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Racial Inequality and the Black Ghetto by Alexander Polikoff

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Racial Inequality and the Black Ghetto by Alexander Polikoff Poverty & Race PRRAC POVERTY & RACE RESEARCH ACTION COUNCIL November/December 2004 Volume 13: Number 6 Racial Inequality and the Black Ghetto by Alexander Polikoff Reading Jason DeParle’s new a nation-threatening matter? Bear with ter still more personal acquisition by book American Dream (Viking), one me, and I’ll try to explain. the most favored. is struck once again by the unremit- First, take small comfort from There is no single explanation for ting, intergenerational persistence of small numbers. In an earlier New York America’s character change. But a ghetto poverty. From W.E.B. DuBois Times piece, DeParle makes this point major factor was disaffection by white through James Baldwin, Kenneth about the small ghetto population: ethnics and blue-collar workers, long Clark, and Douglas Massey and Nancy core elements of the New Deal coali- Denton, in compelling reportage by The poverty and disorder of tion. Disaffection over what? The Nicholas Lemann, Alex Kotlowitz and the inner cities lacerate a larger answer is over blacks trapped in ghet- DeParle, in endless statistical analy- civic fabric, drawing people from tos trying to penetrate white neighbor- ses, ethnographic studies and academic shared institutions like subways, hoods. Hubert Humphrey, civil rights research papers, the point is made over buses, parks, schools and even champion, not Richard Nixon, with his and over again: The concentrated pov- cities themselves.... Perhaps coded anti-black speeches and shame- erty of urban ghettos condemns gen- most damaging of all is the ef- less pandering to Southern segrega- eration after generation of black fect that urban poverty has on tionists, suffered the consequences. Americans to what Clark called lives race relations. It is like a poison There were other 1968 election issues, of impotence and despair. in the national groundwater that to be sure, but a number of historians Yet, some may object, only 2.8 is producing a thousand de- make a powerful case that it was fear million black Americans live in con- formed fruits... of blacks from ghettos “invading” centrated urban poverty — metropoli- white neighborhoods that finally sun- tan census tracts with poverty popula- What deformed fruits? Among (Please turn to page 2) tions of 40% or more. That’s only them is nothing less than breaking up 1% of Americans. Sad, to be sure, the coalition that birthed the New Deal but not a big enough deal to get worked and the Civil Rights Movement, a up about unless you’re a bleeding heart political sea-change that began in the CONTENTS: liberal. The country has more press- World War II years, gained strength A National ing matters to attend to. over the next two decades, then led to Gautreaux Program .. 1 Some 170 years ago, Alexis de Richard Nixon’s election in 1968, fol- Voting Rights Toqueville called racial inequality lowed in 1980 by the triumph of and Race ................... 3 Ronald Reagan. In November 1968, “the most formidable evil threatening Voting Rights the future of the United States.” American character changed. From a for Immigrants.......... 5 Toqueville went on to prophesy that nation concerned with equality we Our New Board the evil of racial inequality would not became a nation that closed the doors be resolved — indeed, that it would on school and housing desegregation. Members ................. 19 eventually bring America to disaster. Under Reagan, we became an uncar- Resources ................. 20 How could that be? How could 1% ing nation, obsessed with the free Index to Volume 13 .. 26 of Americans, confined to ghettos, be market and with crafting rules to fos- Poverty & Race Research Action Council • 3000 Connecticut Avenue NW • Suite 200 • Washington, DC 20008 202/387-9887 • FAX: 202/387-0764 • E-mail: [email protected] • www.prrac.org Recycled Paper (GHETTOS: Continued from page 1) role sentences. coded. White skin denotes civility, In short, as a nation we are dog- law-abidingness, and trustworthiness, dered the coalition that had given gedly pursuing a ghetto-targeted mass while black skin is strongly associated America its reigning consensus liber- incarceration policy that is both mind- with poverty, crime, incivility, and alism creed. less and destructive of traditional distrust.” In American society at large, Another example of a deformed American values. It is mindless be- most whites act like the ones Ander- fruit is the War on Drugs, targeted on cause at enormous cost we insist on son studied — their public awareness black ghettos. Since Reagan assumed sticking with a policy that is having is also color-coded, and they steer office, we have built over 1,000 new no demonstrable effect on drug avail- clear of poor blacks and keep them in prisons and jails, many crowded be- ability, drug crime rates or crime rates their ghettos. Predictable ghetto be- yond capacity. Crowded