ABSTRACT
Unfortunately the “color line” that W.E.B. DuBois decried as detrimental to African American well-being at the beginning of the twentieth century remains a problem at the beginning of the twenty-first century. However, in post-industrial twenty-first century America, scholars have noted how this color line has been joined by the lines of class, gender, and sexuality, and thus they profoundly shape and structure the life chances and opportunities of black Americans (Cohen 1999; Wilson 1978, 1996). Overall levels of poverty and inequality in the United States are the highest among Western industrial nations, and maldistributions in income and wealth are at their highest levels since the Gilded Age and the Great Depression (Krugman 2002; Iceland 2003; Phillips 2002). Even North Carolina Sen. John Edwards referenced these increasing inequalities when during his 2004 Democratic bid for vice-president he spoke of “Two Americas” where a growing economic polarization and inequality disadvantages working-class Americans and especially black Americans (Edwards 2004).
