NET Journal; Still A Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class

i'm really good olive oil revenues run any national educational television in one well i live in a tree lined street and like some home on the lake like that really gotten along who is more sure you're well i like to wear running or american and i'm an american weekend this way so you might think we were like why that's kind of why i don't think of myself as being bigger never until recently and i really been concerned that i am a negro reichl oh well i was mr that's

banking the nation's mayors for haitians mm hmm he can the peak is big

a vacationer somehow actionable marketing says he and wife molly and the two children live on the line to the big money and a law degree from your last clue here in the united states ms bartoli

you mention that according to the united states department of labor statistics negro median income is still a little better than half that of whites and whites and come as increasing at a faster rate horrible want to have the war now american companies ms bee but there are increasing numbers of negroes whose incomes are rising at their qualifications multiply and racial barriers to their advancement slowly

less of a jones mostly white world but those income alone determine what is understood by the middle class called american sense and last hour like dr st clair great sociologist from the university of chicago you won't have to live quietly away myself what a waste i like to think about it is this as some years ago when they were ski and i were working on black metropolis we were suddenly struck by the fact that you could find two negroes work in the stockyard is what we like to call capital in disarray years as they dig out the insides of the cattle as they came along on the assembly line and that is a

symbol of them would make it about four hundred dollars a month one comes home and on the way home stops at a local tavern alcohol and he gets home is in a very bad movie knocked on the door and it isn't open quickly yelled at his wife and he thinks perry about one person's intimate everybody up and down the street against fraud wonders and look she comes out to maybe syria may finally get on the house in them they both started taking that during the fight now media and take his four hundred and eight he addresses of bartering is it the other way and that when he arrived at home his wife also real quickly enough but he waits until he gets inside and then the fight starts inside and then when he gets ready to be very pulled down the shade to make sure that the neighbors don't see

at that are overly sit down at the kitchen table and decide how much of the money that the orders that were the educational fund for good then they're much they're going to put the church that sunday and dirt this is the end of the day we called second a middle class way of life first more like the point i was trying to make was that might have the same amount of money the way in which they've made aspirations they have put themselves and their children are there for money all along and we would see them and they wonder now if you wanna look american society and three levels upper middle of a more question might request puts the emphasis on finding a little perspective philip seymour or manner and to maintain

nice job it if we lose this

thing next year but also customarily think of nearly all the growth is being near the poverty level present picture and jobs business housing and social activity within the negro middle class is a striking well richard clarke he's in the business of creating in nineteen sixty seven

it is thank you the quality of job opportunity to not be taking promotions current median income for liberal college graduate is just under six thousand dollars the white gradually and over ninety eight but one of the grain and operated businesses are they at some of your discharge threatened with a

crime now this today than there were twenty years ago i think we think in terms of large numbers of people in business perhaps this may be true but i think new rules are engaged in the business that they are doing larger volumes are i think they are more diversified its own i think all you have to do is read in the mediterranean and ceo all the private businesses and the girls are here and in the current edition renee montagne host ok because it yeah this is just a move to tell you how sorry we are that you'll be leaving home office jacob you do sense of

the johnson publishing company of chicago is one of the country's most successful negro business for a growth advertising that and you're running into the united states the penny nigro business and in ohio remains in the small business category discrimination by lenders suppliers and insurance companies often make their success a precarious one especially now that many latino white friends have recently discovered the thirty two billion dollar negro market under the very noses housing

that a joint is flourishing the great middle class was widely noted for its extensive and how this new development in areas such as this one and the prestigious cognac heights section built and financed by local negro business model and about why banks traditionally turn down negro loan applications eventually black institutions who were resources and move into the vacuum they fly turned to be trying to outbid the blood banks and the contractors for a share of one of the fastest growing markets in town yeah daisy ridley i'm all what's largely segregated area even those who could afford better off contracts and substandard overcrowded unit while such bad outing as

does become available and flopped with frustrated that will also seek quality education for their children no matter where they live or with whom they were frozen out of the white house into a veritable society within a society the various levels of social structure found among white this world of historic events in the women's club and originally i didn't see it i have an ingeniously apparel at a huge charitable

