That economic power translates directly into control over the political life of the country. Black political power can not become a reality in the current conditions. Black communities feel it is foolhardy now to physically challenge the system, and it is economically impractical now to separate. If the status quo for most African-Americans is intolerable, and this is the central dilemma, then there is a need to think deliberately about political strategies to break out of that dilemma. One of those strategies must be joining the fight to end private financing of political campaigns.
Income alone is a poor index of economic status, for the individual and the community.
The Black middle class, moreover, is many times more insecure in its status than the white middle class, and Blacks are not even at the table among America's real ruling class. Black economic life in the United States is inextricable from the white-dominated national economy, and from global capitalism. It is also utterly dependent. This is the most compelling argument against political separatism in the short term, and Black nationalist capitalism as either long-term goal or strategy. The fortunes of a Black entrepreneurial class inside Black communities, largely built on service and usury, reproduce class antagonisms inside the community, while remaining ancillary to the industrialists and financiers of white capitalism.