Class divisions among African Americans erode belief in a single black race.

Evidence

It’s certainly the case that class complicates how we think about black America. In a 2007 study on race by the Pew Research Center, 61 percent of African American respondents said they believed there was a substantive difference in the values between the black middle class and the black poor. That same study reported a startling rate of African Americans, 37 percent, who no longer believe that African Americans can be considered a single race. Many of the respondents who held this view were members of the black working poor or the black middle class, those who earned between 30,000 and 100,000 a year. But those African Americans earning more than $100,000 continue to hold the view that “blacks can still be thought of as a single race because they have so much in common.” — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 334