic black culture’ that appears to be more widespread than it actually is.
The big subject of racism makes for interesting conversation. What you almost never hear, when successful black people encounter racism is how much it affects them. There are individuals who may have been detained by police officers and cuffed on the curb, and for them it is the most humiliating experience ever, but they walk away and return to their professions. And yet there are black families who deal with the reality of visiting brothers, sons and husbands in prison. That’s worlds apart, but it’s called the same racism. And clearly in recent years it has been popular to assert that ‘unarmed black males’ are endangered by gun happy police. If black lives matter, why concentrate on 400 dead instead of 193,000 that serve in the US armed forces? What about the 34.9% of 18–24 year old black Americans who are enrolled in post-secondary education?[2] When is the last time you saw a movie including black college students? Well a 1/3 are there.
Of course the point of people bringing up race is to highlight inequalities for the political purpose of making them all appear to be injustices, but it blinds people to the greater reality. The greater reality is that black Americans themselves are highly diverse and unequal themselves. What destroys one strengthens another. Inequality is not equal to injustice. And what is actual injustice against a few black Americans does not dim the prospects for the many. But with racial inequality being the focus of so many people, it ultimately distorts the truth. The truth is that black Americans live everywhere and do everything and it is stupid to compare what they do to anything other than what they want to do. In other words, if I improve my self and my life, then it is only proper to compare me now with me before, not what some English king did or what some ghetto drug addict did. (Unless of course, my aim is to be a ghetto drug addict or English king).
So hopefully that explains that the very process of trying to categorize people by race and compare people by race distorts the truth about what people actually do and who they are.
So how are rich black people different than poor black people? How are Democrat black people different than Republican black people? How are Christian black people different than atheist black people? How are black people from Texas different than black people from Massachusetts? The black doesn’t matter. The differences are just as obvious and simple as you might guess.
What’s different and unique about the difference in class and politics and tastes of black Americans goes particularly to the relationships within black America. That is to say how do black Americans of different backgrounds and situations choose to regard each other and what do they consider to be their obligations to each other? This is a question that is a proper study of Black History, the broad outlines of which should be mostly familiar. In other words, black Americans deal with the same divisions of all humanity, but have some history in trying to overcome those differences for the sake of a greater goal for all within the context of America.
I will skip all that and assert that in the wake of the success of the Civil Rights Movement there is no exceptional predominating concept that unites black Americans. Black Americans recognize, some more slowly than others, that they do not and cannot decide the destiny of other black Americans. The fact is that, as William Julius Wilson[3] and others have noted, the significance of race has declined over the years as black Americans have successfully integrated into the American mainstream in every dimension. The clearest evidence of that is the extent to which black organizations like the Urban League and NAACP have declining political influence, membership and economic backing. Neither of those is as powerfully effective as the NFL as last year’s kneeling controversy proves.
This leaves people in a quandary. The invention of the term ‘African American’ in the 1980s was established partly because people recognized that there was no monolithic ‘black community’, and people were getting tired of being cast that way. And yet the dissolution of a prior sense of unity, whether real or imagined, now leaves many people with a sense of longing for the good old days when parents and children listened to the same music, cooked the same recipes, attended the same church, pledged the same fraternities and sororities and voted for the same candidates.
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As I look at my extended family I recognize that many of us have achieved great success, but that these successes are particular to the context of our generational ambitions. There were big leaps I can identify in retrospect - but that’s how families look at themselves, with survivor’s bias: “Look what I did, I must know what I’m talking about.” But some of that is chance and beyond our control. And still we can look at our grandparent’s graves and stand there with pride knowing we’ve fulfilled and surpassed. Nevertheless we have our own unique challenges for which there are few blueprints.
My grandparents were married during the Great Depression. My grandmother survived polio. My grandfather worked troop trains in WW2. They lived in the projects in New Haven, CT. My other grandparents lived in New Orleans, LA. So both of my college educated parents joined two very different families. Here is their wedding picture from 1959.
As a writer and father and entrepreneur, I am dealing with issues that have very little in common with those of my parents or grandparents. I have close family mostly in the American upper middle class, although one or two of us might be considered rich, none of us is wealthy. I think I’m fairly typical of certain men of my generation, getting my kids into and through the military and college, empty nesting (almost) and taking care of my parents affairs (somewhat). I have nieces and nephews living in multiple timezones and one abroad now. I myself have lived all over the US and have worked abroad as well.
So for a personal conclusion, I would say that the biggest difference between myself and other black folks I have known throughout my life is the extent to which I have traveled and worked all over. From Milan to Minneapolis it has been a great privilege to work in many different industries with all kinds of professionals. My disposition as a writer has been enhanced by the fact that my work has given me lots of extra time and money. Since my late 20s I’ve been able to afford all of my middle class necessities without much trouble, a place I might have stayed until I got a taste of six figure entrepreneur’s living. So I have been freed, not by theory, but by experience from the ordinary things that define ordinary folks. And I hope do learn to walk with kings without losing the common touch. These days, I’m looking forward to the next step, and then maybe I’ll be the third somewhat rich person in my family. Fingers crossed.
Footnotes
[1] Race & The Neoliberal City
[2] Percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds enrolled in degree-granting postsecondary institutions, by level of institution and sex and race/ethnicity of student: 1970 through 2015