Shelby Steele and John E. Jacob: The State of Black America (1988)

Shelby Steele and John E. Jacob: The State of Black America (1988)

▪ Primary Source
      The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s represented the apogee of African American political unity. The effort to defeat Jim Crow (Jim Crow law) segregation and to promote federal legislation on behalf of civil rights and racial equality enjoyed wide support among African Americans of all classes and regions. In part because of such unity, the movement culminated in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights (Civil Rights Act) and 1965 Voting Rights (Voting Rights Act) acts, the two most sweeping pieces of civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. Encouragingly, the consequences of the civil rights movement went beyond the political arena. In the movement s wake, the black middle class grew rapidly as African Americans seized upon new and expanding economic opportunities. Nevertheless, two decades later, as the civil rights movement lost steam, a large minority of African Americans remained trapped in urban poverty and despair. In the 1970s and 80s sociologists, other academic observers, and civil rights leaders began to pay closer attention to class divisions within African American communities but often arrived at different conclusions. The first document reprinted below, an essay by author Shelby Steele, explores the intersection of race and class in the lives of middle-class African Americans. The second, a speech delivered by John Jacob, the president and chief executive officer of the National Urban League, before members of Congress in March 1988, addresses the question of how to extend greater opportunities to poor blacks.

      A. Shelby Steele

Class Division Among African Americans
      Not long ago a friend of mine, black like myself, said to me that the term “black middle class” was actually a contradiction in terms. race, he insisted, blurred class distinctions among blacks. If you were black, you were just black and that was that. When I argued, he let his eyes roll at my naiveté. Then he went on. For us, as black professionals, it was an exercise in self-flattery, a pathetic pretension, to give meaning to such a distinction. Worse, the very idea of class threatened the unity that was vital to the black community as a whole. After all, since when had white America taken note of anything but color when it came to blacks? He then reminded me of an old Malcolm X line that had been popular in the 60 s. Question: What is a black man with a Ph.D.? Answer: A nigger.

      For many years I had been on my friend s side of this argument. Much of my conscious thinking on the old conundrum of race and class was shaped during my high-school and college years in the race-charged 60 s, when the fact of my race took on an almost religious significance. Progressively, from the mid-60 s on, more and more aspects of my life found their explanation, their justification, and their motivation in race. My youthful concerns about career, romance, money, values, and even styles of dress became subject to consultation with various oracular sources of racial wisdom. And these ranged from a figure as ennobling as Martin Luther King, Jr. (King, Martin Luther, Jr.) to the underworld elegance of dress I found in jazz clubs on the South Side of Chicago. Everywhere there were signals, and in those days I considered myself so blessed with clarity and direction that I pitied my white classmates who found more embarrassment than guidance in the fact of their race. In 1968, inflated by my new power, I took a mischievous delight in calling them culturally disadvantaged.

      But now, hearing my friend s comment was like hearing a priest from a church I d grown disenchanted with. I understood him, but my faith was weak. What had sustained me in the 60 s sounded monotonous and off-the-mark in the 80 s. For me, race had lost much of its juju, its singular capacity to conjure meaning. And today, when I honestly look at my life and the lives of many other middle-class blacks I know, I can see that race never fully explained our situation in American society. Black though I may be, it is impossible for me to sit in my single-family house with two cars in the driveway and a swing set in the back yard and not see the role class has played in my life. And how can my friend, similarly raised and similarly situated, not see it?

      Yet despite my certainty I felt a sharp tug of guilt as I tried to explain myself over my friend s skepticism. He is a man of many comedic facial expressions and, as I spoke, his brow lifted in extreme moral alarm as if I were uttering the unspeakable. His clear implication was that I was being elitist and possibly (dare he suggest?) anti-black—crimes for which there might well be no redemption. He pretended to fear for me. I chuckled along with him, but inwardly I did wonder at myself. Though I never doubted the validity of what I was saying, I felt guilty saying it. Why?

      After he left (to retrieve his daughter from a dance lesson) I realized that the trap I felt myself in had a tiresome familiarity and, in a sort of slow-motion epiphany, I began to see its outline. It was like the suddenly sharp vision one has at the end of a burdensome marriage when all the long-repressed incompatibilities come undeniably to light.