or they weren't rude awakening and actually they're the ones that have they liked the enemy and work along with me that they wanted to leave it to the homes of the party we knew it we don't know that i'm always leaving the piano onstage and they announced at it than i am sure they would be your team are you feeling like this

do you think about that i think a lot of the policy came to play and

people that maybe a vacation politically they live in june it's

been nice oh no but low class it's impossible for it to exist in this country we have those who aspire to be on the west and center that group i would say that they have been almost totally ninety nine percent negligent in their response to the

struggles of the masses of black people in this country and that they have in many instances in fact handed that struggle by moderating the genuine and legitimate radicalism of the masses right right the new place is politically i think

like it makes me really my

brother had the group also have that sensitive negroes find themselves caught in an awkward moment between designers to exercise usual middle class behavior on the one hand the president reminded a victory looks askance at the idea when we only go there overnight year beyond ours that we understand and they don't mind i don't words can lead to myself i'm born and we're in new york or haven't been a kind of a middle class structure we're going to be here

a white girl from the pleasure of that to really outline there were still two months ago wealthier recipients and now i realize that the beaver might be that i should be able to do something for the moment and get rid of you and i have empathy for my people but here in my milk when you think of those people and i married and i think a lot of people in line does it work white male you

were married when we can take a position people don't like these people and like i think that position now that i should i should do what i can i have begun to grow that i will now because i will now speak out with my oh wow about fifteen years ago i kind of like a bee but now i really you know when i was younger and it didn't work but now i think more people

in mind all that while the gap still exists now those from both groups who realize that it's a survey of virginia that says that this candid committee meeting of parliament holland's anti poverty agency we make a mistake i've been using our us then they'll go through what's the va to provide a recent report that really the world will be a lot of it was what you can see a ticket with the monitoring programs us their noses ought to do who works in the vice president's office wanted to spare time to work with on the tributes and a washington get it when we

get a new play all right i think the one thing that the negro lacks in terms of his ability to move from one point to another have been his separation on the toe middle class his exclusion from contacts are what people were doing things that he could be inspired yeah i think it amundsen out and

lonely for alls i think that the thing that was most helpful to me and being motivated the move out of one question was contact with people who are different cut fortunately i worked at an insurance company which had six million people or more graduates of leading candidates might be an alternate northwest of chicago these men had succeeded in this unstable black men like myself and so i was able to see from day to day that was possible to move from one question that are just the middle class i think just of their wives but the overriding problem faced by negro particularly middle class negroes have been the forging by the larger white society of negro percent of the vaunted american dream that you

carry in nineteen sixty four president lyndon johnson state of the new government was how have your head and the world are more than what they may be and they go into american life iran is a lot of the revelation of land and for what are often it does not by all people alive it is gravy you get a lot of affinity

with despite the fact that you promised no more than that which white americans this day represented the most far reaching promised and the roads have been made by any american president decline beginning of the march on washington that and other civil rights leaders a rising expectations of the vision of a new and more just relationship between white and black he's right a law you to let our

people or second generation immigrants and kenyan law the sociologist at this term disability to refer to the fact to always see the value of his call european things were different and it could change your name and taken an anglo saxon type name and goes in the south in the best interests of this country no matter what the negro obtained in terms of his money he can play we need

our day and this is now generation technology at least with the negro league will make us have reacted with fury in order to try to prevent onion and live this is one of the greatest

tragedies its aspirations are blocked with respect to moving in those kinds of neighborhoods that you were a real problems in the inner city of the song as well the author is that to twitter people were like them in every respect other than covert afghan it is i was quite shocked that many many places

i want to see this exactly our organ or me who might be treated in these urban these villages order number one millionaire chicago scientist dr persecuting co chairman of a committee of negro businessman who had to raise a million dollars a year for civil rights bills they're a little personal experience there's gently bob feedback over the automobile over fellow was standing there and talking about it is a car slightly and then i had jumped out a national army as much i want to see how we would accept an apology really call me name and not that it was mr but durbin he jumped up and ran into a store and one call police and would call the

