America’s Ongoing Tragedy

I am not a fool nor do I avoid unpleasant truths.  I have always been well aware that, despite the stirring words of the Declaration of Independence and the many laws that have been passed over the years to decrease the instances of discrimination faced by our Black fellow citizens, Black Americans continue to face a life experience full of prejudice and discrimination.  Many of my posts refer to this fact of life in America.

Recently, though, I finished reading the classic W. E. DuBois book, The Souls of Black Folk.  This book has done for me what no newspaper article about a police shooting or hate crime or poverty could do.  It has allowed me to feel the souls of Black Americans through its first-hand depiction of black life from slavery through the end of the 19th century.  

It has allowed me to experience the hope that they experienced with emancipation and each following promise of equality.  And the ultimate devastating realization that each hope was an illusion.  

And I’m not just talking about the Southern experience.  While the Northern experience was different, better, in many ways, pervasive prejudice and discrimination was still present.

This post will not again list the instances of both government … even Federal … as well as private prejudice and discrimination.  Suffice it to say that despite an improvement in the living standard of Black Americans over the years, the lives of most remain mired in poverty, degraded living conditions, and inadequate education.  Even for those who have “made it” and are solidly middle-class, they still face constant prejudice and discrimination.

We … both the government and the dominant white culture … owe Black Americans, finally, a real chance to be part of the American dream, not just materially, but to live in a country where, in the words of the Declaration, “all men are created equal … and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  To live in a country that offers true equal opportunity to all its citizens.

How do we get there from where we are now and have always been?  To achieve true equality, a country must be free of prejudice and discrimination.  That’s a tall order given our history and current state.

We must first acknowledge that this prejudice and resulting discrimination has very deep roots and exists throughout our society.  The South may be more infamous for this, but it exists everywhere.  Even the most liberal among us has some racial prejudice within him, if he can be honest.

It was thought by many, or at least some policy wonks, that integration, especially of the schools, would reduce if not eliminate prejudice and discrimination.  And while that has to some extent been the case, that effect has been too limited, too localized, and very inefficient.

The whole experience with multiculturalism did not work either.  While it bolstered self-identification and pride, it reinforced or even created a feeling of difference between groups.  It was in many ways counter-productive.

No, the country must do what it should have done at the end of the Civil War, and what we forced Germany to do at the end of WWII.  We must approach the question of slavery and racism the way we forced Germany to approach their Nazi past and anti-semitism.

I can hear people arguing that people are different now; things aren’t as they were at the end of the Civil War.  Yet on many important dimensions that reflect our attitude about race, we really aren’t much further along than we were then.  Yes, we have many laws on the books.  But the attitude of people and society has nevertheless not fundamentally changed.  Something may not be politically correct anymore, but it is still present behind closed doors.  The country is full of unreconstructed racists and Southern revanchists.

The pillars of the de-nazification program in Germany were: education and keeping Nazis out of government and cultural leadership positions.  Education had two principle components.  One was sticking the noses of the German population in the facts of “the Jewish solution.”  Whether it was watching documentary footage or being led through concentration camps, every German of every age was forced to face the inhumane horror that their government and their fellow citizens, including often their family members, had visited upon Jews and other people that had been classified as undesirable or subhuman by the Nazis.  

The other education component was producing material for students of all ages that both debunked Nazi propaganda about the Jews and others and put forth the facts of the important role that Jews and others had played in the development of Germany, both its culture and economy.

Regarding the job action, to keep Nazis out of important government and other leadership positions, all Germans had to complete the Fragebogen, which inquired into their activities during the Hitler period.  The idea was that Nazi perspectives should not creep into the new government.  While that was indeed achieved, it is the case that many ex-Nazis made it into government and other positions, often with the knowledge of the allies.  They just didn’t bring their Nazi-era beliefs with them.  I should note that with the pressure of the Cold War and the program’s unpopularity amongst Germans, the program was dropped in 1951.

So how could we apply this German experience to our own history of slavery and racism?  If someone argues that the two situations are not at all comparable and my suggestion is off the wall, I would respond that they really don’t understand the impact of slavery and racism in America.

I am not going to attempt to describe what such programs would look like or how one could keep racists out of important positions.  I will just say that with regards to education, it is important that racial stereotypes be debunked as not having to do with race but with slavery.  For example, DuBois addresses the sexual looseness of many Blacks and the extent of single-parent (female) families.  He notes that this stems from the slavery experience not a racial characteristic.  

Marriage between slaves was not permitted.  Men and women were encouraged to co-habit and have children, thus producing new slaves, but there was no formality, no permanence to the relationship.   These were socially loose relationships.  Either the master could separate the man and woman at will or the man could cohabit with another woman, which was encouraged by the system.  

While the end of slavery and the influence of Black churches helped build the concept of the Black two-parent family, the forces of economics, prejudice, and the slavery experience/training kept the number of stable two-parent Black families down. The pattern which was established during 200 years of slavery is thus to a large extent still with us.

