African-American upper class

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The African-American upper class, sometimes referred to as the black upper class, the black upper middle class or black elite, is a social class that consists of African-American individuals who have high disposable incomes and high net worth.^[1][2] The group includes highly paid white-collar professionals such as academics, engineers, lawyers, accountants, doctors, politicians, business executives, venture capitalists, CEOs, celebrities, entertainers, entrepreneurs and heirs.

This group of black people has a history of organizations and activities that distinguish it from other classes within the black community, as well as from the white upper class. Many of these traditions, which have persisted for several generations, are discussed in Lawrence Otis Graham's 2000 book, Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class. Scholarship on this class from a sociological perspective is generally traced to E. Franklin Frazier's Black Bourgeoisie (first edition in English in 1957 translated from the 1955 French original).^{[citation needed]}

Today, the African American upper class exists throughout the United States, particularly in the Northeast and in the South, with the largest contiguous majority black high income neighborhoods being in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, particularly in Prince George's County and Charles County.^[3] Majority black high income neighborhoods are also found in the New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston,^[4] Miami, Charlotte, San Antonio,^[5] Dallas, and Atlanta metropolitan areas.^[3][6]