The Talented Tenth existed only in theory, never as a real workforce proportion.

Evidence

If the dawning of the twentieth century confirmed the northern Baptists’ goal to advance women’s higher education alongside men’s, the new century also confirmed that 1 percent, not 10 percent, of black working women entered professional service. Only 1 percent enjoyed a middle-class status distinguishable from the economic and social status of female agricultural laborers and domestic servants—the vast majority of employed black women. And this was true for blacks as a whole. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 210

Categorization

• XREF: Du Bois’s ‘Talented Tenth’ ideal versus its statistical reality — connects to reader’s grasp of how black female elite self-conception outpaced demographic reality. — connects to: Du Bois reversed his Talented Tenth view, finding the Black elite ideologically reactionary. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 920

Broader Connections

• Du Bois reversed his Talented Tenth view, finding the Black elite ideologically reactionary. #corroborates (0.72) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 920