      What became clear to me is that people like myself, my friend, and middle-class blacks generally are caught in a very specific double bind that keeps two equally powerful elements of our identity at odds with each other. The middle-class values by which we were raised—the work ethic, the importance of education, the value of property ownership, of respectability, of “getting ahead,” of stable family life, of initiative, of self-reliance, etc.—are, in themselves, raceless and even assimilationist. They urge us toward participation in the American mainstream, toward integration, toward a strong identification with the society—and toward the entire constellation of qualities that are implied in the word individualism. These values are almost rules for how to prosper in a democratic, free-enterprise society that admires and rewards individual effort. They tell us to work hard for ourselves and our families and to seek our opportunities whenever they appear, inside or outside the confines of whatever ethnic group we may belong to.

      But the particular pattern of racial identification that emerged in the 60 s and that still prevails today urges middle-class blacks (and all blacks) in the opposite direction. This pattern asks us to see ourselves as an embattled minority, and it urges an adversarial stance toward the mainstream, an emphasis on ethnic consciousness over individualism. It is organized around an implied separatism.

      The opposing thrust of these two parts of our identity results in the double bind of middle-class blacks. There is no forward movement on either plane that does not constitute backward movement on the other. This was the familiar trap I felt myself in while talking with my friend. As I spoke about class, his eyes reminded me that I was betraying race. Clearly, the two indispensable parts of my identity were a threat to one another.

      Of course when you think about it, class and race are both similar in some ways and also naturally opposed. They are two forms of collective identity with boundaries that intersect. But whether they clash or peacefully coexist has much to do with how they are defined. Being both black and middle-class becomes a double bind when class and race are defined in sharply antagonistic terms, so that one must be repressed to appease the other.

      But what is the “substance” of these two identities, and how does each establish itself in an individual s overall identity? It seems to me that when we identify with any collective we are basically identifying with images that tell us what it means to be a member of that collective. Identity is not the same thing as the fact of membership in a collective; it is, rather, a form of self-definition, facilitated by images of what we wish our membership in the collective to mean. In this sense, the images we identify with may reflect the aspirations of the collective more than they reflect reality, and their content can vary with shifts in those aspirations.

      But the process of identification is usually dialectical. It is just as necessary to say what we are not as it is to say what we are—so that finally identification comes about by embracing a polarity of positive and negative images. To identify as middle-class, for example, I must have both positive and negative images of what being middle-class entails; then I will know what I should and should not be doing in order to be middle-class. The same goes for racial identity.

      In the racially turbulent 60 s the polarity of images that came to define racial identification was very antagonistic to the polarity that defined middle-class identification. One might say that the positive images of one lined up with the negative images of the other, so that to identify with both required either a contortionist s flexibility or a dangerous splitting of the self. The double bind of the black middle class was in place.

      The black middle class has always defined its class identity by means of positive images gleaned from middle-and upper-class white society, and by means of negative images of lower-class blacks. This habit goes back to the institution of slavery itself, when “house” slaves both mimicked the whites they served and held themselves above the “field” slaves. But in the 60 s the old bourgeois impulse to dissociate from the lower classes (the “we-they” distinction) backfired when racial identity suddenly called for the celebration of this same black lower class. One of the qualities of a double bind is that one feels it more than sees it, and I distinctly remember the tension and strange sense of dishonesty I felt in those days as I moved back and forth like a bigamist between the demands of class and race.

      Though my father was born poor, he achieved middle-class standing through much hard work and sacrifice (one of his favorite words) and by identifying fully with solid middle-class values—mainly hard work, family life, property ownership, and education for his children (all four of whom have advanced degrees). In his mind these were not so much values as laws of nature. People who embodied them made up the positive images in his class polarity. The negative images came largely from the blacks he had left behind because they were “going nowhere.”

