In Nashville Tennessee, there is a chasm between middle class blacks and lower class blacks.  The only time you see middle class blacks in the same place as lower class blacks is during the work days in the downtown area where most middle class blacks work. 

While in New York both middle class and lower class use the same means of mass transportation, in Nashville, the middle class blacks look down on taking public transportation because that’s what most of the lower class blacks use. 

In a way, you can understand the middle class blacks need to disassociate themselves with the lower class blacks, especially when most people think all black people are the same. 

Those that are of middle class status have worked hard to overcome the “blacks are classless and ignorant” stereotypes. 

They have taken advantage of their education by enrolling in college, going on to graduate or professional school and using those opportunities to further themselves along career-wise. 

On the other hand, there stands a group of black people that disregard education, glorify grammatically incorrect speech, walk around in public as if they just woke up out of bed and speak so loud that the people across the street can hear them…and they manage to do so with out an ounce of shame. 

It doesn’t help that the media’s portrayal of African Americans have often been focused on lower class blacks than on middle class blacks. 

Most of the black movies of the 1970s and 1990s were located in the “hood” or the “streets” and focused on drugs.  HBO show The Wire was focused on the selling of drugs in a crime ridden neighborhood in Baltimore. 

This is the very image of blacks that middle class blacks do their best to separate themselves from.   To this day, most blacks still think the Cosby Show is mythical and that black people “really don’t live like that.”

However in the process of separating themselves of the stereotypical image of black people being uneducated and classless, some middle class blacks have begun to turn their nose up at lower class blacks with an air of superiority of being “better than” these individuals.    

They think that most of the lower class blacks are in that position because they chose to be there and are lazy to the point of not wanting to work toward something better for themselves. 

While that might be true of some individuals, this is where middle class blacks have to be careful not to judge.  A lot of individuals that are lower class blacks are not in that situation because they chose to be. 

Unfortunate circumstances in life may have caused them to be in the situation they are in.  Instead of middle class blacks turning their nose up at lower class blacks, those that have more should be helping those that have less.  It takes a humble person to do this.  That’s not to say middle class blacks have to come out of their pockets. 

But they can volunteer their time to the youth of lower class blacks: they can tutor them, arrangement group trips to museums and focus on something positive, and they can also help their parents by giving picnics or street fairs that help a worthy cause, give seminars or for middle class blacks that own their own businesses, they can offer some apprenticeship programs to help educate and train those of lower class. 

 Sure there is a chasm between middle class blacks and lower class blacks.  But those in a greater position to help can do a lot to close that gap if they are willing to.