Social Powerlessness in the Ghetto (Dark Ghetto, byKenneth B. Clark)
Rush, Sheila
DARK GHETTO, by Kenneth B. Clark. New York: Harper & Row. 251 pp. $4.95. Any new book on urban Negro problems risks being familiar, despite Kenneth Clark's assertion that there is no...
...His suggestion that business can or will provide jobs is particularly unillumined...
...Powerlessness is the theme of Clark's book...
...Any new book on urban Negro problems risks being familiar, despite Kenneth Clark's assertion that there is no comprehensive study focusing exclusively on the Negro racial ghetto...
...While this movement may be slowly turning toward the ghetto and grappling with its problems, Clark's discussion lacks any clear attempt to relate the lessons of the movement to the unique needs of the ghetto...
...Ghetto teachers and social workers often reinforce the frustration and low expectations of ghetto residents by judging them according to white middleclass standards and dismissing them as inferior or incorrigible when they don't measure up...
...His focus, however, clearly is the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King, SNCC, and the March on Washington...
...Nor does he comment upon the more obvious examples of the Harlem rent strike (which was followed by legislation legitimizing rent strikes) or Saul Alinsky's Chicago community organizing efforts...
...Clark's failure to probe further the subtleties of unemployment may reflect his awareness that for Negroes the kind of job held is often more important than having a job at all...
...He would, for example, inaugurate on-the-job retraining for the ghetto's jobless and employment in community service programs until the most unskilled can move on to jobs and job retraining outside the ghetto...
...Yet, if Clark expects business to deal with Negro joblessness while automation continues unabated—and we know that automation often strikes first at the kinds of unskilled jobs many Negroes hold—then he has not explained why or how business will undertake this burden...
...He explains that the ghetto fosters not only economic and political powerlessness but a total psychology of powerlessness...
...The creation of jobs through direct government spending is not a novel idea, yet Clark has failed to examine it, even though public works programs logically would focus upon the ghetto...
...Whatever the success or failure of such efforts, they provide insights into the ghetto's potential for political development...
...It is bewildering that Clark's final chapter, "Strategy of Change," abruptly shifts to a discussion of the civil rights movement...
...The book's momentum comes not so much from its analytical originality as from its emphasis on recent programs such as HARYOU or politically relevant figures like J. Raymond Jones and Adam Clayton Powell...
...He sees such programs as leading to a confrontation of community problems such as poor garbage collection or inadequate street cleaning by ghetto residents, seemingly the beginning of grass-roots political activity over issues directly relevant to the ghetto...
...At the same time, he indicates that he does not expect the pace of automation to subside...
...Clark's book becomes more uneven and impressionistic in the later chapters when he considers the ghetto's power structure...
...Negroes share a sense of inferiority and frustration over the striking contrasts between the American dream and Negro achievement...
...Clark is concerned, as he puts it, with the "truth" of the ghetto...
...Clark's conceptual handle — powerlessness — is well documented, but many of his observations, including complete chapters on ghetto schools and the ghetto power structure, seem to lead nowhere, at least not to comprehensive and concrete proposals for change...
...Unless Clark's retraining programs raise skill levels of all or most jobless Negroes in record time, and this Clark does not maintain, jobs will have to be created if the economic misery of the ghetto is to be relieved...
...He presents a rather pessimistic account of political powerlessness without analyzing the potential impact of the community action programs which he urges at an earlier point in the book...
...What Clark does not explain is how his recommendations will cope with joblessness now spreading through the ghetto...
...Still, he does not explore how indigenous people have been involved politically by the activities of such groups as the Northern Student Movement or Students for a Democratic Society...
...Rather than attempt to break through the ghetto's multiple barriers, some Negroes escape into apathy while others take refuge in "hustles," narcotics, prostitution, and other behavior considered criminal or condemnable...
...Even where Clark makes specific recommendations, what he expects them to accomplish is frequently unclear...
...If, however, Clark sees Negro unemployment as something unique and not redressable by programs aimed at all unemployment, then he at least is obliged to make that clear...
...New York: Harper & Row...
...His single comment that a small, skilled labor force controlled by labor unions is distasteful to business is not at all persuasive...
...Ghetto conditions such as housing decay, illegitimacy, narcotics addiction, massive unemployment, inferior schools, and political impotence have been aired and considered...
...But the ghetto's "truth" is more than a perceptive account of Negro and white attitudes or a documentation of social disintegration...
...The rehabilitative programs he calls for show an appreciation of the-complexity of the ghetto and the need to deal with the problems of low skills, low income, and low self-esteem, but he fails to analyze the impact of his proposals on the very ghetto he would change...
...His job retraining and paid community worker proposals are an attempt to meet the need for meaningful, respectable work...
...The ghetto's "truth" includes a consideration of the possibilities of its positive transformaton...
...Clark summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of the movement, touching on one or two matters relevant to the ghetto—school boycotts, demonstrations...
...And while Clark alludes to the need for civil rights movements to join with other groups with a comparable interest in social change, he neither develops this idea fully nor relates it to the specific problems of the ghetto...
...Fresh insights into the ghetto predicament, while always welcome, become truly meaningful when related to fresh proposals for changing the patterns of ghetto life...
...But Clark fails to consider that wide spread unemployment may eventually prompt governmental measures which combine large investments in the public sector with job retraining geared to an automated economy...
...He suggests on the one hand that the untapped consumer potential of Negroes constitutes an incentive to business for providing jobs for all who need them...
Vol. 13 • March 1966 • No. 2