      No one in my family remembers how it happened, but as time went on, the negative images congealed into an imaginary character named Sam who, from the extensive service we put him to, quickly grew to mythic proportions. In our family lore he was sometimes a trickster, sometimes a boob, but always possessed of a catalogue of sly faults that gave up graphic images of everything we should not be. On sacrifice: “Sam never thinks about tomorrow. He wants it now or he doesn t care about it.” On work: “Sam doesn t favor it too much.” On children: “Sam likes to have them but not to raise them.” On money: “Sam drinks it up and pisses it out.” On fidelity: “Sam has to have two or three women.” On clothes: “Sam features loud clothes. He likes to see and be seen.” And so on. Sam s persona amounted to a negative instruction manual in class identity.

      I don t think that any of us believed Sam s faults were accurate representations of lower-class black life. He was an instrument of self-definition, not of sociological accuracy. It never occurred to us that he looked very much like the white racist stereotype of blacks, or that he might have been a manifestation of our own racial self-hatred. He simply gave us a counterpoint against which to express our aspirations. If self-hatred was a factor, it was not, for us, a matter of hating lower-class blacks but of hating what we did not want to be.

      Still, hate or love aside, it is fundamentally true that my middle-class identity involved a dissociation from images of lower-class black life and a corresponding identification with values and patterns of responsibility that are common to the middle class everywhere. These values sent me a clear message: be both an individual and a responsible citizen, understand that the quality of your life will approximately reflect the quality of effort you put into it, know that individual responsibility is the basis of freedom and that the limitations imposed by fate (whether fair or unfair) are no excuse for passivity.

      Whether I live up to these values or not, I know that my acceptance of them is the result of lifelong conditioning. I know also that I share this conditioning with middle-class people of all races and that I can no more easily be free of it than I can be free of my race. Whether all this got started because the black middle class modeled itself on the white middle class is no longer relevant. For the middle-class black, conditioned by these values from birth, the sense of meaning they provide is as immutable as the color of his skin.

      I started the 60 s in high school feeling that my class-conditioning was the surest way to overcome racial barriers. My racial identity was pretty much taken for granted. After all, it was obvious to the world that I was black. Yet I ended the 60 s in graduate school a little embarrassed by my class background and with an almost desperate need to be “black.” The tables had turned. I knew very clearly (though I struggled to repress it) that my aspirations and my sense of how to operate in the world came from my class background, yet “being black” required certain attitudes and stances that made me feel secretly a little duplicitous. The inner compatibility of class and race I had known in 1960 was gone.

      For blacks, the decade between 1960 and 1969 saw racial identification undergo the same sort of transformation that national identity undergoes in times of war. It became more self-conscious, more narrowly focused, more prescribed, less tolerant of opposition. It spawned an implicit party line, which tended to disallow competing forms of identity. Race-as-identity was lifted from the relative slumber it knew in the 50 s and pressed into service in a social and political war against oppression. It was redefined along sharp adversarial lines and directed toward the goal of mobilizing the great mass of black Americans in this warlike effort. It was imbued with a strong moral authority, useful for denouncing those who opposed it and for celebrating those who honored it as a positive achievement rather than a mere birthright.

      The form of racial identification that quickly evolved to meet this challenge presented blacks as a racial monolith, a singular people with a common experience of oppression. Differences within the race, no matter how ineradicable, had to be minimized. Class distinctions were one of the first such differences to be sacrificed, since they not only threatened racial unity but also seemed to stand in contradiction to the principle of equality which was the announced goal of the movement for racial progress. The discomfort I felt in 1969, the vague but relentless sense of duplicity, was the result of a historical necessity that put my race and class at odds, that was asking me to cast aside the distinction of my class and identify with a monolithic view of my race.

      If the form of this racial identity was the monolith, its substance was victimization. The civil-rights movement and the more radical splinter groups of the late 60 s were all dedicated to ending racial victimization, and the form of black identity that emerged to facilitate this goal made blackness and victimization virtually synonymous. Since it was our victimization more than any other variable that identified and unified us, moreover, it followed logically that the purest black was the poor black. It was images of him that clustered around the positive pole of the race polarity; all other blacks were, in effect, required to identify with him in order to confirm their own blackness.

