A summary of "On being black and middle class"

The black middle class has always defined its class identity by means of positive images gleaned from middle-and upper-class white society, and by means of negative images of lower-class blacks. The blacks achieved its positive images as middle-class mainly by hard working and sacrifice and the values of and kind of middle-classes while the negative images of black lower-class is from laziness and unwillingness to sacrifice. This doesn't have to spark hatred between the different classes.
The middle-class' values is something unchangeable regardless of race and ethnic. And if the black people still feel that most of the victims is the blacks they can be encumbered to achieve anything. The victim-focused identity can reimposes limitations that can have the same oppressive effect as those the society has only recently begun to remove.
From the 80'S and beyond, what is the black needed "to go somewhere" are hard work, education, individual initiative, stable family life and property ownership-these have always been the means by which ethnic groups have moved ahead in America.
What the middle-class black can offer to the lower-class black as a mean to help them out also just those values mentioned above. Only if the victim-focused black identity is removed from them can the lower-class black achieve its goal. To move beyond this identity the blacks must learn to make a difficult but crucial distinction: between actual victimization and identification with the victim's status. Until this is done they can continue to wrestle more with themselves than with the opportunities which so many paid so dearly to win.

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