masses. The black bourgeoisie, he suggested, failed to perform the functions of a responsible elite in a minority group and have become “exaggerated” Americans.2

The Negro press reveals the inferiority complex of the black bourgeoisie and provides a documentation of the attempts of this class to seek compensations for its hurt self-esteem and exclusion from American life. Its exaggerations concerning the economic well-being and cultural achievements of Negroes, its emphasis upon Negro “society” all tend to

Just what was Black Bourgeoisie about? The book described the evolution of the old black middle class from one in which genteel manners, folk traditions, and religious practices were central to one in which traditional values were less important and the outlook more secular.

Yet the black bourgeoisie looked down upon the black masses and scorned their culture. They even disassociated themselves from the majority of Negroes in their rejection of both their African roots and their slave past. In turn the black bourgeoisie were rejected by whites, and so they were culturally rootless and beset by feelings of inferiority

It is not surprising that black newspapers joined intellectuals in ridiculing Frazier’s work since he had saved his strongest condemnation for them.

So while the black masses were experiencing various problems following migration to cities (crime, delinquency, broken families), the new black middle class was experiencing a distortion of values. Its preoccupation with status, in imitation of the white upper class, led Frazier to charge it with being interested in “status without substance.”

This book was seen by many as an attack on the black middle class and suggested that Frazier the scholar had disappeared.