Black Poverty

Thirty years after the Supreme Court ruled against public school segregation in the case of Brown V. Board of Education and 20 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 formally outlawed segregation and discrimination throughout the land, the social cancer we call poverty has tightened its grip on a large and growing number of Black Americans. Unless we as a nation make a sharp break with the inadequate policies of the past--both Democratic and Republican alike--a very large number of Blacks will remain locked outside the mainstream of American society.

Not all Blacks have suffered in recent years, some clearly experienced social mobility. Between 1967 and 1977 the number of Black families with incomes greater than $25,000 (in constant 1977 dollars) increased by twofold.

Unfortunately, the condition of many Blacks did not improve during this period. The Reagan Administration has virtually ignored the problem; indeed its retreat on civil rights enforcement and its budget cuts have exacerbated it. Yet even if a sympathetic Democrat such as Walter Mondale were to win office in 1984, the outlook for the Black poor still appears quite bleak. For the reinstatement of the traditional civil rights policies will probably not affect a large number of Blacks who will most likely remain below the poverty line, locked outside the mainstream of American society.

According to the Bureau of the Census in 1984 some 34 percent of all Black Americans lived below the poverty line a rate almost three and a half times that of whites. More ominously the number of poor Blacks appears to be increasing in 1981 fully 45 percent of all Black children under age 18 were living below the poverty line Black leaders and intellectuals typically blame the continued existence of racial discrimination for the high rate of Black poverty. Yet given the fact that poverty appears to be on the increase in recent years, racism as a causal explanation simply fails Certainly racism did not increase so drastically over the past decade such that the Black unemployment rate would rise from 10.3 percent in 1972 to 18.9 percent in 1982 or such that the Black teenage unemployment rate would rise from about 28 percent in 1972 to 48 percent in 1982.

Recently another interpretation has gained currency which sees the horrible conditions of impoverished Blacks as largely the result of the maladaptive, chaotic, cultural patterns of low-income Blacks. This view holds that the high Black poverty rate persists because lower-income Blacks exhibit a set of attitudes and norms which prevent them from escaping poverty. Proponents of this view single out one phenomenon in particular as evidence of the self-perpetuating nature of Black poverty; unwed pregnancy. Indeed in 1981 fully 55 percent of all Black children were born out of wedlock, up from 24 percent in 1962 and 38 percent in 1970.

However, before accepting the cultural view we must first ask what precipitated this decline in familial norms and attitudes among the Black poor. And here we see that the "cultural" interpretation fails much like the one of "racism." In the last 30 years there have been many developments such as demographic shifts and changes in the economy which have had a profound impact on the lives of a large number of Black Americans. Contrary to the notion that the attitudes and behaviors of lower-income Blacks are internal and largely unrelated to external influences such as the economy. It is these developments which explain the insistence of such a high rate of poverty among Blacks.

As recently as 1940, 41 percent of all Blacks lived on farms Largely because of the mechanization of agriculture, however, millions of Black tenant farmers found themselves displaced from their already precarious positions. Some went to Southern cities, a large number of them migrated to the North. By 1970 then the number of Blacks on farms had declined to less than 5 percent Under ordinary circumstances we could expect such a massive social dislocation to have an adverse impact on Black family stability, we could also expect that it would take some time for Blacks to become adjusted to urban life just as it took time for white immigrant groups to make the adjustment. But unfortunately, Blacks encountered even more difficulty than normally expected not just because of racism, but also because of resent changes in the job market which reduced the demand for unskilled labor, removing that crucial rung which white immigrant groups used to escape poverty much earlier in American history.

So when Blacks arrived en masse in the nation's central cities these cities were in deep economic decline and had few opportunities open for their new citizens. Examples abound. Between 1948 and 1977 Chicago lost over 450,000 jobs in the manufacturing, wholesale and retail sectors but gained only about 50,000 jobs in the service sector. Since 1948, New York City lost 600,000 jobs in the same sectors-including about 450,000 jobs since 1967-while the offsetting gains in New York amounted to only 30,000 jobs in the service sector since 1967. The story is much the same in other cities with large concentrations of Blacks such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, Gary, and Newark. When we consider the toll exacted by the persistence of high unemployment (and underemployment) and the tragic fact that many Blacks, frustrated by failure, have simply stopped looking for work, the "cultural argument that Black family instability and unwed pregnancy are unrelated to external factors seems quite absurd indeed.

The solution to this human tragedy of unemployment lies simply in employment. There must be a dramatic increase in the number of jobs available for low-skilled Black workers. Because of the inability of the private sector to generate enough jobs, the only remaining alternative is for a massive federal jobs program. Unlike previous job programs, this one would not be a temporary program of make-work but rather part of a major effort to improve urban transportation expand the supply of low-and moderate-income housing and to rebuild the national infrastructure of bridges, reservoirs, roads, and highways.

Many will argue against the necessity of such a direct federal effort and instead will advocate massive investment in education and job training programs so that lower-income Blacks can obtain the skills necessary to acquire decent jobs. (This in fact, was the approach of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.) However, that proposal has a number of fundamental flaws. First of all, even if such an education and retraining effort succeeded, there is very little evidence to suggest that there are enough jobs available to employ most of the new workers. As I noted before, the number of new jobs opening in the service sector in the central cities is dwarfed by the number of jobs which have left the cities.

Furthermore, the view which assumes that education can play a major role in helping groups to escape poverty fundamentally misinterprets American social history. In fact, no immigrant group--not even those known for educational attainment like the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Jews--escaped poverty through education Rather these groups first moved from poverty to the upper working-class. Then they used education to hasten their entry to the middle and upper middle classes.

I am under no illusions about the popularity it the likely enactment of the policies advocated here, but neither am I under any illusions about the plight of the Black poor. To those who say that there will be no massive federal jobs program. I simply answer that in the absence of such a program, there will be no improvement in the horrible conditions which the Black poor suffer, period.

The civil rights legislation of the 1960s opened up new opportunities for many Blacks; during the 1970's the ranks of the Black middle class expanded greatly Our nation must now go beyond limited policies like affirmative action to institute the requisite economic reforms to assist impoverished Blacks. If the present trend continues, perhaps one half of the Black community will soon be poor. No development could be more tragic for these Blacks; no development could be more tragic for America.

Robert A. Watts is a senior in Quincy House and a member of the Academy Homes Committee of Phillips Brooks House.