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Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2064
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 12:51 pm: | 
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http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?from=rss_Business%20Report&fArticleId=3844153
Johannesburg - South Africa's black middle class, increasingly referred to as Black Diamonds, has grown by an astonishing 30 percent in just over a year, according to a study conducted by UCT/Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing and TNS Research Surveys.
Findings of the Black Diamond 2007: On the Move study show that black middle class citizens now makeup an estimated 2.6 million South Africans, compared with 2 million in 2005.
Professor John Simpson, Director of the UCT/Unilever Institute and Neil Higgs, Director of Innovation and Development at TNS Research Surveys said the study reveals unprecedented movement in South Africa's single most important market.
Data show there is not only growth from new entrants into the Black Diamond segment, but also from within its ranks as people move up the ladder and establish themselves in the middle class, they said.
Combined annual spending power of the black middle class had grown tremendously from R130 billion at the end of 2005 to R180 billion at the beginning of 2007.
"Perhaps the most important figure here is that 12 percent of South Africa's black population - that is Black Diamonds - account for over half (54 percent) of all black buying power.
“This compares with 10 percent accounting for 43 percent of black buying power 15 months ago," said Simpson
Earlier studies found many respondents that lived in townships expressed the desire to eventually move to the suburbs.
"This prediction has proved correct, with the number of Black Diamond families living in suburbs in South Africa's metropolitan areas growing from 23 to 47 percent in the past 15 months," said Higgs
Simpson said the migration does not mean that people are turning their backs on townships.
"Our study shows that a high percentage of Black Diamonds who have moved to the suburbs return to townships on a regular basis. Even though they live in the suburbs there remains a strong desire, right across the board, to maintain their township connections," he said.
The contribution of this group to total buying power has grown considerably in absolute terms, reflecting an increase of R50-billion in just over a year. - I-Net Bridge |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8681
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 02:00 pm: |
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Oh-oh. Is that a good sign, or a bad one?? |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4491
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 02:24 pm: |
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Good for the Negroes over there who are making out--bad for the mass of blacks who are still mired in poverty--bad for everybody when Mandela dies. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2364
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 10:07 pm: |
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someone should do a study comparing the post-apatheid and post-civil rights rise in the black middle-class. |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 4821
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 10:54 pm: |
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As if we need another study. We need to get our shit together, that's what I think about it! |
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5590
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 25, 2007 - 12:25 am: |
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One of my concerns is that we've gotten into a rut where we define "middle class" by personal revenue material belongings and large assets, when there are principles that have to be met that we tend to overlook, a big mistake as these principles are needed for middle class longevity. Younger generations of Blacks are never going to do as well as their parents, for example, if we don’t reconsider the way we as Black people define "middle class". Of course this is not limited to Blk people, but we do seem to put the most emphasis on wealth.
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Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4502
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 25, 2007 - 11:08 am: |
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We need to get our shit together, that's what I think about it!
There ain't no WE involved. If they need OUR help they are doomed indeed. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2367
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 25, 2007 - 11:49 am: |
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Could someone please ask Tonya [I'm willing to go to counseling beloved if only you give me a chance], what are some of things we overlook? |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2368
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 25, 2007 - 12:11 pm: |
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mzuri:
LOL!
I'm talkin about a comparison, so its not necessarily about what we need...
you know, some people are interested in this stuff just to learn about why things are the way they are...
oftentimes, why we think something is the way it is, it is actually not...
For example, more recently, I've been reading some books on how the cold war shaped the civil rights movement. This literature helps us, or me, understand why, in part, the civil rights movement was limited to political rights instead of economic rights. And how economic rights were in fact once part of the broad black freedom movement, but it was repressed by the integrationists organizations, such as the NAACP, and the government.
This literature illustrates particularly how red-baiting was used to limit our struggles to "civil rights," that is, political rights. And, how the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy administrations responded to civil rights struggles at those particular moments when they received pressure from the USSR and so-called Third World nations.
It suggests that while the marches, boycotts, and the like were able to galvanize and inspire black folk to organize and fight for access to public accommodations and voting rights, the U.S. government would rather give us that then give us economic rights, and that in hind sight the boycotts and the like hid the fact that we only won first-class citizenship...
King would understood this later on...In 1968, during the Memphis Sanitation workers strike, King said “now our struggle is genuine equality, which means economic equality. For we know that it isn’t enough to integrate lunch counters. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?”
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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5595
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 25, 2007 - 04:40 pm: |
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Chris, I agree. Of course THEY don't need OUR help, (Africans/Caribbean, that is, esp. the ones that come to the U.S.). We could learn a thing or two from them. I was talking moreso about us.
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