For some time now, I have been making comments on the black middle classes. They are becoming more and more vociferous and demanding, but are not as influential as they would like to be.

They distinguish themselves from the rest of the black and Asian community by education, and from the white middle classes by colour of skin only. They have attended schools (usually the better ones) alongside whites, qualified at universities with them, and become engaged in the same social and artistic pursuits. Yet they hold that, despite these similarities, they are discriminated against when they try to improve their social mobility, to break the glass ceiling. They point to whole areas of power in society from which they are absent. The closer their social relationships with whites, the more explosive the issue becomes. After all, they can see no fundamental differences between themselves and white people. They have made huge efforts to reach this far. Burning with ambition, they are resentful that they have got so tantalisingly close, without hitting the target. One of their white allies suggested that Prince Charles should marry one of them. A ridiculous suggestion. Joining the royal family destroyed Diana and Fergie. I see no need for a black sacrifice.

In any case, race is not the only impediment to upward mobility. There are large numbers of whites who are equally well qualified and who do quite ordinary, nondescript jobs. Competition is fierce at the top, and black people are finding that they do not have the social connections to give them that extra push. Inevitably, they scream race and quote the Macpherson report with its catch-all phrase, institutional racism.

These people are very few in number, but they make a huge noise and write lengthy reports about the plight of blacks in general when, in reality, they are referring only to themselves.

Yes, they are entitled to the equality they crave; yes, they can do the jobs they identify as well as whites can. But they do not carry the political weight to influence major decisions. Their liberal counterparts in the white community may well be sympathetic, may even join them in a running social commentary on their plight, but nowhere is this a major issue among whites. Other blacks and Asians, meanwhile, shrug their shoulders. Their attitude is that the black middle classes haven't paid their dues. In the countries we came from, the educated middle class were expected to use their education to assist in the betterment of the less fortunate. Here, the first generation of successful blacks spent most of their time campaigning, mobilising and bringing to the attention of the rest of society the injustices we suffered. Supplementary schools in abundance, staffed voluntarily by blacks, took up the slack where the mainstream schools had failed.

These first examples of black success lived in the same communities, went to the same parties, ate the same grub, dressed in the same way and, in short, socialised with those black people who worked in ordinary jobs. They would hang with the brothers and sisters on the block, so to speak. Not any more; they have succumbed to the allure of greener pastures in a huge migration from the black communities. Thatcherite individualism seeped deep into the consciousness of those who claimed to oppose her.

And who can deny them their newfound freedom from what they see as the burden of community? But now they blame the black community they have left behind for its own difficulties: black boys are blamed for failing at school; crime and poverty are now separable; and we are called upon to comply with those who stop and search us, willy nilly.

It is their smugness that irritates: when they turn up to assist, it is always about charity, not about support and solidarity. The divisions in the black community are increasing by the day. The black middle classes cannot, in the political arena, depend on the votes of their fellow black men and women, or on their support in their own struggle for equality. It could have been otherwise.

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