As a black man I can tell you that we tend not to aspire too much (though I have a brother and sister who have done well) because we know what people equate to the colour of our skin. So we don’t try to get the best education because the person who crosses the road when they see us approach is also the person giving out the jobs. We don’t open buisnesses that require a non-black customer/client because they are afraid to frequent our places for fear of being robbed our raped (or something).
So we supply to other black people, who generally have less money, which means smaller profits which leads to less company expansion or even complete melt down which leads to less money for our children(s) education which leads less propects for our children which leads to less for their children and the cycle continues.
Black women are seen as warm in the main part especially the fuller figure variety and they have climbed up the social ladder through that extra advantage over black men. In the future I imagine black men will be appologising left right and centre to our black sisters and start dating them again hopefully they will still want us.
There is also the issue of jealousy, when we see a black man do well we see our own personal failings which leads some people to try and stop their success and others become to scared to try. I believe their is a black middle class around south London (Lambeth District) but wether that is made up of ‘House Husbands’ I do not know. There definately is one in Birmingham

A few points and then I should return this to the topic that Clifford raised concerning the Black Middle Class.

I didn’t want to leave this without acknowledging.

Some do not like Kuhnian perspective, but in that process, the change through generations is as you say revolutions in thinking ,that changes ole’ paradigms, and ushers in new ways things must be done. Ignorance swept away.

bigotry must cry out a death song before it wimpers away

How appropriate. Of course we are not just talking about science here, but social change as well.

Kuhn vehemently denies this interpretation and states that when a scientific paradigm is replaced by a new one, albeit through a complex social process, the new one is always better, not just different.

Thanks Bob

A few points and then I should return this to the topic that Clifford raised concerning the Black Middle Class..You made some very good comments..

In retrospect, we shouldn’t have ignored their inquiries. The fact that there was such a symmetrical unfolding to realize the charmed quark and how well the particle physics community shuffled science around showed that they were at the same threshold of preparation as we were. But I shouldn’t think that the change we advocated was dependent only upon our success. That is why we walked away. If it is valid others will find it even if they never heard of us. After all, the computer revolution did show up 18 years after the forecast Mick gave.

I do see changes slowly coming from the professional class and workers as well. Since each of the November Revolutions both are restructuring. Teamsters are finally opening their eyes and organizing employer’s competitors and they are likely going to internationalize to survive. it just won’t be as heroic or utopian like Marx thought. It will balance trade and force the need for physicists to come up with alternative energy sources. Can you imagine what a successful Chinese working class movement would do to the price of gas?

My astronomy club and the trips I take to Fermilab have given me a lot of encouragement concerning the professional class..

And integration? The realization of the black middle class in America? It is clearly a reality that doesn’t need an announcement at all. Richard Nixon had his “silent majority” that he felt supported his views. Integration is the new silent majority. The reason we see so many hate groups in America is not because things got worse. 30 or 40 years ago many bigots felt unthreatened by integration. They felt secure that integration would fail and not take root. Now that it is a reality that won’t turn back (regardless of what laws are passed), bigotry must cry out a death song before it wimpers away.

I watch those who are better educated then I, and they are people too, yet, the political climate would not have made much sense to them, if they had not understood this transformation that was taking place in society?

You had to be there(your time) I think for them to grasp the changes that would happen in the social fabric, as this new technolgy made it ways into our lives and affected livelihoods.

This might have been part of the adjustment the market place might take of that downsizing was to encourage new technologies to take our place and reduce overall costs in it’soperation thus increasing it’sprofit line. Whew.

People become expendable. So you have to plan as you have been explaining. A lot of us are on borrowed time when it comes to what changes will supplant us.

Retirement is not to far off either, which leaves only my children and all other children, as to what forms our scoiety will take?

So has some of that philosophy been transferred to the children?:) We have way of trying make things better from one generation to the next, while we watched our parents, so it will not be much diffrent for our children, as they correct the way in which we had done things. You think?:)