The Millennium Breach Richer, Poorer and Racially Apart
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The Millennium Breach Richer, Poorer and Racially Apart In Commemoration of the Thirtieth Anniversary of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders Second Edition, 1998 The Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation and The Corporation for What Works Table of Contents Executive Summary. .2 1. Thirty Years Later . .14 2. What Doesn’t Work. 27 3. What Works . 46 4. Lessons . 98 5. Betrayal . .117 6. Investment . .133 7. Alliance . .174 Bibliography . .187 Appendix 1. .208 Appendix 2. .239 1 Acknowledgements Chapter 1 of The Millennium Breach was written by Fred R. Harris, Co-Chair of the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation, former United States Senator (D., Oklahoma) and a member of the original National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Chapters 2 through 7 were written by Lynn A. Curtis, President of the Foundation and former Executive Director of President Carter's Urban and Regional Policy Group. Some of his work here has evolved from a lecture given at All Souls College, Oxford. Eisenhower Foundation Vice Chairs Elliott Currie and Joy G. Dryfoos read the manuscript, made helpful suggestions and contributed sections to the report. Eisenhower Vice Chair Yvonne Scruggs-Leftwich contributed to the section on race-specific policy. Eisenhower Foundation Trustee Leila McDowell and her partner Gwen McKinney organized the media strategy for dissemination of the report. Dorothy A. Coleman, Director for Capacity Building at the Foundation, supervised much of the production process, undertook research, copyedited and coordinated with the media as part of the Foundation's communicating what works initiative. We wish to acknowledge the substantive input and advice of Jeanne Brooks- Gunn, Rebecca Buchanan, Kent Cooper, David Chavis, Cushing Dolbeare, Greg Duncan, Pablo Eisenberg, Jeff Faux, Paul Jargowsky, Jerry Jones, Robert Kuttner, Molly Martin, James Quane, Bruce Raskin, Gary Sandefur, Elizabeth Sturz, William Taylor, Thomas Wells, Roger Wilkins and William Julius Wilson. The work of Eddie Banks, Richard Foote, Rodney Jackson, Pat Kelly, Kien Lee and Ming Trammel contributed to chapters of this report, which was printed by ImaTek. We strove to release a document on March 1, 1998, exactly 30 years to the day after the Kerner Commission issued its original report. Later, under less time pressure, we will publish a more elegantly packaged version of this update. The report was word processed by Pam J. Green and assisted by Betty Entzminger and Katherine L. Hunter. The front cover shows a scene from the Detroit riot in the late 1960s, reprinted from the original Kerner report. The back cover has feedback from the media on the Foundation's 25 year update of the Commission, published in 1993. 1 Executive Summary "Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal." On March 1, 1968, in the wake of riots in Detroit and Newark, and with more riots soon to come after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, that was the conclusion of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders -- the Kerner Riot Commission, named after its chair, then-governor of Illinois Otto Kerner. Thirty Years Later What has happened in the 30 years since and where do we stand now? The Kerner Commission proposed remedies to racial, spatial and economic disparity. The civil rights movement of the 1960s and early 1970s brought about improvements that helped expand an African-American middle class. It is important to recognize the achievements made possible by the civil rights movement and by individual struggles of millions of African-Americans. The African-American middle class has expanded, as has African-American entrepreneurship. The proportion of African-Americans with white-collar jobs has risen. There has been an enormous rise in the number of African-American mayors, other elected officials and police chiefs. The high school graduation rate among African-Americans is rising. Yet in the 1970s, when technological change in the economy increased demand for high skilled and educated workers, jobs for the less skilled and educated became obsolete. The unemployed stayed behind, but more mobile middle class African-Americans left core inner city neighborhoods. Especially during the 1980s, labor market policies to provide training and jobs for the less skilled never materialized. In the words of Professor William Julius Wilson and his colleagues at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (Appendix 1), "The exodus of working-and middle-class blacks from core inner-city neighborhoods enhanced the concentration effects of joblessness and poverty and removed important economic and social buffers that had softened the impact of macroeconomic changes in these vulnerable communities. During the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, conditions in inner-city ghettos went from bad to worse." Today, while pundits and leaders talk of full employment, for the first time in the twentieth century most adults in many inner city neighborhoods are not working in a typical week. Former Labor Secretary Ray Marshall estimates the real unemployment rate at about 15 percent, far higher than the official rate. The Center for Community Change in Washington, DC estimates the "jobs gap" to be over 4,400,000 persons needing work. A high proportion are in the inner city. The consequences of high neighborhood joblessness are more devastating than those of high neighborhood poverty. When people are poor but employed they can better prevent family breakup, crime, drugs and other problems than when people are poor and jobless. 