Other aspects of ghetto life are the result of ongoing prejudice and discrimination, not, as many especially on the right would have it, Black culture.  Drugs, crime, poverty, terrible living conditions are not the fault of Blacks or Black culture. They are the direct result of the prejudice and discrimination that continues to exist.  Yes, Blacks could do more to address these plagues, but they cannot be faulted.  They have been beaten down for more than four centuries.

My point is that we do not just need a discussion of race.  We need something far more drastic to once and for all root out the prejudice and discrimination that exists in all corners of our society.  Only then will the dream of Martin Luther King be fulfilled: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’”

More Proof That the Problems of Inner Cities Are Not Caused by Black Culture

In an earlier post of mine, “The Cause of Urban Ghetto Violence Cannot Be Placed on a Failure of the Black Community,” I argued that while many, especially Republicans, criticize Blacks for the violence in the urban ghetto community, that causal connection is false.  It is not a function of Black culture.  It is instead the product of poverty and the soul-crushing experience of life in the modern urban ghetto.  This is what has caused the supposed “failure” of Black culture and families.  An argument supported by the existence of violence and gangs in every urban ghetto around the world.

Here's more proof.  Recently a friend shared with me something startling from a book he was reading, There Are No Children Here, about the devastating life in a broken Chicago housing project - the Henry Horner Homes - in the 1980s.  This project was completed and first occupied in 1957.  Describing her experience as an early resident in the 1960s, the children’s grandmother, Lelia Mae, “told the children, to their disbelief, that families used to keep their doors unlocked at night.  During the summers, she told them, they might even spend the nights outside, sleeping on the lawn.  The old days she spoke of seemed bright and cheery.”

And Lelia Mae’s experience was not an anomaly, as shown by a New York Times article in 2009 about lives in the early years of the city’s housing projects.  Here two quotes:  “In the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, a sense of pride and community permeated. Far from dangerous, the projects were viewed as nurturing.”  “Doors were kept unlocked as kids bounced from one apartment to the next on rainy Saturdays to watch Laurel and Hardy and Hopalong Cassidy on television. People did the right thing, or they could force you to leave.”

What a difference from life in the projects in the mid-80s when the book was written.  What a difference from life in the projects, or generally in the inner city ghetto, today.

What has caused this extreme deterioration in the quality of life for everyone living in the inner city ghetto?  (I know that’s probably not a politically correct phrase, but that is in fact what it is.) 

Once again, it is not a function of Black culture or a failure of Black one-parent households.  Or even just of poverty.  All of that was present in the 1950s.  The experience of Lelia Mae when she first lived in the Henry Horner Homes, together with other stories such as those noted in The New York Times article, is proof positive that the cause of the problem does not have the word “Black” attached to it.

Actually, just the opposite.  It was the strength, faith, values, and resilience of Black culture that enabled generations to endure poverty and discrimination in the aftermath of slavery and still retain a remarkable life-affirming attitude and quality of life.

So what happened?  The deterioration was caused instead in large part by the morphing of black social gangs with their limited turf violence into criminal drug syndicates.  This had two consequences.  It brought the violence that marks the battle for money and turf in any criminal environment, whether it’s within the Italian-American mafia or between Black gangs.  And it made drugs readily available to vulnerable ghetto residents.  When gangs such as El Rukn, the most notorious and violent of the Black Chicago gangs of the period, brought heroin into the ghetto in the mid80s, followed by other highly-addictive drugs, things got even worse … the violence more pervasive, the addiction darker.

The reader may ask, “Why haven’t Italian-American neighborhoods been devastated by mafia-related violence and drugs like inner city neighborhoods?  Isn’t the difference due to the nature of Black culture?”

No, the reason is that the mafia kept their drugs and violence mostly away from where they lived, seeking out instead vulnerable communities.  But the zone of activity of El Rukn and other Black gangs was limited to the inner city ghetto because that was the only community available to them, as Blacks, to infiltrate.  Also, the poverty and joblessness in the ghetto created a vulnerable group susceptible to the addictive quality of drugs, despite the strength of Black culture.

The other prominent cause were changes in the way the housing projects and welfare were administered.  Incomes were capped in 1971, forcing less poor tenants to move out.  Funds were cut in many housing agencies creating serious, ongoing, maintenance problems which degraded the buildings and apartments.  In Chicago, because of funding cuts, tenants were no longer carefully screened resulting in people with criminal records moving in.  In general, the projects stopped being tightly administered.

Also, until the early 1960s, the black family had been stable for decades, with roughly 80% being headed by two parents.  That changed dramatically in the 1960s due to a combination of the disappearance of jobs traditionally held by many low-skilled Black men and the new welfare rule which prohibited aid to families if there was an able-bodied man in the house.  This rule forced many unemployed men to move out so their families could receive aid.  