      Certainly there were more dimensions to the black experience than victimization, but no other had the same capacity to fire the indignation needed for war. So, again out of historical necessity, victimization became the overriding focus of racial identity. But this only deepened the double bind for middle-class blacks like me. When it came to class we were accustomed to defining ourselves against lower-class blacks and identifying with at least the values of middle-class whites; when it came to race we were now being asked to identify with images of lower-class blacks and to see whites, middle-class or otherwise, as victimizers. Negative lining up with positive, we were called upon to reject what we had previously embraced and to embrace what we had previously rejected. To put it still more personally, the Sam figure I had been raised to define myself against had now become the “real” black I was expected to identify with.

      The fact that the poor black s new status was only passively earned by the condition of his victimization, not by assertive, positive action, made little difference. Status was status apart from the means by which it was achieved, and along with it came a certain power—the power to define the terms of access to that status, to say who was black and who was not. If a lower-class black said you were not really “black”—a sell-out, an Uncle Tom—the judgment was all the more devastating because it carried the authority of his status. And this judgment soon enough came to be accepted by many whites as well.

      In graduate school I was once told by a white professor, “Well, but . . . you re not really black. I mean, you re not disadvantaged.” In his mind my lack of victim status disqualified me from the race itself. More recently I was complimented by a black student for speaking reasonably correct English, “proper” English as he put it. “But I don t know if I really want to talk like that,” he went on. “Why not?” I asked. “Because then I wouldn t be black no more,” he replied without a pause.

      To overcome his marginal status, the middle-class black had to identify with a degree of victimization that was beyond his actual experience. In college (and well beyond) we used to play a game called “nap matching.” It was a game of one-upmanship, in which we sat around outdoing each other with stories of racial victimization, symbolically measured by the naps of our hair. Most of us were middle-class and so had few personal stories to relate, but if we could not match naps with our own biographies, we would move on to those legendary tales of victimization that came to us from the public domain.

      The single story that sat atop the pinnacle of racial victimization for us was that of Emmett Till, the Northern black teen-ager who, on a visit to the South in 1955, was killed and grotesquely mutilated for supposedly looking at or whistling at (we were never sure which, though we argued the point endlessly) a white woman. Oh, how we probed his story, finding in his youth and Northern upbringing the quintessential embodiment of black innocence, brought down by a white evil so portentous and apocalyptic, so gnarled and hideous, that it left us with a feeling not far from awe. By telling his story and others like it, we came to feel the immutability of our victimization, its utter indigenousness, as a thing on this earth like dirt or sand or water.

      Of course, these sessions were a ritual of group identification, a means by which we, as middle-class blacks, could be at one with our race. But why were we, who had only a moderate experience of victimization (and that offset by opportunities our parents never had), so intent on assimilating or appropriating an identity that in so many ways contradicted our own? Because, I think, the sense of innocence that is always entailed in feeling victimized filled us with a corresponding feeling of entitlement, or even license, that helped us endure our vulnerability on a largely white college campus. . . .

      As a middle-class black I have often felt myself contriving to be “black.” And I have noticed this same contrivance in others—a certain stretching away from the natural flow of one s life to align oneself with a victim-focused black identity. Our particular needs are out of sync with the form of identity available to meet those needs. Middle-class blacks need to identify racially; it is better to think of ourselves as black and victimized than not black at all; so we contrive (more unconsciously than consciously) to fit ourselves into an identity that denies our class and fails to address the true source of our vulnerability.

      For me this once meant spending inordinate amounts of time at black faculty meetings, though these meetings had little to do with my real racial anxieties or my professional life. I was new to the university, one of two blacks in an English department of over seventy, and I felt a little isolated and vulnerable, though I did not admit it to myself. But at these meetings we discussed the problems of black faculty and students within a framework of victimization. The real vulnerability we felt was covered over by all the adversarial drama the victim/victimized polarity inspired, and hence went unseen and unassuaged. And this, I think, explains our rather chronic ineffectiveness as a group. Since victimization was not our primary problem—the university had long ago opened its doors to us—we had to contrive to make it so, and there is not much energy in contrivance. What I got at these meetings was ultimately an object lesson in how fruitless struggle can be when it is not grounded in actual need.

