"Using in-depth interviews of high-achieving African Americans who came of age both before and after the civil rights era, The Black Elite documents that race still matters in the twenty-first century. Lois Benjamin describes how African Americans grapple on a daily basis with what W.E.B. Du Bois called the double consciousness: living within and between two worlds. A new chapter details how the post-civil rights generation interprets and navigates racial terrain differently than the civil rights generation, a fact that has significant implications for group identity and group mobility."--Jacket.