police before he came out i always try to see where the damage was there was no damage and yet he was just curious you insert i began to wonder well which is on the sacred oak of a portion of the song i went all over know that the experience of many many times as i went once in the service and i would ask the children are many of them and they will they would look at news of the us army which are like the clients that he had a needle in it so i know and i realize that those really great impact of a gaggle of the great impact of the philosopher

dale actual existence of the untouchables that they have a white child of not going and they have a white child grows up in these insulated to their villages to come in contact with him later on and pass judgment on and to represent him in congress to represent your mortgage or to try him on a jury to send him to the army as a member of a rabble of an inevitable and they don't know what they're all they know is thursday about rumors about and this so this guy this has not been overcome by the large number even though they are larger numbers of people of goodwill a couple things

so many who don't bother to the center and i'm not sure that we can rest comfortably and think that the majority of white americans have good will put that idea on foot and i wish i could keep this dream what i'm afraid that these experiences that would chew over four made me doll the search for the it's a classic enough for people to say that if the

negroes prepared as himself well and the opportunism that i think the press plays up the appointment of an extremely outstanding big role high level position reporting and that creates an impression that things are getting worse we were doing one of our major discovery communications between the races but we're going to congress congress

they're going to change anyway as a result of that so as we just heard philosophers and he says in effect that you know you never really know that i'm ready to be a man in america now but i was for equality with no water and if i can have a new engine and tell him more of in my opinion this is his attitude oh yeah

i happen to be attending and the national urban league conference in new york and my family still lives in the world and so i decided to visit them on the way back to washington and i visited with my stepfather about a half hour or so and we decided to visit the system so you're going from my stepfather department over to the brother's house to get in his car services to get another pot of

and we were about to get into the car about three carloads of newark police camera icon and without warning and to my knowledge without any provocation open fire on isis and the group of about forty or fifty people who are standing on the stoop of his apartment building remember that and there my stepfather was mortally wounded and a lot of those wounded twice and required an operation an extensive possible care and we were on the far i was approximately ten minutes later they said they were looking for a sniper on the run for the upper floors of an apartment building there was still fire grow it and once we had and i would i had an opportunity to collect my senses evaluate think this thing through

it came through the stark reality widows of how far up the economic ladder and it grew you is that this dual suppress something no prejudice and he's subject to appoint a white man and i realized that i was extremely fortunate not to be to myself and that even though i possess two degrees even though i had played football syracuse you know i was an elementary school principal and their educated whites on your work with white people nor should you know the only people that i consider close friends in as the boys say when it gets down to the nitty gritty why down to where it really matters is joe nigro

still identify with every other negro and america the un general in suburban neighborhood used over and i think we just have to do communication is actually one way we review the kitchen

i mean the pipe is broken i was born to pay you know all right

right now this bill oh baby baby i

know genealogy is serious debate concerning tactics and goals and strategy is commonplace the middle class in the group gatherings to pay outright violence generally deployed there is nevertheless widespread empathy would get orion is that having expressed more openly saying that the perforation and resentments these zillion the top job joyce

reports yes the past of the war while for on that no hesitancy about the fact you will wiles all his inimitable the commitment right episcopal clergymen and on the night of the new black power conference of delayed the growing trend among black intellectual as a historian as a pragmatist also i recognize that there's no group of people who have the press olive oil one the freedom unless they have to either believed in our actual while violence of some kind

or the laws effectively of the aisle while i would reach into the president's own law so many middle class oriented what people with no one story about people at the bar car companies are echoes of flying that what people want to remember to this nation and a lot more the most basic service that that can remember this particular version the perilous hour and that is understanding and relating to the best for the village desperate in our society and all all are black people are all know from all of our white people realize that there are threats and it's simply the press the public press that has chosen to identify all the philosophy which says that black people shouldn't have a sense of being and that sense of control of their own destiny

as esoteric movement associated with a certain type of song called a radical view and all black people are radical everyone loves this country is a radical i think that all these people he denounced modern of values in our culture serve a fundamentally predictable the greatest evil that happened that year was not the destruction of property but people were driven crazy on people are driven crazy the crazy man and in our system of justice if a person is temporarily insane he's a judge all he's not render non are incapable of judgment and so all right which are a form of social psychosis all certainly are more worldly beyond the realm of moral judgment not the worst thing that happened was the resort public massacres off areas are at an adult to the destruction of physical property that no civilized my

