What do they have to offer the black community?
''There are no black Rockefellers, Vanderbilts or Kennedys, families who have sustained great wealth for generations,'' said Sam Fulwood 3d, a Los Angeles Times reporter who writes on race relations and is the author of ''Waking From the Dream: My Life in the Black Middle Class'' (Anchor, 1996). ''Members of the Boule, the Links, and Jack and Jill represent such a small piece of black America, they are insignificant. It may be interesting but no more interesting than the way rare flowers are interesting.''
He added, ''If blacks understand our experience in this country, then they don't need to be validated by some artificial construct like class.''
Nonetheless, memberships have been growing, thanks to the ballooning of the black upper middle class. The Boule membership has more than tripled since 1970. The Links started with nine women in one chapter in 1946 and has grown to 10,000 members in 270 chapters. And in the last 20 years, Jack and Jill chapters have doubled, to 220, with 30,000 family members, reflecting the desire to have well-off black children meet ''the right kind of people.''
''Most calls I've received about Jack and Jill were from people who've moved to the suburbs, whose kids might go to a private school, who are looking to have their children exposed to children with a similar culture and with similar goals,'' said Barbara Brannen Newton, the executive director of Jack and Jill, who lives in Isle of Catalina, Fla. ''We're here to educate future leaders and to teach them to bring back to the local community.''
If membership in an upper class is defined as simply having lots of money, it's clear that a black upper class exists. The incomes of African-American athletes and entertainers are as stratospheric as those of their white counterparts, and among professionals and entrepreneurs, blacks have increasingly attained affluence in the last decade. The number of black households earning $100,000 or more nearly doubled from 220,400 in 1988 to 414,500 in 1998, Census Bureau figures show.
But it takes much more than money to belong to the upper class as Mr. Graham uses the term, following the tradition of bulwarks of white society like the Social Register.
''It's not just the money,'' he said. ''It's where did this person's grandfather go to medical school? How far does the family go back in a certain city? Did you go to the right school, the right boarding school? How far back were your family members professionals? Have they been summering in Oak Bluffs and Sag Harbor. Who are you married to?''
Mr. Graham, who is best known for rooting out racism in an all-white country club in Greenwich, Conn. -- he posed as a busboy and his experience landed him on the cover of New York magazine -- draws a parallel to another group that would seem far removed from the black elite. ''I hate to use it, but they are like black WASP's,'' Mr. Graham said by phone from his large home in Chappaqua, N.Y. It has a swimming pool, tennis courts and a guest house. He left a corporate law firm to write and lecture, and lives with his wife, Pamela Thomas-Graham -- who is both a partner in McKinsey & Company, consultants, and a mystery writer -- and their son.