> > Right you are, except that many of them are not even
>> petit-bourgeois
>
>Correct. The real elite don't have their parties put
>together by companies with web sites, or have stories
>written about them in the NY Times.
>
>These folks are more of a potential elite. They want to be
>Vernon Jordan or Ron Brown, but they're not there yet.
I forgot to add that real black petty producers (shop owners, for instance) whose income depend nearly exclusively on black patronage can be very progressive, in contrast to the Black Diamonds. For instance, in Columbus, OH, one well-known black activist -- I mean well-known to local lefties -- is a barbershop owner, and he's been instrumental in bridging the gap between (for the lack of a better term) the left-wing of the Nation of Islam & other leftists on issues such as police brutality, racism in the media, etc.
It used to be the case (before the partial success of civil rights movements) that folks who fit the profile of the Black Diamonds ("Young, Gifted, & Black") were much more politicized & willing to put up the good fight as race men & women, for there could be no illusion then that there were careers open to their talent. Lorraine Hansberry, Angela Davis, etc. are of course among the greatest examples. During the heydays of the Communist Party, there were many, many Jewish folks who were likewise young, gifted, & closed out of professional mental labor. The Communist Party would have gotten _nowhere_ without these two groups of intellectual-organizers, black & Jewish.
Today, because of the partial success of civil rights movement, Jewish assimilation, and the triumph of Zionism among most of the American Jews, the Left lost the erstwhile source of revolutionary intellectuals who had organic & indissoluble ties to oppressed communities. On the other hand, a hoped-for realignment of social forces in the direction of anti-racist class politics based on inter-racial solidarity with working-class leadership has not taken place _at all_ (if there are any potential Malcolm X's within black communities today, they are probably languishing under long sentences in prisons & won't be able to come out in society until they become middle-aged or worse & cease to be trouble-makers). Instead, we got an unholy dialectical twin of the Black/Feminist/GLBT Talented Tenth and the predominantly white Green movement (with odd anarchists & Marxists scattered here and there).
> > Do the Black Diamonds feel the rage that Cose discusses?
>
>No, because they haven't risen high enough yet to feel the
>glass ceiling. They are still trying to climb, and are
>therefore still full of optimism. The rage that Cose
>describes doesn't kick in until you get to the point
>where you feel you should be given the keys to the
>top floor penthouse, but no one is handing them
>over to you.
Makes sense.
Yoshie