Equality Quote by Ed Smith

Progress, in Ed Smith's framing, comes with an unglamorous invoice: solidarity gets more complicated once survival stops being the only agenda. The line is doing two things at once. On the surface, it observes a shift many sociologists and organizers have argued about for decades: as formal barriers recede and a Black middle and upper class expands, class starts sorting people more visibly inside the community. But the sharper subtext is that unity forged under overt oppression was, at least partly, a unity of necessity. When the external pressure eases, the internal differences that were always there stop being postponed.

The rhetorical move - "divided itself the way the larger white community divides itself" - quietly normalizes Black class stratification by comparing it to the dominant template. That comparison can sound like validation (a sign of "arrival") while also smuggling in a warning: the white community's class divides are brutal, politically polarizing, and often masked by myths of meritocracy. If Black life begins to mirror that structure, the community may inherit not just opportunity but the same churn of status anxiety, blame, and distance from the poor.

"Race is no longer the bond" is intentionally provocative because it pokes at a cherished story of automatic racial cohesion. It's not claiming racism ended; it's suggesting race can't do all the social and political work it once did. Calling that a "price" is the tell: Smith is less celebrating progress than mourning what it unthreads, implying that gains in mobility can dilute collective obligation - and that the next fights may be harder precisely because the enemy isn't only outside.