Why I don't understand the black affluent class
The black middle class is talking of values and civility as many Americans of colour continue to languish in poverty.
It's amazing how similar middle-class and well-positioned African Americans are to white elites in their perspectives on US politics. They continue to play in the sandbox of respectability politics and civility, as if only since the election of Donald Trumpas president has racial and socioeconomic progress been in jeopardy.
Take Washington Post columnist Colbert I King's reaction to US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement last month. The "honor - or from, my point of view, blame" for strengthening the right-wing hold on the Supreme Court "goes to those citizens who did not vote for a presidential candidate in 2016," he wrote in a recent column. He added, "I thought the case [for Hillary Clinton] was strong. Sadly ... Black voter turnout fell from 66.6 percent of eligible voters in 2012 to 59.6 percent four years later."
King's words reflect the thoughts of many middle-class and affluent African Americans who've despaired over Trump and the GOP's control of all three branches of government as a sign of the apocalypse. Like King, many have scorned black voters who decided to abstain from voting or not vote for Clinton because they didn't see her as having African Americans' interest in mind or working to combat poverty, as her campaign platform demonstrated.
The reality is that every president since Lyndon Johnson has forgotten about America's poor, and especially, poor Americans of colour. Most politicians rarely use the words "poor" and "poverty" in their speeches, unless they intend to criticise the poor for their lot in life.
Yet the black affluent class continues to emphasise racial progress and social mobility as if it's 1978, with Jimmy Carter as president and sitcom Diff'rent Strokes (starring black actors Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges) an NBC primetime hit.
Democratic Senator Cory Booker implied as much last month in his defence of Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders who, last month, was asked to leave a restaurant by its owner. "Not to lead with love and to do it in a way that is more reflective of the values we are trying to reject in our country is not acceptable to me," Booker said on MSNBC.
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