Middle-class African Americans don't do as well as whites on standardized tests, are more likely to be incarcerated for drug offenses, are less likely to marry, and more likely to have a child without being married, she said. It's the payoff of an unequal, less-advantaged, segregated society, she said. It's true, most of the black middle class wants to live in an integrated environment, but they don't. Mostly, they continue to live in nice, but very segregated neighborhoods, very close to the poor. So even in middle class black neighborhoods there is great economic diversity and it makes things harder.
Poor people have less money to support businesses and institutions.
Even churches, which are everywhere in poor, black communities, find their collection plates coming up short. So the burden falls more heavily on the black middle class, Pattillo-McCoy said. And where there's higher poverty, there's more crime, less well-funded schools and less political clout to fix things. People are keenly aware of how racial segregation devalues their neighborhood. Pattillo-McCoy looks around the cafe crowded with UC Berkeley students of every ethnic background, sipping lattes and smoothies, studying, talking.