with whom? generally. It is destructive of values havior then intensifies whites’ sense of The answer is blacks from ghettos. By because it has driven us to extremities danger, validates their color-coding 1990, nearly one of every four young that no fair-minded person can defend. and drives their conduct. black males in the United States was A final example of disfigured pro- Urban economist George Galster under the control of the criminal jus- duce is the demise of welfare, but with- describes a self-reinforcing “ghetto- tice system, more in major cities (over out the jobs supposed to have been part izing cycle.” First, ghettoization in- 40% in Washington, over 50% in Bal- of the deal. At the heart of Newt duces “behavioral adaptations” by timore). In his book, Malign Neglect, Gingrich’s successful, dump-welfare ghetto dwellers. Widely reported by Michael Tonry observes that the ris- the media, ghetto behavior is then seen ing levels of black incarceration were The concentrated as validating and legitimizing whites’ the foreseeable effect of deliberate poverty of urban prejudicial attitudes toward blacks. policies: “Anyone with knowledge of ghettos condemns The prejudices translate into with- drug-trafficking patterns and of police drawal from blacks, and into discrimi- arrest policies and incentives could generation after natory conduct in housing, zoning, have foreseen that the enemy troops generation of black employment and institutional arrange- in the War on Drugs would consist Americans to lives of ments of all sorts, which in turn lead largely of young, inner-city minority impotence and despair. to more ghettoization. males.” Part and parcel of our mass Ghettoization is growing, in spite incarceration policy are “three strikes” of many reasons to have expected the laws that mandate long prison terms campaign, was a stick-figure carica- contrary (the Kerner Commission ad- for third convictions. California has ture of the ghetto: “You can’t main- monition; passage of anti-discrimina- meted out a 25-year sentence for the tain civilization with twelve-year-olds tion laws; the substantial growth of the third strike theft of a slice of pizza, having babies and fifteen-year-olds black middle class; the unprecedented another for pilfering some chocolate killing each other and seventeen-year- good times of the 1990s). From 1970 chip cookies. Thirteen-year olds have olds dying of AIDS” (Gingrich, as to 2000, the number of metropolitan received mandatory, life-without-pa- quoted in DeParle’s new book). ghetto census tracts (40% or more pov- Can these deformed fruits be blamed erty population) doubled, from around solely on black ghettos? No, they can- 1,100 to over 2,200, and the number not. Ending black ghettos wouldn’t of blacks in metropolitan ghettos in- Poverty and Race (ISSN 1075-3591) end anti-black attitudes any more than creased from under 2.5 to over 2.8 is published six times a year by the ending Jewish ghettos ended anti- million. And there’s every reason to Poverty & Race Research Action Council, 3000 Conn. Ave. NW, #200, semitism. But it is not easy to find believe the problem has grown since Washington, DC 20008, 202/387- anything in American society that the 2000 Census. 9887, fax: 202/387-0764, E-mail: matches the black ghetto for its poi- In a nutshell, that is why I think [email protected]. Chester Hartman, soning effect on attitudes, values and we’d be well advised to play it safe Editor. Subscriptions are $25/year, conduct. with respect to Toqueville’s prophecy. $45/two years. Foreign postage ex- Sixty years ago, Gunnar Myrdal Color-coded poison continues to flow tra. Articles, article suggestions, let- wrote: “White prejudice and discrimi- into our groundwater, with disfigur- ters and general comments are wel- come, as are notices of publications, nation keep the Negro low in standards ing results that are plain to see. Di- conferences, job openings, etc. for our of living, health, education, manners saster may not come in the form of Resources Section. Articles generally and morals. This, in its turn, gives riots and race wars, as Carl Rowan may be reprinted, providing PRRAC support to white prejudice.” Decades predicts in his recent book, The Com- gives advance permission. later, sociologist Elijah Anderson’s ing Race War in America. But it will © Copyright 2004 by the Poverty studies of a ghetto and an adjacent non- be disaster no less if American values & Race Research Action Council. All ghetto neighborhood led him to con- are sufficiently deformed. rights reserved. clude: “The public awareness is color- (Please turn to page 8) 2 • Poverty & Race • Vol. 13, No. 6 • November/December 2004 From Slave Republic to Constitutional Democracy: The Continuing Struggle for the Right to Vote by Jamin Raskin “Why is George Bush in the White imagination of the Warren Court in the the crucial currency of democratic poli- House? The majority of Americans did early 1960s redistricting cases like tics and the precondition for instrumen- not vote for him.
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