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.

Guiding Children from Ghetto Poverty to Stable Adulthood

It does not, or certainly should not, need to be said that it is very difficult for any individual to lift themselves out of poverty, let alone lift themselves out of the often-degrading lifestyle of poverty in the ghetto.  Republicans are constantly saying that if you’re poor and unsuccessful it’s your fault.  As though we lived in a land of great and equal opportunity.  But that is not the case.

Nevertheless, examples do exist.  Life stories I have read show that it is possible and suggest what the conditions are for it to happen.  I will be referring to people’s lives documented in two books:  Rosa Lee and The Tragic Life of Robert Peace.

Rosa Lee was a woman of the ghetto with many of the dysfunctions often associated with the ghetto lifestyle … drugs, shoplifting, prostitution, etc.  She had eight children, most of whom followed in her footsteps.  However, two of the boys did not.  Indeed they never participated in drugs or other dysfunctional activity and became upstanding adults with steady jobs.

Why the difference in the two outcomes?  There were two major factors.  Even as young children, Eric and Alvin, the two boys who “made it,” were for different reasons extremely embarrassed and even repulsed by their mother’s lifestyle and swore that they would make a different life for themselves.  Alvin was struck by shame and humiliation about living on welfare.  Eric felt anger and disgust about his mother’s shoplifting.  Both reactions heightened by taunts, actual and feared, from other children.

The second factor was that because there was something different about them, both attracted the attention of an adult who became an important mentor, a teacher in one case, a social worker in the other.  These mentors showed the boys that they believed in them, and that a different life was open to them if they applied themselves.  Although both became teenage fathers and dropped out of school, they entered the military and afterwards held down solid, primarily government, jobs.

The other example is the life of Robert Peace.  Peace was also a child of the ghetto.  While his mother was a strong and positive influence in his life, which resulted in him achieving academic and career success, his father was a negative influence, teaching Robert the ways and lures of the ghetto drug culture, which Robert soaked up like a receptive sponge.

Robert’s hard work in school earned him a full scholarship to Yale, where he continued to excel.  After graduating he went home to teach at the high school he’d attended.  However, at the same time as he attained this success, he remained deeply enmeshed in the ghetto’s drug culture and became a dealer  He was murdered at age 30 in a drug-related shooting.

While these are only two examples, I think that they offer some important lessons for those trying to improve the lot of ghetto children.  First, if children, either because of the influence a parent or some other mentor or due to some experience of their own, apply themselves to their studies, their natural intelligence will be watered and they will succeed in their studies  and gain self-confidence.  

Having written the previous sentence, it sounds like a real “duh!” statement.  And yet it isn’t.  The vast majority of children living in poverty, not just the ghetto, don’t have either a positive parent influence, a positive teacher/mentor influence, or some life experience that makes them determined to get out of the ghetto though an education.

How sad!  But you can’t blame parents living in poverty because they are who they are.  They are a creation of the social circumstances in which they were born and grew up.  Without strong programs to bring parents into the education process … and there have been successes … this just isn’t going to happen.  

The successful programs prove though that with sufficient public/government will and the resulting funding, it is possible.  But such government programs almost always lack funding.  The money is there; it’s just a matter of priorities.  Personally, I think the nation would be better served if the cost of several new fighter jet for the military …$412M for a single F-22 or $100M for a single F-35 … were diverted instead to such programs.

We all know what a sad state most urban ghetto schools are in, not just physically but more importantly in the utter lack of motivation provided.  The vast majority either don’t know how, or just don’t try, to transform the raw material that comes through their doors from children who have no interest in education, to children who seek it out and thrive on it.  

Again, though, there are schools that have been successful in achieving this transformation.  So we know it is not the child’s intelligence or background that is the insurmountable barrier … although the ghetto background is certainly something to be overcome.  It is first and foremost the attitude of educators and teachers, and secondly their abilities, that are the real obstacles and that need to be transformed.  This has to be a priority of federal, state, and local government.  The nation’s future is its children.

But if we look at the contrasting examples of Rosa Lee’s two children, Eric and Alvin, and Robert Peace, we see that providing a child with a good education is not enough,  There is a saying that you can take the child out of the ghetto, but you can’t take the ghetto out of the child.  In the case of Robert Peace, that certainly proved to be the case.  But not with Eric and Alvin.

Robert Peace was addicted (not in the literal sense) to the ghetto drug culture.  Rosa Lee’s other children were literally addicted.  Eric and Alvin, on the other hand, were repulsed and embarrassed by all the various social dysfunctions they encountered growing up with Rosa Lee.  What does one do, what does a society do, with this lesson.?

I guess the first question is how atypical is the Robert Peace experience?  If one looks at others who have come out of the ghetto background and established successful careers, how many continue to be caught in the harmful elements of ghetto culture as Peace was?  I don’t know the answer.  But my guess is that for most it is not a problem.  It is probably the rare person who is both caught up in something like the drug trade and also has a parent influence who pushes the value of education.

But even assuming that his story is atypical and that most do not get pulled under by those forces, it would still make sense for the children and society if schools placed appropriate emphasis on taking the ghetto out of the child.  Show the child not just that education is exciting and that the child is capable, but that a change in lifestyle is also necessary to free themselves from the dysfunctional aspects of the ghetto, all the while remembering that it’s not all negative.  The point should be that they need to show themselves self-respect by removing the degrading elements of the lifestyle from their lives.  Operation Push tried to do this, I think.  I’m sure there have been other programs.  But it needs to be part of the school program.

