A timely window on Black America’s rich elite

Lisa, NeNe (above), Sheree and DeShawn are, in their way, breaking the racial barriers of America just as surely as their president-elect, Barack Obama.

They are The Real Housewives of Atlanta, the stars of a reality show on the Bravo cable channel as ghastly - and eye-popping - as most of them. The show comes on the stiletto heels of Real Housewives series set in Orange County, California, and New York - both of them hits. But the Atlanta version features an attention-getting innovation: these rich American women are black.

The timing is terrific: as the nation imagines a black First Family in the White House, Real Housewives introduces them to four families who are already living the fabulously wealthy style of the American elite.

Tomorrow sees the final episode: the claws, we are promised, will be out as scores are settled. Meantime, the most recent show offered a birthday party for NeNe laid on in a Country Club which makes Gleneagles look cheap, if tasteful; DeShawn being given a Rolex watch by her husband Eric, a professional basketball player; a giggling group-shopping trip to the lingerie parlour; and pole-dancing lessons from a professional stripper who boasts that "black women have booties, and we shake 'em and we're proud".

What else? Lisa, an Asian-African-American and therefore, like Obama himself, a "mutt", invites her buddies to a lunch cooked by her own full-time chef, while DeShawn searches for an estate manager, a governess, a nanny and other members of staff.

Voluptuous NeNe, the most raucous of the bunch, charms her business-tycoon older husband Ed into helping her set up her own foundation - an unrivalled status symbol - for battered women, which she launches with the 'Battered But Not Broken Brunch'.

Housewives of Atlanta packs a punch because the idea that America is home to a large and affluent black upper-middle class still comes as a surprise. The popular image remains of poverty and under-privilege garnished with the bling-bling of a tiny minority, mostly in crime, sport and entertainment.

In fact, about 10 per cent of the 40 million black Americans earn more than $75,000 a year and live solid, middle-to-upper-middle-class lives, while at least half qualify as middle-class. They have been earning degrees, climbing the ranks of the civil service, becoming professionals, paying mortgages and doing homework with the kids, while Hollywood and the world's TV cameras point at crack, crime and rappers. And nowhere are they more at home than in Atlanta, the capital city of the New South, with its sprawling, mostly black suburbs.

Bravo’s Real Housewives are caricatures, which is their appeal

Bravo's Real Housewives are therefore no more representative of the average Atlanta woman than their white sisters were of silicon-breasted Orange County or harpingly-ambitious New York City. Neither are they less representative: they are caricatures, which is their appeal.

The Atlanta wives live in vast McMansions, decorated down to the pictures by paid professionals, drink white wine while riding in stretch limousines, and drive Range Rovers and Porsches. That, surely, makes the black wife of a black sports star no different from the white wife of a white soccer star: Posh Spice with a booty to shake.

Michelle Obama, mother and working lawyer, is moving into the fanciest mansion of them all, with plenty of servants. But Lisa, DeShawn, NeNe and Sheree got theirs first. ·