Over 60 percent of blacks felt these values were becoming more different over time. But prominent historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. also argues that the “class divide” in the black community is “one of...

Over 60 percent of blacks felt these values were becoming more different over time. But prominent historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. also argues that the “class divide” in the black community is “one of the most important and overlooked factors in the rise of Black Lives Matter” (Gates 2016). He observes that “today’s black activists are the children of middle- and upper-middle-class parents” and their activism is, in part, motivated by the vast gulf they see between the college campuses they inhabit and the poor black communities where police violence, chronic unemployment, and poverty are so firmly entrenched. Gates suggests that these activists may turn out to be the grandchildren of what Du Bois once termed the “talented tenth”—the percentage of African Americans who would provide “college-trained” and “intelligent leadership” to understand and address the problems of the black community.