The 'Splintering' Of America's Black Population from NPR Podcast Fresh Air

"You can no longer talk about what black America thinks or feels," writes Eugene Robinson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist, in a new book about the increasing disconnect between America's African-American communities. In Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America, Robinson argues that America's African-American population can now be divided into four distinct groups: the abandoned poor; immigrants and people of mixed race; the mainstream middle class; and the small but powerful elite. He describes how each group has a different 'black experience' and largely remains detached from the others.

Download the podcast here. Check the webpage for the show out, here. See also: Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass-Kicking but Were Afraid You'd Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking, Coal to Cream: A Black Man's Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race

Eugene Robinson on Race and "Disintegration" from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson swings a big stick in national policy debates – and he swings from the Left. But this time out he’s not talking policy so much as race. He’s talkign what it meant to be black in America, and what it means now. In his new book “Disintegration,” Robinson says there is no more “black America.” There are, he says, now a bunch of black Americas. There’s a super-rich tier and a super-poor tier. Blacks are going their own ways. Not on the same boat. Divided.

Listen to the podcast show here.