The black middle class is a buffer group. I know cause I grew up on the fault line between the black underclass and the black middle class. Don't just look at PG County Maryland -- check out the Chicago 'burbs. Middle class black people often see poor blacks as the problem just like whites. Black people don't like crime, either; and they are just as programmed to view us in the ghetto as criminals, drug addicts, and welfare queens as white people. They believe in the empty American dream and will conform to get it. Don't be fooled by their "Afrocentricity"; progressive black politics threatens the status quo, and believe me, the black middle class has an investment in the status quo, or believes it does. However, the burgeoning intellectuals that grew up along the fault line like myself (or were brought face-to-face with the contradictions of their class) are trying to set the agenda for us in the new century. Hip-hop intellectualism alone won't save us w/o recourse to Delaney, Cruse, Woodson, and all the people young black people in college are being exposed to. Not everyone is getting their minds blown...most are just in college so they can get that paper or some symbolic power...but the mental liberation afforded by the gains of the black middle-class is affording the incubation of proto-revolutionary thought.
So, the black middle class itself is useless, but is necessary as an incubator for the next niggaz who may bring the pain to this distressed system we live in.

"Alphas are that good high...stick witcha, you can't shake that shit...like heroin. You'll always be addicted."
--OKP novembersgift