cadaver equate the value of one human line with bottles of whiskey left alone television set or the destruction of five hundred billion dollars worth of property i've had some religious leaders have said that we must avoid and i kill i may not be an expert on christianity but it may be potentially deployed seven to it but it is certainly not so much for people to equate the property value human life audit is this kind of white people almost all repeatedly reminded me until our image of realize that way in also under growing scrutiny we get there in st paul that they'll or why

the online and look at it what do you do maureen in america rachel ries these are black christians was saying this because they see that the white noise is it relevant to the hopes and aspirations of black people supposedly was the classic live i would say priced r and the n and the truth of that have priced knows no color but in our races society yesterday one concrete want to be

relevant while the whites over blacks in this country that's that black power conferences were on many a number of other a black episcopal prints and that we were not disturb was we expected this that there would be a rejection of christianity as a white man to religion as indeed it is and it seems to me we are authors going to solve this question we're going to have to add that what we're going to also have to extricate jesus from this thing because i don't think even at a level that it may need in that christianity will take a different direction then the white nationalist direction which unfortunately it has taken it seems to me that mr most understanding assessment of situations always situation where i'm standing full black nationalists i guess i'm not in our time are

almost afraid of this business because of the danger is that it will use art my basic rate which is christian it has that kind of excitement and vitality end and contagion about it i really do believe that white nationalism serve as a creative her in a project of moderates who weren't because it's it seems to me it serves the perp was all time well what they really are i don't think it ever really seems they all until they see themselves reflected in the narrow black nationalists they're frightened by because they're frightened by themselves and if this rule out as i believe it will serve the

purpose of moving them toward becoming more human uno dillard remove them toward creating so like that may we but nationalism and cannot sell ourselves over in ways that we like better and which i think would be more you all right but right now i think we'd leave the confrontation and really all the pressure we can get and we need to keep that pressure so that hopefully and here's where i think i am optimistic interested only in later can be reshaped into world war while both forms and and more viable show you know

situation for the first two hundred and fifty is an american negro concerned with free themselves from physical part of the horrors of american travel slavery lead this gaza and not only the back but also the minds of its victims the road between those who live in the field and the overseers and others often the illegitimate offspring of a slave

owner himself who operated with seven jobs because these house negroes of biblical but sometimes momentum of change and the new negro the renovated about from the house negro and on the plantations and a small partisan and citigroup which established itself in the cities the negro middle class coming in and mine you need the radio mr pickett people were asian ass it begins at

prejudices against these people that are going to happen then i think you begin to get something else happening with the taboo of all immigrants now that i'm educated and peculiar math people began to get ahead or so and we're going to play it education they'll remain a more insidious effect

outmaneuver critically which reverberates within the black community to this day and a controversial book entitled black bourgeoisie dr frasier last a rated white collar labor for what he called living in a dream world anyway anyone you

the strangest or the negro middle class are still suffering from the crippling legacy of slavery as being in a sense still mentally enslaving my concepts which defined blacks as inferior and whites and superior what was needed was a break an emergence into a new and healthier self image as well as a more realistic appraisal of whites as merely a fellow human beings have no special significance what was needed enjoy it was a mental revolution the

car was in high school i don't mean the growing alliance in virginia and it was a boarding school and we would sit in a room and a moment take us pass around someone would be missed and it's a what's wrong minded and i was ashamed of being in a day because it meant that i was wanting to get paid for the night was one to dictate that they gobble gobble gobble and it says a patient in the movement helped me overcome that people don't have that struggle that they have more difficulty overcoming that shame that the year that living in america has been for some time i'm going to howl come in are

you you ought to know it was applied to all acts that very honest about the fact that that happens you expose all of the house the violations he's at home right now now it's true just those longo is no such thing as a pure eight you go back into law with which the american bases african standards of beauty that is very

