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Rather than showing pictures why not show data? It is a fact that a much higher % of the black population is now middle class, and decent numbers are even affluent. Certainly HIGHER than at anytime during the pre Civil Rights Movement!
Show data to prove your point that there were more middle class blacks in 1950 than there were in 2000, or even 2010 as the middle class (of all races) became eroded due to the Bush induced financial collapse in 2008.
If you don't see the relevance of the images posted then you missed MY point entirely.
Then African Americans need to look in the mirror when they rail against the evils of slavery. A MUCH higher percentage of free Blacks owned slaves than did White people. Black Slave Owners Civil War Article by Robert M Grooms
Includes citations.
As some one said if your competitor is using free labor, how can you compete if you have the same non labor costs that he has, and addition pay wages? In addition many of those so called "blacks" were actually mulattos (half whites) and so despised full blacks as much as full whites did, and were encouraged in this by a white power structure which supported the continuation of slavery.
The fact remains that it was a WHITE dominated power structure which kept slavery alive and the vast majority of slave owners were white, and the vast majority of the blacks were slaves. Most free blacks were extremely hostile to slavery, not indifferent, or in support of it as were most free whites, even in the North.
In addition if the end of slavery meant equality for blacks, this debate will not have occurred. Evidence suggests that many blacks worked hard to acquire lands and to be independent people.
It was the de jure Jim Crow of the South and the de facto Jim Crow of the North, which undermined much of the efforts of these people. One can only look at what happened in Tulsa, and in Rosewood FL, and many other communities to see how whites destroyed successful black communities, which were filled with people just minding their own business.
It is the POST slavery oppression which is largely responsible for the racial disparities and tensions which we have today. Africans had NOTHING to do with Jim Crow USA.
If you don't see the relevance of the images posted then you missed MY point entirely.
I see the relevance. I knew those people. I was there then. I had the counsel of those successful blacks who encouraged me to gain the tools to leave those neighborhoods. Those very same successful people were the ones most strongly encouraging us to move up and out. None of them was saying, "Get an education and then come back to live in these projects and shanties." They themselves were feeling the constraint of being koi in goldfish bowls.
There were African American surgeons, entrepreneurs, dentists, attorneys and everything else under the sun thriving and prospering, with 100% African American clientele. I think integration was good, but the problem was, the upper and middle class African American professionals abandoned African American neighborhoods in droves.
African Americans had very tight knit families prior to integration.
And there are MORE AA surgeons, business people, dentists etc TODAY.
What is your point? Also the levels of family break up were high in the pre CRM era. This wasn't necessarily happy families all living joyfully together.
As some one said if your competitor is using free labor, how can you compete if you have the same non labor costs that he has, and addition pay wages?
Exactly. Slavery in the U.S. wasn't a racial issue; it was a financial issue. The fact that the first legal American slave owner was a Black man drives home that point.
Perhaps in your small town but not in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. Once the restrictive covenants on real estate were lifted and the CRA was in place the majority of middle and upper class AA fled to the (white) suburbs instead of working to strengthen our own communities. White equaled "better" and we are now reaping the effects of that mentality in every way imaginable.
You realize, don't you, that the blacks in LA and Chicago had moved there from Mississippi and Alabama?
I have mixed feelings on this. What do you think? As far as material wealth is concerned, we are all better off. But poverty and incarceration still disproportionately affect blacks.
Just remember one thing if a person goes against people in his or her own race take it as them being confused. This man/pastor is an unknown nobody.Being a conservative, he has few Black followers.
Perhaps in your small town but not in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, etc. Once the restrictive covenants on real estate were lifted and the CRA was in place the majority of middle and upper class AA fled to the (white) suburbs instead of working to strengthen our own communities. White equaled "better" and we are now reaping the effects of that mentality in every way imaginable.
Now why should AAs stay in majority poor communities, limiting options for themselves and their children when people from virtually every other group have a right to move to better communities as their incomes improve. This is in addition to the fact that blacks, regardless of income levels, except for the highest earners, live in communities with a large black presence.
As many communities fell prey to deliberate attempts to destroy them through building highways THROUGH them etc, or as many communities became redlined by the banks, insurers and local authorities, or as the poor in many communities became a group of the permanent unemployed as jobs were moved to other locales, or replaced by machines, why do you think that the black middle class should be forced to live in the midst of this location, about which they had no control?
Note that despite the presence of a large middle class LA, Chicago, and NY remain among the more segregated metro areas in the USA. What happened was as Harlem collapsed to drugs and despair, those blacks, who were able to, fled to black East Elmhurst and black St Albans. These aren't white suburbs.
This is not going to be a popular comment but the truth is that there was/is a false belief by many blacks that what white people have is "better". The purpose of the CRM (led by black men) was to gain access to what white men had...white companies, white jobs, white schools, white businesses, white country clubs, white neighborhoods, white women, white lives. The black communities that had been comprised of ALL socioeconomic levels of black people who were the neighborhood store owners, the neighborhood doctors, the educators, etc. were quickly emptied leaving a vacuum of lower socioeconomic black people. The gains of the CRM were used by many to simply grasp for what whites had instead of building upon black progress.
Here is an important question. How much of the Black population lived like the Black people in those pictures? And what it really ALL about getting access to what Whites had? Lets look at this. The schools, Blacks who worked had to pay taxes for those schools too. However, Black schools weren't given the same amount of resources as White schools. Blacks were limited in where they could live. Blacks did not have as many choices. The Civil Rights Movement was more than just about "getting access". It was about having the same treatment as anyone else in society. It was about being able to vote, being able to live wherever you wanted to live. It was started because Blacks did not have the same amount of freedoms that everyone else had. And consider this. The Black middle class grew after the Civil Rights Movement. More Blacks have college degrees than every before. It was about freedom, having the same resources as everyone else, having the freedom and privilege of getting the same stuff as anyone else.
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