The United Negro College Fund has as their motto, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”  How true.  Yet even in the 21st century, the vast majority of urban ghetto children’s minds are wasted, both to their detriment and the detriment of our nation.  Which is not to say that many other children’s minds aren’t wasted!  A top priority of government and our society has to be to end this waste.

The Fallacy of the War on Drugs - Getting to the Root of the Problem

There is no question but that the drug abuse epidemic that has swept across our nation is a catastrophe.  It is a catastrophe for those who are addicted and are subject to its cravings.  It is a catastrophe for their loved ones, who suffer in innumerable ways.  It is a catastrophe for our economy because of the lost productive value of those who are addicted and the cost of dealing with the drug problem.  Estimates of the total overall costs of substance abuse in the United States, including productivity and health- and crime-related costs, exceed $600 billion annually.  

Recognizing the importance of getting people off drugs, the government has engaged in a policy aptly named, “The War on Drugs.”  Its concept is one of prohibition ... whether by criminalizing the use and sale of drugs and thus deterring such activity, or Nancy Reagan’s campaign of, “Just say no.”  

What simple-minded approaches to a deep-seated problem!  First of all, we know from our experience with alcohol prohibition that it not only doesn’t achieve the goal of reducing consumption, it has an actual negative impact by creating a whole illegal subculture around the manufacture and distribution of the substance.  And that has been our experience with the war on drugs as well.

Then they decided that the deterrent aspect needed to be strengthened by making prison sentences mandatory, even for relatively minor possession charges.  Well, our prisons have filled to overflowing, and yet it has made absolutely no impact on the demand for drugs.  

The criminalization approach to drug control and Nancy Reagan’s appeal to people to just say no have failed for the same reason.  As Time said in a report, “Americans tend to think of drug addiction as a failure of character.”  Such approaches assume that one has the ability to make a rational choice whether to do something or not.  Yet that is clearly not the case when it comes to drug abuse.

Others who recognize that it is not a failure of character, view drug addiction as primarily a biological problem relating to the chemical process of addiction.  But that is also looking at the wrong place.  That certainly describes why addiction is so hard to break out of, and why treatment rather than incarceration is often more appropriate, but it does not begin to help understand why people choose drugs to alter their mental state, which is where addiction and abuse begins.

Drug abuse is at root a societal problem.  People want to alter their mental state because they feel painfully insecure and thus unhappy.  It is an indictment of the failure of our society to raise children who feel secure, psychologically, and grow up be secure adults.  There is an abundance of academic research stretching back decades that finds that, to quote from an NIH report, “factors such as peer pressure, physical and sexual abuse, stress, and quality of parenting can greatly influence the occurrence of drug abuse and the escalation to addiction in a person’s life.”  These are all factors that induce feelings of insecurity in children.  The same can be said for almost every type of addictive behavior.

No one chooses to become a drug addict, or an alcoholic for that matter.  The problem is not that addicts have less moral fiber or character flaws.  The problem is that people who choose drugs or alcohol to alter/escape their mental state are typically people who are in agony.  They are suffering from feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem that are so intense, even if they are outwardly successful, that they feel that their only escape is through drugs or alcohol.  Yes, there are those who fall into drug addiction accidentally because of peer pressure, but the vast majority are trying to escape a world in which they can find no peace and security.

Indeed, one can argue that almost all of our social problems flow from a failure to raise secure children who go on to become secure adults.  Assuming that our government or a local community understood this and wanted to address the root cause, how would it go about it?  How could it change the pattern of insecure parents raising insecure children, with the situation repeating itself without end?

In my book, Raising a Happy Child, I note that it is a myth that childhood is a happy, carefree time. Typically it is neither carefree nor happy; it is instead fraught with insecurity. Raising a Happy Child seeks to change this fact of human development.

Why do children suffer this fate? What becomes of our lives is overwhelmingly a function of learned experience ... from our family, our peers, and the larger culture ... but first and foremost from our parents. The vast majority of parents are good people and would not do anything intentionally to harm their child.  But parents are people who are a function of their own upbringing and learned experience. They have their own fears, frustrations, angers, and desires.  And they see things through the lens of that experience and those emotions, which in turn impacts how they interact with their children. 

The result is children who do not feel loved unconditionally, are as a consequence insecure, and grow up to become insecure adults who do not love themselves unconditionally.  This is the primal basis of our fears and neuroses.

But this does not mean that parents should simply lavish praise on their children, give them what they want, or be uncritical of their children.  Direction and criticism are important parental functions; the question is how they are given, in what context. Raising a Happy Child seeks to provide parents with the means to step outside themselves, to be able to experience their child, themselves, and the world around them mostly free of their learned experience and emotions, thus enabling them to provide their children at all times with the nurturing and unconditional love they need to be happy and secure. 

The book then guides parents through the critical development stages of a child's life, providing advice on how to address the significant issues that arise at each stage within the context of unconditional love.  Raising a Happy Child  seeks nothing less than to fundamentally alter the quality of the relationship between parents and children, and thus change the way children relate to themselves and the world around them.  For more on the book and sample text, click the book's cover in the sidebar.  

What government, civic leaders, religious leaders ... anyone who is in a position of influence should do is read this book and encourage all parents to read the book and follow its advice.  Beyond that, government must take action to reduce social problems that exacerbate these issues, especially the failure of our schools.

Raising a Happy Child assumes that there is nothing fundamental that we can change about the competitive, consumption-driven society we live in.  I think that is beyond hope.  But governments and parents can take steps to improve the quality of life (and I don’t mean the number of possessions one has) that the average person experiences, insuring that everyone feels part of the larger community, equal in opportunity, and that everyone is nourished by their immediate family.