      At our black faculty meetings, the old equation of blackness with victimization was ever present—to be black was to be a victim; therefore, not to be a victim was not to be black. As we contrived to meet the terms of this formula there was an inevitable distortion of both ourselves and the larger university. Through the prism of victimization the university seemed more impenetrable than it actually was, and we more limited in our powers. We fell prey to the victim s myopia, making the university an institution from which we could seek redress but which we could never fully join. And this mind-set often led us to look more for compensations for our supposed victimization than for opportunities we could pursue as individuals.

      The discomfort and vulnerability felt by middle-class blacks in the 60 s, it could be argued, was a worthwhile price to pay considering the progress achieved during that time of racial confrontation. But what may have been tolerable then is intolerable now. Though changes in American society have made it an anachronism, the monolithic form of racial identification that came out of the 60 s is still very much with us. It may be more loosely held, and its power to punish heretics has probably diminished, but it continues to catch middle-class blacks in a double bind, thus impeding not only their advancement but even, I would contend, that of blacks as a group.

      The victim-focused black identity encourages the individual to feel that his advancement depends almost entirely on that of the group. Thus he loses sight not only of his own possibilities but of the inextricable connection between individual effort and individual advancement. This is a profound encumbrance today, when there is more opportunity for blacks than ever before, for it reimposes limitations that can have the same oppressive effect as those the society has only recently begun to remove.

      It was the emphasis on mass action in the 60 s that made the victim-focused black identity a necessity. But in the 80 s and beyond, when racial advancement will come only through a multitude of individual advancements, this form of identity inadvertently adds itself to the forces that hold us back. Hard work, education, individual initiative, stable family life, property ownership—these have always been the means by which ethnic groups have moved ahead in America. Regardless of past or present victimization, these “laws” of advancement apply absolutely to black Americans also. There is no getting around this. What we need is a form of racial identity that energizes the individual by putting him in touch with both his possibilities and his responsibilities.

      It has always annoyed me to hear from the mouths of certain arbiters of blackness that middle-class blacks should “reach back” and pull up those blacks less fortunate than they—as though middle-class status were an unearned and essentially passive condition in which one needed a large measure of noblesse oblige to occupy one s time. My own image is of reaching back from a moving train to lift on board those who have no tickets. A nobel enough sentiment—but might it not be wiser to show them the entire structure of principles, effort, and sacrifice that puts one in a position to buy a ticket any time one likes? This, I think, is something members of the black middle class can realistically offer to other blacks. Their example is not only a testament to possibility but also a lesson in method. But they cannot lead by example until they are released from a black identity that regards that example as suspect, that sees them as “marginally” black, indeed that holds them back by catching them in a double bind.

      To move beyond the victim-focused black identity we must learn to make a difficult but crucial distinction: between actual victimization, which we must resist with every resource, and identification with the victim s status. Until we do this we will continue to wrestle more with ourselves than with the new opportunities which so many paid so dearly to win.

      B. John E. Jacob

A Doomed Generation?
      I suppose I give over a hundred talks a year to groups large and small, but it s rare to come before an audience with as much power as you represent.

      So I"m honored to be here and I look forward to this opportunity to present my views on the future prospects for black Americans and to engage in some dialogue with you.

      Today I want to begin by briefly sketching what the Urban League is, and going on from there to discuss the plight of black citizens. Along the way, I d like to look back at some of the things America has done to deal with its racial problems. And I d like to look ahead as well, to suggest some of the things we can do to secure the future for black people and for all Americans.

      Most of you are familiar with the work of the National Urban League. We have affiliates in 112 cities—and that means most of your districts and states include at least one Urban League.

      We re based on three principles—and we ve held fast to them since our founding 78 years ago.

      One is advocacy on behalf of black citizens and all poor people. We are a repository of research, ideas, and experiences that the nation needs in framing policies that affect the third of our population that is black or poor.

      Second, we are a community-based service delivery organization. Urban League job and skills training programs, education and health and housing programs, and a host of others, serve one-and-a-half million people who come to Urban League offices each year.

      Currently, we are concentrating on mobilizing black and minority communities around a national Education Initiative designed to radically improve black students academic achievement. We are also concentrating resources on the plight of female-headed households, teenage pregnancy, crime, and citizenship education.

