Those too impressed with material things cannot hold their place n the world of culture; they are relegated to inferiority and ultimate death. – Alexander Crummell
Good morning Trads, fellow travelers and bored friends. Years back I went on a bit of a ramble about the failures of my tribe’s middle class or psuedo upper class.
This morning, I was wondering the internet, stumbling through The New York Review of Books archives and came across this piece by Darryle Pinckney named Aristocrats. A good read, while scrolling though it I remembered, I screenshot a passage from it years back. I should have added it to my ramble when I published it, as it fits perfectly, so I’ll just connect them here.
AfroTraditionalist 
What might have happened if some middle-class Negroes had decided to run Gullah-speaking businesses where a worker had to speak Gullah to do well? In the 1960s, the rice trade in Hong Kong was dominated by Teochew-speaking people, so people who spoke only Cantonese hadn’t a chance in that business.
We are too open a culture for certain. A level of clannishness could have helped us hold or gain foothold in certain industries
It is strange to me that Negroes, facing ethnic hostility, would not respond with a certain clannishness to build up their strength. It is possible to have the wrong sort of clannishness for political and œconomic power, like Chinese who care about their blood relatives but are largely indifferent beyond clan relations, but having no clannishness at all in such circumstances is very odd.