"In some ways, middle-class society has become a pale copy

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"In some ways, middle-class society has become a pale copy of the black ghetto, as the appropriation of its language would lead us to believe. We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle-class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed, the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general conditions the most important feature of which is a widespread loss of confidence in the future."

The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, page 129.