long standing they signed on reaction to be detrimental effect with western civilization and what i call the man is inexperienced as head on black people in america we're talking on the manicured experience like to get that black people black people and evil black women in particular article and israeli military threat thank you we came to play davis shame

of being black at automatic this way into a conservative on many inventors well i guess we intend to come up again that we invented don't like people that they are valuable available and will continue to make it to the world and it will pay for a weekday and follow it does this trip to imagine that and he's a great surprise

the way we are and i think that's a healthy thing and again we felt that every all to reflect the changes that are going on in the community and then i can say that while it is certainly not the majority of people there are a growing number of legal minimum age were wearing their hair in natural farming one of the great problems that we have in our country is the fact that we have been swayed by standards which were not standards of

beauty that related jobs and i have to work for eric fair cosmetics company one of the things we are taking a long hard look at even more than that we make decisions and to try to relate ut upon black people black beauty and not to try to herd all that people now are proud of being that they are proud of their hay and when i was a child i was taught the light complexion that he was somebody that i was that i was that i was no work they are powder that that's in that rather than that the hair and because that's what they are now that is new to me that is who

oh yeah this a ripple of people really about whether they happened to be in the navajo nation all i've done in london england is where all the american immigrant is legal later in february and what that truly i did it and to look you're not going to well you might be president alvaro that

the underlying legislative the human on an individual is there and they get is no bamboo and this is no wonder why there who knew about this law living here at all oh yeah oh and then you ride and being given day not so many russians looked down upon as well educated may wrote about it too soon command of the

navy as bell for a surprise you decided you wanted to include to carry a list of ten famous person or in order name of the paper to show their lists of the ten white or civil rights

activists have long wanted to convince people and let me make a veiled do you so i told i have to get busy and the books to do some research and meanwhile i went back or grandmother the divorce we have three wise

ferdinand interest the negro history and african heritage is leading to the growth of museums libraries and cultural centers and black neighborhoods across the country a southside chicago said is dedicated to the middle for a trader who founded the city and seventeen seventy nine and supported by the media professional intellectual and white collar workers who take their work seriously as he goes out to play we have now now says the term negro rejected by a growing number of black people today as having a slave

system martin isn't his name was recently changed through the museum of african american history up until twenty twelve voters so that didn't that weren't citizens of this country they call themselves that they will probably continue to do that if they're around eating and twelve a colonization movement had not started in which people like george washington thomas paine thomas jefferson benjamin franklin was a negro to be free but they should be the port from the united states and that they're very unlikely areas that really great ride get the growth that the country one times in the head i

think the leadership beginning to use the term color color men's associations replace that because the fact is because it was there either african cinema way i gather that one of the most interesting things is now secured a relatively stable status within the shrine legally within the us the middle class now does not need to feel insecure or about once more excepting an abdication of african the same way that jewish americans polish americans japanese americans last year and the attending a festival in that car in west africa the first test of a liberal arts and won the most interesting things to me with a large number of american schoolteachers businessman and professional people with germany always send a gallon west africa to spend the week those things that any given in debt to the new sense of security for the city that

it is norway is not a revolution more evident than among middle class lakeview as graduates of negro colleges such as howard university in washington dc what about iraqi men who am a lot of now you know in the past for its strict sumo victorian tradition was how about in a militant and activist who will bring

back the city remain old fashion small room and before as equalizing black consciousness rules on campus are a lot of the fabled plan would get favoritism of songs or are you had headaches acceptable now our interview black and you've been the main springboard to middle class taxes will drop a mostly white institutions and will produce a lack of finance today however many of the students chosen blacks who over the white often as an expression of racial pride and militant i think in years past used to embody in the faculty at howard were particularly massive i just was scared to death i believe that in the past the university administration was very oppressive then at a slight the slightest movement outlined by the faculty

maryann ooze about a young sociology professor dr nathan has recently fired by powerful intelligence establishment all about what impact my web video on a monitor the white boots and much of it to research on an ego and then we said i'm out of a sense that in the wrong hands the white man but us as a couple and so we're going to take some of these outlets with effectiveness like that that whites do that as much as we're allowed to make my cell with what you have then is a sorrow who don't want to brave they can do anything until the whites who said that was out of malcolm x was not allowed to speak of how the first year he was invited that didn't and yale and private employers to

