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You have little representation of young black men in the business sector, so you have children growing up in disadvantaged neighborhoods who don't hear discussions at the dinner table about what goes on in business. It's almost as if we have two nations.

A whole generation of young whites have involved themselves with traditional Negro music.

Hip-hop is very diverse, but if you only focus on one aspect of it, then what you get is this image of Black America that is completely contrary to what actually goes on.

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

What I think is different today is the lack of political connection between the black middle class and the increasing numbers of black people who are more impoverished than ever before.

In real life there are indeed black people who have been in the middle class for generations, but in entertainment it's as if they don't exist.

There is a tendency to want to treat blacks as a monolithic socioeconomic group.

Using the Africanist model, each generation should take the family name to a higher place. My father's folks were sharecroppers in South Carolina. He went to Harlem. They were still poor, but they moved up. If my parents didn't do this and offer me this background, I wouldn't be here.

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

Black culture is something I don't relate to much at all.