In 1965, when Moynihan published his report, suggesting that the out-of-wedlock birthrate and the number of families headed by single mothers, both about 24 percent, pointed to dissolution of the social fabric of the black community, black scholars and liberals dismissed it. They attacked its author as a right-wing bigot. Now we'd give just about anything to have those statistics back. Today, 69 percent of black babies are born out of wedlock, while 45 percent of black households with children are headed by women.
The words are by Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, of Harvard's Black Studies Program, and appear in today's New York Times in an op ed entitled, as is this diary, Forty Acres and a Gap in Wealth. Gates is writing in response to last week's Pew Center report where African-Americans think blacks can no longer be thought of as a single race because of the class divide.
I am not black, and perhaps am not the best to write about this. But it is an important subject, so I will with some trepidation use the Gates editorial to explore it.
Gates is very straightforward, quoting from the Pew report and offering his somewhat bleak assessment (please note what I have placed in bold):
"By a ratio of 2 to 1," the report says, "blacks say that the values of poor and middle-class blacks have grown more dissimilar over the past decade. In contrast, most blacks say that the values of blacks and whites have grown more alike."The message here is that it is time to examine the differences between black families on either side of the divide for clues about how to address an increasingly entrenched inequality. We can't afford to wait any longer to address the causes of persistent poverty among most black families.
Gates has been studying this issue, and notes that there as many theories as there are pundits,
from slavery and segregation to the decline of factory jobs, crack cocaine, draconian drug laws and outsourcing. But nobody knows for sure.His approach has been to study
the family trees of 20 successful African-Americans, people in fields ranging from entertainment and sports (Oprah Winfrey, the track star Jackie Joyner-Kersee) to space travel and medicine (the astronaut Mae Jemison and Ben Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon). And I've seen an astonishing pattern: 15 of the 20 descend from at least one line of former slaves who managed to obtain property by 1920 - a time when only 25 percent of all African-American families owned property.
Ownership of land as the basis of the ever-growing class divide in the African-American community. As the child of middle class Jews growing up in the 1950's I had hammered into me the importance of ownership. My mother's family had a primary residence in a prestigious (rental) apartment building on Central Park West but they also owned a weekend/summer place in Long Beach. My father, the 2nd of 6 children of an immigrant tailor in Utica NY saw his mother not only maintain her own home on Lansing Street but in her 60's get a real estate license to help others move to home ownership. Reading the foregoing paragraph from Gates immediately got my attention.
The op ed describes several examples from his research, Oprah Winfrey's great-grandfather and Whoopi Goldberg's great-great-grandparents. As an historian he reminds us that
The historical basis for the gap between the black middle class and underclass shows that ending discrimination, by itself, would not eradicate black poverty and dysfunction. We also need intervention to promulgate a middle-class ethic of success among the poor, while expanding opportunities for economic betterment.
And the key to this is building wealth. Gates points at the success Margaret Thatcher had in turning residents of public housing into homeowners and suggests that American progressives might have something to learn from her example. He notes the extreme wealth gap, using reserach of Edward Wolff, that
the median net worth of non-Hispanic black households in 2004 was only $11,800 - less than 10 percent that of non-Hispanic white households, $118,300.
Gates argues that for many African-Americans
real progress may come only once they have an ownership stake in American society.People who own property feel a sense of ownership in their future and their society. They study, save, work, strive and vote. And people trapped in a culture of tenancy do not.
He acknowledges that there are other issues, some self-inflicted, in the Black community:
Why can't black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality, birth within marriage, parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework? Imagine Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson distributing free copies of Virginia Hamilton's collection of folktales "The People Could Fly" or Dr. Seuss, and demanding that black parents sign pledges to read to their children. What would it take to make inner-city schools havens of learning?
Skip Gates is likely to take some hits for this piece. Some progressives will criticize him for quoting Thatcher, although a true progressive should never be afraid of the source of a good idea, and I am reminded of the former saying of this site that we should feel free to steal what we want. Others will worry that his words are perhaps too reminiscent of Bill Cosby, who certainly created a firestorm with his criticisms. When Moynihan tried to point out the coming crisis he was severely attacked: what business did a white academic have in telling the Black community how to live? And yet in this, as in so many other things, Moynihan was quite prescient, and we now live in a society that, as in the quote with which I began indicates, might be worse than even Moynihan would have projected.
Race has been a persistent problem in the United States, but so has class. We have had our periods of time when we have tried to address both issues, but have usually been successful when a large number or percentage of those who would be aided by government assistance were not people of color - unfortunately our persistent problems with race lead to our not addressing the specific needs of poor people of color, be they Black, Hispanic, or Native-American.
