ABSTRACT
One of the underlying arguments to the point in this is that growing socioeconomic divisions within the black community are increasingly posing a threat to black politics as we knew it. Social, political, and economic interests within the black community are more diverse today than they were in either the Protest or Politics Eras. Furthermore, social and economic changes in society have created an environment that makes the ability to forge a common “black” political agenda increasingly more difficult to achieve. In a strange twist of faith, the same civil rights legislation that was to empower and liberate black people as a community in the United States has created an environment in which the black community now comprises a collection of political sub-communities that are divided by socioeconomic and geographic factors and driven increasingly by individual interests. The social and economic changes in society during the Protest and Politics Eras have set the stage for a shift in the dynamics of black politics today. Because of these changes, black politics today has become more complex than it was in the Protest or Politics Eras. This third era of black politics is one in which blacks’ struggle for social and economic significance at the sub-population and individual levels is becoming just as important as blacks’ struggle for collective political significance in the Politics Era.
