Scholars who study the connections between public opinion and the policy process, and politicians who engage in making those connections, face the same two problems. First, determining what opinion the public actually holds is much more of an interpretive than a methodological exercise. Second, designing policies to respond to that (presumed) opinion is at best an inexact art and at worst a demonstration that making the wrong moves can produce more harm than good. This essay illustrates these points by examining race politics in America over the past three decades.

In order to move quickly to those illustrations, let me stipulate, with minimal evidence, several starting points. First, middle-class African Americans are better off now than middle-class members of their race have ever been; well-off African Americans are getting richer at a faster rate than well-off white Americans (though from a lower absolute starting point); and middle-class African Americans are gaining ground at the same time that poor African Americans are losing it.

Those points require much evidence to be completely persuasive, but they are all illustrated by a simple comparison of income quantiles by race over time (see Table 1).