Gates mentions voting, and recounts a discussion with John Kenneth Galbraith where that worthy said the problem was greater than voter participation. The next sentence caught my attention:
Politicians will not put forth programs aimed at the problems of poor blacks while their turnout remains so low.
I teach government, and in my Advanced Placement classes we examine voter participation. Here's something most people don't realize. It is true that overall Blacks vote at a lower rate than do White. But suppose you divide the population into quintiles (fifths) by income. At every quintile, Blacks at that income level vote at a HIGHER rate than do the Whites at the same level. The problem is that African-Americans still tilt far more heavily to the lower levels of income - and of wealth - than do the Whites.
I am not Black. Despite a life-long concern with the inequalities I see around me I cannot claim any particular expertise. I can only comment from my own experiences and perceptions, and from reading material offered by others, Black and not Black, who do have expertise. I got involved in civil rights in the 1960s because as one of Jewish background I thought I understood something about discrimination, and if I did not want it directed at me could not morally stand by when others were denied their rights and liberties because of some category into which they could be placed. I teach in a heavily African-American district that serves a community with the highest median household income of any majority Black political jurisdiction in the United States but which also has major pockets that lack wealth and economic stability. And even that high median household income pales by comparison with neighboring jurisdictions (including my own) that are predominately White.
This has serious implications. The wealth of most people is in their residences, and in Prince George's the lower value of the average residence leads to a smaller tax base which means less money per student for the public schools that are supposed to help address our inequities.
We have had too many Government studies that told us what we should already know, that we have ongoing problems of class and race, and that the divides caused by this threaten our very democracy. In city after city we can find great wealth and power not very far distant from incredible poverty and despair. Having gated communities, perhaps as in New Orleans after Katrina guarded by mercenaries imported from Israel does not address the underlying problem. In Washington DC, just across the river from where I now write seated in my living room in a white neighborhood in Arlington VA, the powerful often live on Capitol Hill for convenience sake, but need go only a few blocks to neighborhoods that are powerless except perhaps in their ability to elect a few local officials. Our national capital city is far too illustrative of our unwillingness to address the problems of poor people of color.
Gates thinks we have a national responsibility to address these festering problems. Undoubtedly insofar as the issue involves people of color, there will be those who will resist the costs involved, and will find occasion to criticize those who remain poor, blaming their lack of responsibility or offering some other similar rot. Or we will be exposed to the ideas of people like Ruby Payne as a supposed magic bullet, one that treats poor African-American students with less respect and allows them less dignity than that to which they are entitled as human beings. Perhaps this is my Quaker orientation now speaking through me, but I still believe that it is possible to address the best in people, even children, and use that as a means of maintaining hope for a better future, of encouraging the effort necessary to break out of the downward double helix of poverty and despair. Double-helix. Yes, I used that imagery deliberately, not because I believe that poverty has any genetic basis, but that the combination is deadly and can be determinative.
I have tread on ground that does not belong to me - I am not Black, nor am I a sociologist, economist, expert on the Black experience. I am a human being who regularly interacts with people who come from environments such as those that concern Gates. I would think he would want me to consider his words, to wrestle with their implication. As he would also want of you.
So as I began with Gates, albeit not his beginning, let me end with his final words:
If the correlation between land ownership and success of African-Americans argues that the chasm between classes in the black community is partly the result of social forces set in motion by the dismal failure of 40 acres and a mule, then we must act decisively. If we do not, ours will be remembered as the generation that presided over a permanent class divide, a slow but inevitable process that began with the failure to give property to the people who had once been defined as property.
Peace?
It has been on the recommended list at big orange for a while, with an interesting dialog that you are invited to read, and if a member there to participate. I will of course read any comments posted here as well.
peace.
Now I'm not saying this was all her fault. She'd never had any expectations of her from the beginning of her life. She came from a chaotic household headed by a single mother and wasn't sure who her father was. There were no books in her home, just a TV kept on day and night, and to her teachers she was just another kid whose mother never went to parent-teacher meetings, who was disinterested in and quite often disruptive in school, and who was a frequent truant. Her life centered around listening to gangsta rap, getting drunk and high, and partying every day. She shoplifted and stole to get money and things.
I've represented many, many kids with exactly the same MO. A lot of the kids I've seen have been dumped on grandparents or elderly aunts or even great-grandparents by hard-partying substance abusing parents. Many of the young people I deal with have never experienced a father in the home. Young men think that manhood is proved by having sex, often promiscuously, and have no sense of responsibility for their offspring. When brought to court on child support cases they will tell me they offered to pay for an abortion and don't see why they should have to pay for the kid the young woman insisted on having. The young women I deal with will tell me it's their baby and they don't want the young man to have anything to do with it. They just want the child support. Sometimes they will try to turn down child support because they think it means the young man won't be able to see the child, and "we ain't need him."
