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The historical basis for the gap between the black middle class and underclass shows that ending discrimination, by itself, would not eradicate black poverty and dysfunction. We also need intervention to promulgate a middle-class ethic of success among the poor, while expanding opportunities for economic betterment.

There's a lot of Americans, black and white, who think that we've arrived where we need to be and nothing else needs to be done and affirmative action needs to be dismantled.

The most ironic outcome of the black Civil Rights movement has been the creation of a new black middle class which is increasingly separate from the black underclass.

The black community now in many ways divided itself the way the larger white community divides itself, over class issues. And that race is no longer the bond that it once was. That's one of the prices you pay for progress.

In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence.

Affirmative action works but we're going to need to muster all our political resources if we are to keep it in place.

Affirmative action is the most important antidiscrimination technique ever instituted in the United States. It is the one tool that has had a demonstrable effect on discrimination... Affirmative action, by all statistical measures, has been the central ingredient to the creation of the black middle class.

Progress for black Americans depends on good schools because education is the last great equalizer.

In a sense the quest for the emancipation of black people in the U.S. has always been a quest for economic liberation which means to a certain extent that the rise of black middle class would be inevitable.

The black population now consists of two distinct classes-the middle class and the poor.