Jonah Goldberg dissects the nationalist character of much contemporary African-American political and cultural expression. This is quite consistent with the Republican faith, which draws its own Enlightenment optimism from Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, and G.W.F. Hegel, that economic interdependence is the foundation for common legal, moral, and political outlooks. However, it is oddly inconsistent with the problem as both George and Goldberg describe it. Economic growth and a growing black middle class are happy occurrences, but on their own they don't engender greater trust between African-Americans and either Republicans or the nation as a whole. Indeed, the appeal of separatist and nationalist rhetoric has grown as the black middle class has grown.
Some surveys show a direct correlation between income and alienation in the black community.
Affluent and educated blacks are more likely to view whites with suspicion and to view racism as a constitutive feature of their lives than poorer and less-educated blacks. Some on the Left think this reflects the fact that upwardly mobile blacks simply encounter more whites and thus more racism. This explanation has a surface plausibility, but it is shallow. Ellis Cose's book Rage of a Privileged Class purports to chronicle the racist insults that successful blacks must absorb on a regular basis. I would suggest that the rage of successful African-Americans is explained not only by their encounters with whites, but by the fact that they are the direct consumers of the discourse of black nationalism.