      Third, the National Urban League is a bridge-builder between the races. We are believers in an open, integrated, pluralistic society, and our activities support that goal. Our staffs and boards are integrated, and we work very hard at improving race relations in America.

      I am clearly here today in our advocacy role, and I have to tell you that the state of black Americans is very bad. In fact, our future is at risk.

      In January, the National Urban League published its annual State of Black America report. It documents continuing black disadvantage.

      Let me share with you some of the facts about black life in America. I know that this knowledgeable audience is familiar with them—but I also know that they cannot be repeated often enough.

      —Half of all black children grow up in poverty.

      —Over a third of all blacks are poor—two million more blacks became poor in the past dozen years.

      —Almost two million black workers are jobless—over twelve percent of the black work force, and a rate two-and-a-half times that for whites.

      —Black family income is only 58 percent that of whites; the typical black family earns less than the government itself says is needed for a decent but modest living standard.

      —Black households have less than one-tenth the wealth of white households.

      In this high-tech, information age, black dropout rates in some cities are higher than black graduation rates, and there has been an alarming decline in the numbers of blacks entering college.

      In virtually all of those areas, black disadvantage is worse than it has been at any time since the mid-1970s.

      At the same time, I should acknowledge the fact that some blacks have made extraordinary progress.

      Today, black judges preside over court rooms where civil rights demonstrators were once sentenced in the 1950s. Black executives now help shape policies of corporations that once wouldn t hire blacks. Black professionals live in formerly all-white suburbs and earn middle class incomes.

      But they share with their poorer brothers and sisters the bond of blackness—the fact that whether affluent or disadvantaged, all blacks suffer from racism.

      Racism need not be violent, like the murder of a black truck driver in Texas by police officers, or the actions of a mob in Howard Beach.

      It can take subtler forms that affect all blacks—from the teenage kid denied a job in a downtown store because of racial stereotypes to the son of the black doctor who s stopped by police because he s driving Dad s Mercedes and they just assume a young black behind the wheel of that kind of car stole it.

      Recently, we ve seen surveys that document the harassment of black managers in corporate America, and their perceptions of a racial ceiling that limits their potential.

      So despite the often-proclaimed statements that we are finally a color-blind society, I have to tell you that we are very far . . . very far . . . from achieving that goal.

      And let me take this opportunity to say that Congress action last week in overriding the veto of the Civil Rights Restoration Act helps move us just that little bit closer to our goal.

      Your vote to override is important for the future of black people and the entire nation. It endorsed the proposition that federal money should not subsidize discrimination in any of its forms.

      And it sends a bi-partisan message that when it comes to civil rights, America will allow no loopholes. . . .

      In the 1980s, there was an extraordinary increase in poverty, in homelessness, and in other indexes of disadvantage among blacks and other minorities.

      This was due to two factors.

      One was the deep cuts in government social programs. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities studied funding for low-income programs other than entitlements and found that spending was cut by 54 percent after inflation since 1981. Subsidized housing was cut by 81 percent and training and employment services by 68 percent.

      A second factor is the economic shift in our society.

      The elimination of a substantial part of America"s manufacturing base has hit black workers hardest. Studies show they are concentrated in the most vulnerable industries and are more likely to be laid off and less likely to find comparable jobs.

      And there has been an extraordinary shrinkage in lower level jobs available to people without high educational credentials. That is the single most important factor in the troubles of the black family. . . .

      We ve found that black people with skills, education and strong family backgrounds are able to enter the mainstream today. But the other half—blacks without skills and suffering from educational deficiencies and social deficits, are increasingly locked out.

      There is a powerful myth today that the answer to such problems is self-help—that it is the sole responsibility of the black community to eradicate dysfunctional behavior and to pull itself into the mainstream.

      That"s just a myth—without basis in fact or history. I have little patience with the people who tell us to look at other groups that are making it. Black people did not come here voluntarily. No other group came in chains. Today s successful immigrant groups came to these shores with education, with a belief in the American Dream, and with substantial internal community financial resources.