Although the rule was declared unconstitutional by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1968, it continued to be used in many localities for years.  For example, I know for a fact that it was used in Chicago, where I was a Legal Aid lawyer in the early 70s, even if a man visited occasionally.

All of this combined to greatly change the nature of the housing project community and the environment they lived in.  It changed it from safe and nurturing to dangerous and demeaning, open to infiltration by the gangs and drugs.

Previous eras of inner-city ghetto poverty were hard, and certainly many black men found it impossible to have a semblance of self-esteem in that environment.  Lorraine Hansberry’s Raisin in the Sun is eloquent testimony to that struggle.  

But this was something new. This violence turned the ghetto into a war zone, both in the sense of people fearing for their lives and in the sense that the worst-hit neighborhoods looked like war zones.  That and the epidemic of drug addiction the gangs fostered turned the ghetto into a truly degrading place for humans to live and it has spawned generations of damaged, highly dysfunctional children who grow up to be lost adults.  

How could anyone grow up in that environment and not be so impacted?  Yes, of course there are those who manage to rise above it and escape, whether it’s because of an exceptional parent or the good fortune of having had a mentor in school who believed in them.  But no part of society should be so structured that it is the exceptions who grow to become healthy, reasonably fulfilled, responsible adults and citizens.  

It should be everyone’s birthright in our democracy to have an equal opportunity to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.  And as the Declaration of Independence states, it is the role of government to secure that opportunity.  It is society’s responsibility … for government is just an expression of the society from which it springs.

But as I said in the previous referred-to post, society prefers the ease of finger-pointing at Black culture to place blame.  “If it wasn’t the fault of the poor, if the problem wasn’t self-inflicted, then the larger society would have both a social and a moral obligation to correct the situation, to remove or at least ameliorate the causal factors.  

But we do not want to drastically change the way our societies are structured, the way resources are distributed by government, the deeply embedded racism against the ethnic poor, and the pervasive discrimination directed towards all poor.  And so life for the poor continues more or less as it always has, even while receiving meager assistance in the U.S. and other countries from the government.

This is just one more example of the impact of the lack of humanity in our society  (see my post, “Healing Our Nation, Healing Ourselves”).  And our nation, as well as the rest of the world, will not move forward unless the essence of humanity is rediscovered by us humans, individually and collectively.”

We have so far to go.  And after the recent election, we have just taken many steps backward.

The Cause of Urban Ghetto Violence Cannot Be Placed on a Failure of the Black Community

There are many, especially Republicans, who criticize Blacks for the violence in the urban ghetto community, which mostly falls on themselves.  The point is either made or implied that it has something to do with Black culture, that it is a failing of Black mothers to raise their children properly, or that there are too few two-parent households.

While there can be no arguing against the facts of ghetto violence, the causal connections often made have only superficial merit.  If one looks at urban slums/ghettos around the world, one finds gangs, drugs, and violence.  It makes no difference if one is in Asia, Africa, Europe, Los Angeles or New York City.  

Regardless what the race, color, or ethnicity of the urban ghetto dweller is … the incidence of violence in the urban ghetto is a universal fact.  It is instead the crushing, de-humanizing impact of urban ghetto poverty that creates a seedbed for violence.

In most global urban ghettos, the poor are also predominantly immigrants or migrants.  One could even argue that Black Americans are still to a large extent immigrants (forced) because they have not been successfully assimilated into important aspects of the larger culture.  This aggravates the crushing impact of the urban ghetto because people also feel, with good reason, that they are not welcomed, that they have no place in the larger society.

That the combination of poverty and urbanization should produce such an outcome should not be surprising.  And the impact of globalization has actually made it worse.  

Maya Angelou, in her book Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now, says that the children of the ghetto are the way they are because they do not experience caring, self-respect, and courtesy in the home.  That has much validity, but that experience itself is in turn the product of poverty and the soul-crushing life of the urban ghetto.

I’m not going to go into the sociological reasons why the combination of poverty and urban ghetto produce violence.  Untold books and articles have been written on the subject.  The reasons are well known and the facts inescapable.  Yet we as a society, and all societies around the world, choose to point the finger at the people themselves and/or their cultures rather than the situations the poor find themselves in because that is what is convenient for us.  

If it wasn’t the fault of the poor, if the problem wasn’t self-inflicted, then the larger society would have both a social and a moral obligation to correct the situation, to remove or at least ameliorate the causal factors.  But we do not want to drastically change the way our societies are structured, the way resources are distributed by government, the deeply embedded racism against the ethnic poor, and the pervasive discrimination directed towards all poor.  And so life for the poor continues more or less as it always has, even while receiving meager assistance in the U.S. and other countries from the government.

This is just one more example of the impact of the lack of humanity in our society  (see my post, “Healing Our Nation, Healing Ourselves”).  And our nation, as well as the rest of the world, will not move forward unless the essence of humanity is rediscovered by us humans, individually and collectively.