Class and conservatism in the black community

Is there a growing middle-class conservative movement in black America? Previous attempts to analyze conservatism in the black community have been plagued with several problems, among them small black sample sizes in national surveys. This article tests three hypotheses about the relationship of class to conservatism in the black community using a national sample of 1,067 blacks and 1,414 whites. The major findings were that a on social welfare issues, the black middle class is more conservative than the black lower class, but the cleavage in the black community is smaller than in the white one; b on affirmative action, the black middle class appears to be more conservative than the black lower class, but this conclusion must be hedged with several caveats; and c at each income level, blacks are substantially more liberal than whites on each issue examined.