The Black middle class mantra – ‘Let them eat cake’

The question about African-Americans’ “empowerment” is not as much about our political clout as it is whether or not we are better off economically than we were when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in 1968.

Some Black Americans are doing very well. Barack Obama’s presidential run. Tiger Woods, the world’s best-paid athlete. Former Merrill Lynch CEO Stanley O’Neal pocketed $160 million in a golden corporate parachute.

But these Blacks are the exception rather than the rule. Where MLK’s civil rights activities paid off the most was in spawning a Black middle class, which grew from the civil rights movement through public policy and increased opportunities for skills development.

Forty years since MLK declared America owed a debt to Black Americans, Obama is our race-neutral messiah, and our middle class group is regressing. In what Booker T. would have called “frivolous actions,” the Black middle class’ activities have tilted more toward trappings of consumption than economic advancement for the race.

All after 1960s
The “Black middle class” is predominately a development that arose after the 1960s. Prior to then, African-Americans had limited opportunities. In 1960, Blacks had little to no access to higher education and only three percent graduated from college. Those Blacks who were professionals were mainly confined to serving the African-American population. The Black middle class MLK had envisioned was to grow and impact traditional Black communities.

Since King died, the Black middle class population has quadrupled.Black middle class cashed in on the check MLK said America owed. In 2008, over a million Black households have annual incomes of $100,000 a year or more. These upward strides and their excesses have given the illusion that race cannot be the barrier that some make it out to be.

As they became middle class, they became adherents of the status quo. Many among the Black middle class never think or act outside a mainstream mindset. They became establishment-oriented and provided “insufficient funds” toward lifting up their fellow Black Americans.

Never equal
Despite their displays of opulence, similar salaries and educational backgrounds, the majority of the Black middle class never enjoyed class-equivalency to Whites. The rates of self-obsession and consumption among the generations of the Black middle class illustrate how static hold reaps regression.

Nowadays, many Blacks are finding their grip on middle class is precarious. The value of many Black middle-class homeowners wealth is falling. Loans that many of them received in the 1990s were high-cost subprime loans. Now the value of their homes is sinking as foreclosures occur and their banks have frozen home equity lines of credit. Their “trappings of power” are being foreclosed and America’s contemporary Black middle class is being revealed as having been more symbol than substance.

To their determent, middle class Blacks have been obsessed with “mainstreaming.” Their unflinching support of the Obama candidacy and acceptance of the American establishment’s indifference to the plight of poor Blacks and social policy needed to maintain affirmative action, end law enforcement and judicial injustices, and increase race-targeted antipoverty programs to help poor Blacks illustrates their abandonment of any legacy of King’s economic dream.

No help for ‘cousins’
“If they have no bread, let them eat cake,” is how the Black middle class has responded to their urban and underclass cousins. A Black underclass has remained rooted in urban poverty. Blacks of middle class means started to leave them in the 1970s to pursue quality schools, security and appreciated property values in suburban neighborhoods.

With their contemporary image of surfeit, the question surrounding the Black Middle Class Era is “What contribution have they made toward Martin’s dream of economic equity in America?” As they reel backwards, I wonder how many of the Black middle class recognizes the error of their deeds?