Does any or all of this count as aggregate progress? Maybe, maybe not. My own parents were a part of this trend, as were many middle class Black people who moved to the suburbs, turning out to be the "only ones" on the block, in the schools, in the strip malls. Each side accused the other of abandonment. This article captures some of specificity of those issues, often created by class anxieties and expectations. The traditionals saw the suburbanites as racial sellouts, while the suburbanites saw themselves as new traditionals, following the social and political models set for them in the 30s and 40s (in this case, of integration and desegregation), often risking their physical and emotional lives, and those of their children, to carry on The Struggle. Along these same lines, Adrienne's latest article, cited yesterday, sheds much light on why someone like Condoleeza Rice is doing precisely what she was raised to do, which is basically sit on top of the world, be a mover/shaker, etc. Although she grew up in a segregated world, the mentality was definitively post-segregation, sites like her first anal sex, insane cock brothas and back seat bangers were very popular. Not otherworldy, but of this world, in the here-and-now. While the BAP expectation and entitlement issues are paramount, I would add that it's the Preacher's Kid Rice that we see in those Donna Karan suits.

The PK who is singled out, marked as different and outsider by right of their parent's profession. (But then again, so is the town drunk's kid.)

The PK, whose obligations exceed that of the other kids in the congregation, and the broader community. Comfortable in the company of grownups and socially disabled among our peers, we are treated as grownups in children's bodies, and are expected to respond to every situation with the maturity (and often the vocabulary) of adults. Paradoxically, this can often create an infantilizing effect.