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Forum nameOkay Activist Archives
Topic subjectThe Black Middle Class?
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=22&topic_id=12176&mesg_id=12183
12183, The Black Middle Class?
Posted by NoShelter, Sat Jul-21-01 05:49 PM
>You never saw the term "sell-out",
>which is a loaded term
>that doesn't really have much
>application. Also, you are oversimplifying
>a complex subject. It is
>strange that you ignored the
>statements on the origin of
>black intellectualism in the middle
>class.

The word sell-out has a lot of application in my opinion it is what you just said. You claim that the black middle class comforms to the "american dream" which is what most people refer to as a stricly european/western viewpoint. What you said is that the black middle class is not liberal and can not have progressive views.

>Yes, the black middle class and
>upwardly mobile blacks want to
>keep what they think they
>have, and that is conservative
>in the classic sense, but
>not in the modern-day sense.
>Because of this tension between
>a comfortable status quo and
>the obvious effects of racism,
>it may be more accurate
>to say that the black
>middle class actually has no
>"politics" other than vague notions
>of cultural democracy and economic
>maintenance.

I guess you could say conservative in the classical sense, but than i could pin that label on anyone. No one wants to lose what they have at all. I think the "middle class" has politcs but they seem trivial in your opinion since based on your post yours seem radically left.
I don't feel a debate would be possible on this topic anymore becuase your viewpoints don't seem to be based so much on racial lines, but on destruction of the capitalist system as a whole. The term black middle class is vauge enough, to me it means not poor but not rich. but what i have a problem with is the attack on upwardly mobile black class and not so much the system as a whole. You seemed to argue that those blacks with money turn their noses down at those in the ghetto. I argue that point becuase many blacks who are middle-class now were raised in the ghetto. The reason I used the word "sell-out" was becuase at the beginning of the column you wrote you said that the "black middle class" acts like white people. That is a very devisive position that is fostering an intrarace them against us mentality. That is why I used te term "sell-out" becuase you claimed that the black middle class sold themselves out to white america so they could get good jobs and decent pay.
It seems to me that your idea is that if you are black and you have money you did something very wrong.
If you feel that way than don't come out and attack other black people, just come out and attack the capitalist system that you seem to despise.
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