michigan and others are but then the next year however by them but they hasten do without the relations release saying that now will join the ranks of yale and harvard and of course they have the matter debate him black lead in the predominantly white schools such as columbia university are also caught up in the revolution gone with attendant please tolerate the attitude of some nigro students of yesteryear today it's and here i am black and i am beautiful baby afro american societies have sprung up an afro american students are openly challenging the educational concept and practices they encounter waterston says that university for the likes of incident a concerned about beyond the fact that we aren't included in any way in the curriculum of the fifth day of course that covers fifty to seventy five years of american history not limiting at all about what black people are and what role it played the fact that there are many black troops of what the civil war or the role they were involved in political action to

reconstruction or or the exact nature of european imperialism principles that is a lot of these things just like copper and we've recently tried to get the administration era columbia to just set up the study does that concern itself with the university and that has really reduced the spouse in a reasonable manner a university protest the unrest an academic approach to think that sitting down and study they don't like the fact that people go and burned books and about a third of all that the university isn't really willing to sit out and solve any of the problems and that this is something that in the long run is going to contribute to more comfortably more incidents of people burning books events like burning buildings in the near future is going to really study the discontent that leads to students of the fact that white students and black kids though that a real appreciation of this collision we talk about history courses or whether they were american history or history of the world will include what the accomplishment of non white people and it's about time some changes were made

the central theme of middle class that rumors today that despite so his game day after and didn't even furious at the continuing exclusions and discrimination is they meet in jobs promotions housing and other opportunities which they know their qualifications all income would automatically admitted into not accredited by quite violent subtly apply they are insistent upon recognition and respect as human beings of pride and dignity equal to any other and they are fed up with like the journalism they want to run their own of their own the play and the basic function of the middle class oriented of black america used to be the airport or all not

only the diseases all which mark mr nations like a lot of our culture to be the re created agents off for the reconstruction all our society actually it's funny you know euthanasia is the unused palette all black man of the greatest pen nor as well as countless other tragedy lies here the fact that all the people who are the controllers of the system you need this candor and problems from mind in order to preserve the best in their system and what they will do is to get carbon copies of white men and not of the most troubled a candid black people who have a really the most creative all moms are in our society are these people the ones that should be

the consultants for the building up of our society is unique role of the black middle class there are other rules or maligned creative rules for all elements in the black community but certainly all these are the people who are presently the most valuable are people are potentially in our society today billy what do you plan to do a what would you like to do and this is an experimental program that thing about six months would like to have like the cement job that was you know that it wiped out the

role comparable job to love me forgotten mean a lot of them will be enacted you know the month at that point large enough to you that you are more than what happens even that you know he's been somebody called with this year whether they live in the crowded piano or commute to work along with whites from the suburbs afro americans particularly you are hardening in their assessment of why veterans on all levels they're skeptical the model of integration itself now comes increasingly on the question and the tragic assassination of dr martin luther king i've inevitably added that the distrust or disillusion

issue some degree of acceptance in some situations into negroes by a white middle class as friends neighbors people associate with this is something that is just beginning at they are also the middle class will have a fundamental racial identity and reheated the years go on that it will continue oh i smell with the masses play ball right right this week

the report of the people who will be giving services he's been deployed to the workers that increasingly rather than back through spring market will work in common cause with the phone call unity them previously revealing themselves and others they id act of mainstream of america with both critical and determined to screw that however irritating inconvenient it may seem to others black people

living in the midst of the wealthiest nation the world has ever known no longer measure progress in terms of how much better things maybe today than yesterday their vision is focused on how much further there is yet to go before they too share one handed him the great american dream or share they will or the dream itself may well be jeopardized paroled sex i live for you the analysts question how much longer and america they are in its most basic and pressing commitment will the younger and the momentum be forced to continue losing faith in the promise of a truly a quarter and multiracial america if so then the troubled we've recently seen could be but a prelude to a national disaster averted a very realistic about it

we can imagine this because all over the world how are you the pay is because many many

things but national educational television fb