2 Since the Kerner Commission, there have been other important trends: • From 1977 to 1988, the incomes of the richest 1 percent in America increased by 120 percent and the incomes of the poorest fifth in America decreased by 10 percent during a time of supply-side tax breaks for the rich and against the poor. • In the words of conservative analyst Kevin Phillips, this meant that "the rich got richer and the poor got poorer." The working class also got poorer. The middle class stayed about the same in absolute terms, so it, too, lost ground relative to the rich. • During the 1980s, child poverty increased by over 20 percent, with racial minorities suffering disproportionately. Today, the child poverty rate in the United States is 4 times the average of Western European countries. • Today, the top 1 percent of Americans has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. In terms of wealth and income, the U.S. is the most unequal industrialized country in the world, and is growing more unequal faster than any other industrialized country. • Since the Kerner Commission, the U.S. has had the most rapid growth in wage inequality in the Western world, with racial minorities suffering disproportionality. • America’s neighborhoods and schools are resegregating. Two-thirds of African-American students and three-fourths of Hispanic students now attend predominantly minority schools -- one third of each group in intensely segregated schools. • In urban pubic schools in poor neighborhoods, more than two-thirds of children fail to reach even the "basic" level of national tests. • America’s housing policy for the poor and minorities has become prison building. Over the 1980s and early 1990s, we tripled the number of prison cells at the same time we reduced housing appropriations for the poor by over 80 percent. Only 1 in 4 eligible poor families now can get housing. • States now spend more per year on prisons than on higher education, while 10 years ago spending priorities were just the opposite. • In the early 1990s, 1 of 4 young African-American men was in prison on probation or on parole. By the late 1990s, 1 of 3 young African-American men was in prison, on probation or on parole. 3 • Today, the rate of incarceration of African-American men in the U.S. is 4 times higher than the rate of incarceration of Black men in South Africa during the pre-Nelson Mandela apartheid government. • Sentences for crack cocaine, used disproportionately by minorities, are much longer than sentences for powder cocaine, used disproportionately by whites. • Prisons disproportionately incarcerate minorities, but prisons building has become a growth industry for whites in rural areas. • In the most prestigious study of the impact of prison building, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that "by itself the criminal justice response to violence could accomplish no more than running in place." A National Policy Based on What Works If the nation will not carry out a practical policy of proven investments targeted to the truly disadvantaged now, with a robust economy (for some) and a projected surplus, will we ever? In this report, we present a 10 point national investment and opportunity policy based on what works in education, employment, economic, development, race and criminal justice. The policy also is based on the knowledge of how to replicate what works that we have acquired since the Kerner Commission: 1. Fully fund Head Start. Dramatic new biological and chemical research findings have demonstrated how attention to children in their earliest years determines the way their brains are wired and provides a basis for intellectual development. The CEOs on the Committee for Economic Development in New York conclude that every $1.00 spent on preschool yields $4.75 in benefits later on. Yet Head Start preschool presently is funded for only about one third of the poor children eligible. 2. Create a national nonprofit Corporation for Youth Investment. Naysayers assert that the effects of Head Start diminish over time. Of course. After inner city kids leave Head Start at age 5 or 6, they are back on the mean streets. Evaluations by Columbia University, the Eisenhower Foundation and others have shown that boys-and-girls-club-type safe havens after school for kids 6 to 16 work -- as logical continuations of Head Start to provide help with home work, direction by responsible adults and safe passage through adolescence in a risky society.