American Black Upper Class

American Black Upper Class

The Black American Upper Class consists of African American professionals in fields such as law, medicine, business and entertainment that have incomes that amount to $100,000 or more. This class, sometimes referred to as the black upper-middle-class or The black elite, represents less than 1 percent of the total black population in the United States. This group of African Americans has a history of organizations and activities that distinguish it from other classes within the black community as well as from the white upper class. Many of these traditions, which have persisted for several generations, are discussed in Lawrence Otis Graham’s 2000 book, Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class.

Scholarship on this class from a sociological perspective is generally traced to E. Franklin Frazier's Black Bourgeoisie ( first edition in English in 1957 translated from the 1955 French original).

Famous quotes containing the words upper class, american, black, upper and/or class:

“The stately Homes of England,
How beautiful they stand,
To prove the upper classes
Have still the upper hand.”
—Noël Coward (1899–1973)

“Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)

“The black cat does not die. Those same books, if I am not mistaken, teach that the black cat is deathless. Deathless as evil. It is the origin of the common superstition of the cat with nine lives.”
—Peter Ruric, and Edgar G. Ulmer. Edgar G. Ulmer. Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff)

“You doubt we read the stars on high,
Nathless we read your fortunes true;
The stars may hide in the upper sky,
But without glass we fathom you.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

“psychologist
Ultimately it’s all a matter of style. What it comes down to is this: Do you spell Jennifer with a J or G? That’s a class division. As a populist, I’m all for G.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)