RACISM ISN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE: To what extrent has the nature of America's racial problem changed in the last thirty years?
Marciniak, Ed
RACISM ISN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE But not everyone has noticed Ed Marciniak A new vocabulary is surfacing to assess the state of race relations in the United States. The operative words and...
...and social services that might once have ignored the plight of blacks are also run by blacks...
...Some university affirmative-action programs give priority to students in poverty...
...gave his "I Have a Dream" speech to two hundred thousand people, culminating the March on Washington...
...Census Bureau reported that 24 percent of the nation's blacks were under that poverty line...
...Hispanics will soon overtake blacks as the largest "minority...
...These racial changes since the 1960s—and others too numerous to highlight—have encouraged a new generation of black leaders to recommend that priority also be given to those social problems that only tortuously can be linked solely to racism...
...In political jurisdictions where the voting majority is of one race, candidates of another continue to gain office...
...Census Bureau confirmed this conclusion: 50 percent of black children under six in families without a father lived in poverty, while only 9 percent of those in a two-parent family were poor...
...Representative Bobby Rush (D-III...
...Instead, they hope to unite blacks and whites so that together they will address the serious social problems that beset inner-city neighborhoods...
...Consequently, they search for new ways to eradicate disparities in income, seeking additional means of uprooting black poverty...
...Several years ago, the need for such self-scrutiny was dramatically summarized in the Economist (March 7,1998): Black unemployment in desperate ghettos is not obviously the result of racism...
...In the new millennium a new civil-rights agenda is being fashioned to promote two-parent families, curb street violence, improve public schools, reduce dependency on drugs, and uproot poverty...
...Nationwide, the count of black elected officials zoomed from some 100 in the 1960s to 9,000 in the new millennium...
...The victims of black crime are predominantly black...
...African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans are assaulting each other...
...Black entrepreneurs as well as white ones have fled the inner cities for the suburbs....A bigger cause of black poverty is that 70 percent of all black children are bom out of wedlock....During 12 the Depression, poverty was acute but families were more cohesive...
...Recently, the U.S...
...Now the assumption of some is that ethnic and racial groups should be proportionately represented in occupations, incomes, wealth, college graduations, achievements, and failures...
...Our communities are seething with racial violence...
...That is why in Chicago last year, U.S...
...At the same time, the poverty rate for whites was 8 percent...
...Disinclined to air "dirty linen" in public, they continue viewing the world through the prism of race...
...Yes, white folks have treated us wrong...
...Nowadays, the comparable words and ideas have become: "racism," "diversity," "hate crimes," "racial profiling," "redlining," "reparations," "blacks," and "African Americans...
...victims...
...Civil Rights Act...
...Inequality is not the same as inequity...
...In the 1960s our racial language was dominated by "civil rights," "integration," "desegregation," "prejudice," "discrimination," "colored," and "Negroes...
...Affirmative-action programs originally intended for blacks now embrace Hispanics, Asians, women, and/or gays...
...Their first priority goes to reducing urban poverty...
...The variations in language reflect the notable developments in race relations since 1963 when Martin Luther King Jr...
...And it can no longer be claimed that 11 a.m...
...In their tug of war with the venerable civil-rights establishment, new—and increasingly influential—black leaders no longer seek to divide (victimizers vs...
...To black America, if you want to help, we've got to start in our own house...
...As a result, the civilrights establishment now strives even harder to keep racism high on the nation's agenda and conscience...
...Yes, there is an injustice, but we're doing a whole lot of stuff to ourselves...
...On the other hand, the racial gains since the 1960s, the disturbing social conditions within some black communities, and the calls for self-help initiatives have put traditional civil-rights leaders on the defensive...
...convened a summit on black-on-black crime and asked the attendees to "find alternatives to the culture of gun violence...
...These objectives may prove to be more difficult to achieve than the equal-opportunity goals of the civil-rights movement in the 1960s, but they are no less worthy of pursuit...
...A growing number of blacks who have "made it" want to be seen as having arrived there by their own ability rather than affirmative action...
...It is critical we teach by example the true method of conflict resolution...
...Some call it a national crisis...
...Or since 1964 when Congress enacted the U.S...
...Consider only a few of the changes: In 1966,42 percent of American blacks had incomes below the official poverty line...
...Ed Marciniak is president of the Institute of Urban Life at Loyola University, Chicago...
...Most of the worst-stricken cities are run by black mayors, after all...
...The 1960s, furthermore, emphasized equality of treatment—in employment, voting, housing, and government services...
...In the new millennium the stress has shifted to equality of results...
...This is a touchy, controversial endeavor...
...For them, however, racism as the reason for the durability of black poverty has become more difficult to substantiate...
...In spite of an era of high prosperity, the persistence of child poverty among blacks (and whites), can be attributed, in the main, to the decline in marriage and to the tide of single-parent households...
...But she is not a black writer...
...On the other hand, black athletes now dominate the nation's sports, such as track, basketball, football, and baseball (almost...
...In doing so, they play down white guilt and black helplessness...
...The operative words and approaches signal remarkable changes...
...The reading public has come to realize that Toni Morrison is black and a writer...
...We now have a national holiday in January honoring a black minister who preached and practiced nonviolence...
...At about the same time, James T. Meeks, vice president of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/Push Coalition, appealed to fellow blacks: "Let's stop blaming everybody else for the problems of black men and start doing something for ourselves...
...In their eagerness, hyperbole often suffuses their arguments...
...Alabama's Southern Poverty Law Center recently claimed in a fund-raising letter: "I'm sure that you are well aware that our schools are racked with racial strife and intolerance against those who are different...
...Statistics for 1999 from the U.S...
...They publicize instead anecdotal data about racism's presence to garner support for their contention that the nation's 34 million blacks are still the victims and that racism is omnipresent...
...They struggle to have their voices heard and their proposals implemented...
...While the new black leaders may echo the Economist's devastating overview, they do not deny that racism exists...
...By shunning the more favorable data about black achievement...
...on Sunday is the nation's most segregated hour of the week...
...In California, Florida, Michigan, and Texas, for example, affirmative-action programs based on race in college admissions have been challenged by whites, and also by some blacks...
...We are in transition, striving to find a racial vocabulary appropriate to today's society and culture...
...They point, for example, to the prevalence of black-on-black crime, absentee fathers, the disproportion of aids among blacks compared to whites, the large number of single-parent black households in public-housing projects, and the poorly performing public schools in those neighborhoods...
...Meanwhile, efforts to create ongoing coalitions among blacks, Hispanics, and Asians have not been successful...
Vol. 128 • June 2001 • No. 11