I agree with Gates that there is a structural problem in the poor African American community. There seems to be a chasm between the more middle class and affluent African Americans and their poverty-stricken brethren. Not only is there a need to expand opportunities for home ownership among poorer African Americans, there needs to be more of an emphasis on education and all the other hallmarks of successful, achieving people. The self-appointed spokespeople for the African American community need to get off the V train and start promoting self-sufficiency, self-respect (as opposed to the execrable self-esteem, which seems to be predicated upon uncritical self-acceptance), and a thirst for education and improvement. I've had enough of watching the vast potential of these young people drain away into a swamp of substance abuse, aimlessness, and counter-productive behaviors. I'm tired of watching young people put a good face, with their embrace of the gangsta mentality, on their inner insecurities and their sense that they can't measure up to others in either education or attainment. Some of my clients have overcome enormous difficulties to become productive, involved citizens. I want to see the kind of effort we put into promoting education and achievement among our more prosperous citizens put into the least prosperous among us.
In parts of America, the administration of justice is still very racist and discriminatory. Blacks are arrested more often, prosecuted more harshly, convicted more often, and incarcerated longer than whites for the same crimes. I am not a sociologist, and I don't have any good data in front of me, but I'm fairly certain that, in the realm of non-violent drug offenses, blacks are especially entangled in the criminal justice system greatly out of proportion to whites, especially since blacks do not use/abuse illegal substances at rates much different than whites.
Even 40+ years after the great Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, blacks are still discriminated against when it comes to the administration of justice. In other words, the state is still helping to perpetuate an unjust system. If you're a white kid in a middle class neighborhood or at college and you make your stupid mistakes, you're likely to get a slap on the wrist or not be prosecuted -- the authorities will go out of their way to help you out, generally. The same societal courtesy is not extended to the underclass, especially the black underclass. This contributes mightily to the destruction of black families which may in fact be the source of all this crime, despair, and endemic poverty -- there is not stability in these communities to allow young people to grow and prosper and improve themselves. The barriers to success are so much higher, that most are prevented from escaping the cycle.
There are obvious examples of this in backwards places like Jena, Louisiana, and Tulia, Texas, in the past five years. But it's just as true in the urban settings. There are no easy answers here, because law abiding citizens in crime-infested areas absolutely deserve the protection of law enforcement. But, as Senator Webb says, the trajectory in this country needs to change. The state needs to at least stop exacerbating this problem, but also has a duty to extend a hand up to these communities that were treated as sub-human for the first almost 200 years of our nation's history.
My point was not and will never be that racism does not exist in America. Or that justice is equally applied in all cases.
And just one last thing, there are obvious examples outside the South. New York City, Los Angeles, and Cincinnati provide plenty of examples. I'm not saying the South is perfect, but the media and the Voting Rights Act play up a false argument that racism is a peculiarity limited to the South.
The only real southern place I mentioned was Jena. Tulia, while in Texas, is closer to New Mexico than Dallas -- it is small town panhandle West Texas, which is not in any respect Southern. I also explicitly mentioned that many of the same problems happen in urban areas, as well. So I don't get why you got so fired up about me picking on the South, because I did no such thing.
I can't answer for Catzmaw. My answer was just an attempt to take a sideways angle on your question. I'm fairly sure people in endemic poverty, whether white or black, have much more in common than they do with rich people of their 'own' skin color. But I'm also fairly sure that there is something unique about black poverty that is intertwined with the realities of race in America -- and the skewed criminal justice system and the centuries of active disenfranchisement, both at the ballot box and also from being part of the wider society, lie at the heart of it.
My other comment here echoes your sentiment on the impact of history. I agree on those historical causal factors. I am concerned that a continual focus on skin color only promotes the ills of racism. I am concerned that attributing characteristics to a community that are not unique to them, to a less informed mind, might lead to the false assumption of inferiority. I am concerned that new solutions focused on skin color instead of on a root problem are likely to generate envy. My concern is that the continued focus on skin color doesn't help us bridge the divide. I'm not trying to discount the experience of black people, their history or promote a false assertion that racism does not exist. I just think focusing on superficial distinctions might perpetuate provincial perceptions.
How do we move out from underneath that shadow? How do we escape the past? I don't know. But maybe we should stop framing things in terms of skin color. Because is that really a meaningful distinction?