I'm going to pray for our race and the black folk living in poverty, middle class and upper middle class because I see a separation taken place in our culture, we have some black elite that want to be seen as another race, other than black. Believe it or not, there is a large black elite class out there that feel that way, their family history of wealth, education & values put them on the level of the majority white society class of wealth, not on the level of the majority of uneducated black folk living in poverty.
This is why I don't understand some black folk that have wealth or live in upper middle class society.
The Top of The Class African Americans make up 10% compared to the 70% class of whites, the anxious middles class of black folk make up 10% compared to the 73% class of white folks and the satisfied middle class make up of 75% whites compared to the 7% black folks. And for many black folk remaining in the middle class is like walking a tightrope, downward mobility is just a job loss or medical surgery away. What black folk living in the elite class have to understand, economic success measured by family income does not appear to protect black children from future economic diversity the same way it protects white children. Black middle class has just 15% of wealth for every dollar their white counterparts possess most of their wealth is held in their home and their car equity. Since the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s a disproportionate number of middle class black elites are the blue collar professions that moved up in the company not the college degree grad students. There is a solid reason why the blue collar professionals have been hit hard in this economic downfall, and why out resourcing is the way to go for most U.S. companies because the majority of black folk have used these jobs to position themselves into the middle class elite society, drive nice cars and send their children to good privet or public education school systems. There is a reason that predatory lending is systematically stripping tens of thousands of black households of home equity their primary source if wealth for families, college education is going through the roof, at 3 to 4 times the rate of inflation. We are facing a period where there could be a serious losses of middle class status and reversing the trend of middle class, not even in the 80’s, when the economic growth was slow and black communities was facing the war on drugs crack, guns, and the rise of gangs & crime did the percentage drop of black folk in the middle class. Some folks are not in favor of the blue collar jobs, but it was the blue collar jobs that raised many black folk out of poverty. There are, believe it or not, many black elites that feel their a different kind of race than poorer black folk, they feel blue collar labor may have raised many black folk out of poverty but it did not raise their values many black elites feel values play a strong role if you want to live and be successful in the white majority world and blacks living in poverty just don’t possess the values black elites white college grad buddy possess, yes, black folk contributed to racism. I don’t blame upper class black folk because there are a lot more black folk living in poverty who are more racist toward other poorer black folk trying to make it out of poverty through education than the black elite . I don’t blame the upper class black I bought into capitalism myself, and that notion if you pull yourself up by the bootstraps nobody is holding you back, money will solve all of my problems, and since a was raised around mostly poor, middle class and wealthy black folk I never thought about making it in the white mans world, my thoughts was making it in the black mans world growing up as a child that was my thought process, because I lived in a all black middle class suburb and a all black hard working community in the inner city even when we lived in a majority white suburb there was enough black folks living in that community , we all hung around each other enough it felt like a majority black suburb, so making it, to me, was making it in a black mans world. But back to my point, there are black folk that take pride in the idea of being the only black one at the job, or the first black living in that community, they like the fact to be seen as not like the rest of them other black folk. Black folks have internalized the idea that those who are better off economically are, in general, superior to those without let the majority starve and feed the rest. In the black elite world the emphasis is on how long your family has had money, how long you've had history and education in your background and where you are rooted in a particular community. This is important because the class of society their trying to act like don’t care about their family background or their family wealth how smart they are what kind of car they drive all those things their using wealth as if that’s suppose to separate themselves as another race of people from the rest of the majority of black folks that have not reached a level of wealth. This brings me to the Darwin theory and genetics and the way wealthy black folk are really looked at not only by white folks but other ethnic groups no rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man, as well, Africans or the “Negro” come from a "gorilla" occupying evolutionary positions between the "Baboon" and the "civilized races of man" ["Caucasian"], some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time, the anthropomorphous apes will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between men in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro and the gorilla. Despite his hatred of slavery, Darwin's writings reek with all kinds of contempt. I will say it again “no rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man.” Sir Francis Galton, founder of the eugenics movement, believed very strongly that intelligence was mainly hereditary. He was also convinced there were profound differences in mental ability between the races. He regarded Negroes as barely human at all Robert Chambers in his classic Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, concluded that Blacks were "at the foot of" the Mongol, the Yellow race between, and Caucasians at the top. Chambers himself taught that the "various races of mankind, are simply . . . stages in the development of the highest or Caucasian type. . ." and that the Blacks were the least developed, and the Caucasians were the highest, most evolved race.
Yours truly,
Anthony Smith