      Black people have made it in America despite overwhelming odds—the rise of the new black middle class is proof of that. But far too many of us are trapped in the hopelessness and despair of urban ghettos with little hope to escape. Too many of our kids are seduced by the underground economy and sucked into crack and crime.

      While many ask why they don t stop such behavior, I have to ask what kind of society creates an environment of hopelessness and despair that drives young children into self-destructive behavior.

      The Urban League knows all about self-help and pulling yourself by your bootstraps. That s what we ve been about for 78 years. But we also know that conditions have changed in many of our communities—changed to the point where our efforts cannot possibly succeed without government intervention.

      It s all right to talk about pulling yourself by your bootstraps but not when you re talking to people who don t have boots. The conditions that allowed previous generations of black people to pull themselves up have changed. Today s young generation is too concerned with simple survival to think about long-term career choices.

      In Chicago s Cabrini public housing project, the big question for kids is: have the gangs stopped shooting so I can go out of the house. We re talking about kids whose parents keep them away from the windows so they won t be hit by stray bullets. We re talking about kids whose classmates tote automatic weapons.

      It s a new ball game out there, and those people in positions of power who won t do anything about it and who preach self-help are adding to the problem, not solving it. The black community today is mobilizing to deal with those issues. Last week I attended a meeting of community leaders drawn from across the nation to find ways to save young black men—America s most endangered group. . . .

      With a 28 percent top tax rate, can anyone really argue that a surtax or a third bracket at 35 percent is unreasonable at a time of huge national needs?

      Any prudent person invests in the future, and any responsible government does the same. There s a strange notion around that when government builds a bridge it is making a capital investment in the future, but when it invests in a job training program, it is current spending. It s not—it is a long-term investment in human capital.

      By not making those investments today, we re increasing tomorrow s deficits. Between 700,000 and 900,000 kids drop out of school every year, and the ultimate cost to society in lost earnings and lost tax revenues comes to $240 billion over their lifetimes! And that doesn t even include the bill for crime, social welfare programs, and other costs.

      I find it hard to explain why so many businessmen understand that while others do not. The Committee for Economic Development includes some of the top corporate leaders, and they ve urged heavy investments in child development programs and in education.

      They point out that one dollar spent in child health programs—the same programs the Administration wants to cut—saves almost $5 in expenditures down the road.

      When hard-nosed businessmen start talking about the need for nutrition, health, and educational programs, you know the message is beginning to get across that government action is necessary. Only government can train and educate our young people, keep them healthy, and give them access to the social services they ve got to have if they re to make decent lives for themselves. . . .

      But today, I do want to suggest that such investments in the nation s future make sense . . . are do-able . . . and should cross party and ideological lines.

      Winston Churchill is the model of a conservative statesman, and he once said: “There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.”

      And George Will, the conservative columnist, wrote: “It is cheaper to feed the child than jail the man. Persons who do not understand this are not conservatives, just dim.”

      So I don t want to see the fate of black Americans embroiled in false liberal versus conservative ideological disputes. I would hope that all of us have the sense to understand that government has the responsibility and the ability to solve the social problems that endanger our economy and our society.

      And I would hope that all of us have the compassion and the human concern to want to do something about children who face bleak futures and adults who have no jobs, no homes, no hope. Social and economic policy has been in a state of paralysis over the past decade.

      We now find ourselves having to make up for lost time and lost resources. A generation of young black people was lost in the 1980s—doomed to failure and to marginality because they didn t have access to the opportunities they needed to become functioning members of our changing society.

      We can t let that wastage of human resources continue. We can t let our society continue to drift apart, separated by unbridgeable gaps in education, income, skills, class and race.

      We are at a period in time when the currents of the past and future converge . . . when we are positioned to make decisions and implement policies that determine whether future generations of poor and black people are consigned to the outer borders of society or are drawn into the mainstream.

      As Congressmen, as leaders, and as citizens, you have the power to make the right choices and the right decisions.

      I have faith that you will.

Source: Commentary, January 1988, “On Being Black and Middle Class.”
Source: Vital Speeches of the Day, August 1, 1988.

* * *


Universalium. 2010.

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