THE "ANIMALS" & THE MORALISTS: NEW YORK AFTER THE SUMMER LOOTING
H., I.
New York After the Summer Looting The looting that took place during the power blackout in New York last July showed what should never have been forgotten. It showed that the social order in...
...wE PERSIST in "all that stuff' about social reform and social change...
...These ideas are not really so complicated, though carrying them out might be...
...That, of course, is the business of the blacks...
...President Carter, in an interview with black broadcasters a week after the looting, said some of the same things...
...Looting, and burning down our dwelling places, will not bring us allies: it will only contribute to the pitiful desolation of our neighborhoods...
...Our local policemen were ranting about "the animals" to the reporters of the unspeakable New York Post (by comparison to which the Daily News reads like Albert Schweitzer...
...It showed that the social order in America contains deep segments of disaffection...
...Well, of course they don't excuse it...
...it is to understand and then, if possible, to act...
...Intellectuals peddle similar wisdom...
...it signifies our weakness...
...Looting is not a sign of our common effort...
...Or for a minimum of 75 c you could get the same wisdom from a taxi driver: "those animals, they don't want to work, they're just bums etc...
...Poverty and unemployment," they kept saying, "don't excuse antisocial behavior...
...or that even the guilty have rights under a document known as the Constitution...
...Obviously not, for by now there is such an accumulation of malaise and despair that nothing can dissolve it overnight...
...New York After the Summer Looting The looting that took place during the power blackout in New York last July showed what should never have been forgotten...
...Still, we say to you that the path of crime can only do our people harm...
...For the small shopkeepers victimized by looters, one feels sympathy and hopes for quick governmental help...
...Unless you are a Dickens heroine, it becomes insufferable after a while constantly having all the unfairness left on your doorstep while the Mayfair swells are eating Scotch salmon, weekending in the Hamptons, and enjoying exclusive membership in the Abortion Club...
...Looting does not create black pride or political strength...
...And it is of course a question whether any leadership could now reach the more deeply alienated segments of black youth...
...if even a modest fraction of the resources this country wastes on everything from warfare to advertising were directed toward the difficulties that fester in our cities, then at least the foundation...
...And then there are---let's call them--the neorealists, those who are "tired of bleeding hearts...
...Only action by the society at large--which in practice means employing the resources of the federal government can provide a start...
...it creates demoralization and division...
...The sophisticated version of this response came from ex-liberals deploring the breakdown of morality...
...But no newspaper can take the place of an active leadership immediately present at emergencies...
...The philanthropic tradition," he says, "has shaped New York City politics in such a way as to encourage fiscal recklessness...
...If we do not expend resources for social reform, the whole society will pay through endless "hidden" and visible costs— from pathology to waste to violence...
...Domestically, the Carter administration has thus far been decidedly conservative and timid, caught up with the old shibboleths of a balanced budget...
...After the looting a tide of moralistic bilge swept across the city...
...The only thing I have read on the events of July 13 that begins to make sense is a piece by Russell Baker in the Times: if [like President Carter] you are going to preach that unfairness is inescapable for some, good sense suggests that you also accept the inevitability of beastly behavior by people who have to carry the burden...
...that the seeming social quiet of the last few years can easily be broken by accident or provocation...
...No sensible person really supposes that creating jobs for black youth will immediately or totally solve the problems of racial tension or bring social health to the ghetto streets...
...Trouble will remain, even if we were to do what we should and can do about poverty and unemployment...
...The question is, whether they explain it, wholly or in part...
...Does all this "excuse" the looting...
...There is much talk about "the limits of social policy"—and you know who's most likely to feel those limits...
...A few days after the looting, an important black newspaper published in New York, the Amsterdam Neit's, did appear with an editorial not very different from the above imagined message --- and that is encouraging...
...But if there were a policy of serious and sustained help and rehabilitation for the black poor...
...What's a bleeding heart...
...All the neoconservative talk about our society being essentially well-ordered and healthy turns out to be the merest ideology—and the worst kind: that of people who think they have risen above ideology...
...what do the cynics and skeptics propose instead...
...But what is so exasperating is that while he says the right things, he does not do them...
...It does not seem to matter to the neorealists that some, or many, of the people in the jails might be innocent: that the accused are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty...
...BEFORE CONFRONTING the question directly, let us ask in turn: what else...
...A heart that's horrified at the conditions in the jails where thousands of alleged looters were held...
...Otherwise, there will be darker days and more looting...
...The business of society at large is to do something about the social conditions that underlie such outbreaks of desperation we saw on July 13...
...Oh no," interrupt some terribly sophisticated voices, "you don't really want to bring up all that stuff again about social reform as the answer to violence...
...The social nastiness, the sly implicit racism, the middle-class selfishness that is a major heritage of the Nixon years—this had found, just a few days earlier, a deplorable repetition in Jimmy Carter's reflections regarding abortions for the poor: that life is sometimes "unfair" and the government can't undertake to remedy that unfairness...
...The looting itself is, of course, destructive...
...Among the local commentators only Murray Kempton had the sense to remark that "want of sympathy for these people [the alleged looters packed into stinking, unsanitary jails] in no way exempts us from the normal commands of decency in their treatment...
...and it will only intensity the contempt in which we are held by people who ought to be working with us...
...For the minority groups themselves, it is utterly selfdestructive...
...If anyone needed convincing once more that moralism can often veil meanness, the response to July 13 should prove sufficient...
...Poverty persists...
...that despite the rhetoric and occasional achievements of the last few decades, large numbers of blacks continue to lead a miserable, deprived existence...
...We share your indignation at the sufferings to which we are subjected...
...July 13 is said to have cost several hundred million dollars...
...An editor of the Public Interest, Irving Kristol, has come out for cutting social welfare programs: his sense of timing is exquisite...
...that we send Irving Kristol to 125th Street to preach fiscal responsibility...
...t ./or social rebuilding could be created...
...But people who try to think about such matters must also keep certain facts clear: • Unemployment among black youth, in some areas of the city, runs to more than 50 percent...
...If the lights go out on a steamy summer night well, life is unfair, isn't it...
...But the problem is neither to excuse nor celebrate...
...Quoted, Jewish Week, July 16, 1977...
...Consider how many jobs for black youths in New York City could have been created with that kind of money...
...Housing remains wretched...
...Such a leadership would, one supposes, speak to its people in terms somewhat like these: "We understand the sources of your desperation...
...And worse still...
...Or if that fails, as seems rather probable, that we set up more jails, hand out tougher sentences, create thicker walls around the ghettos...
...Over the decades, as a legacy of neglect and callousness, there has grown up a social demoralization strongly alloyed with pathology...
...You may not take to the streets with torch and shotgun, but you are likely to find your eyes going glassy when the professor, or the President, talks about social obligations...
...Jobs are scarce...
...It also seems to be true that the black community is floundering, without it sufficiently strong political or moral leadership such as it had in the 1960s, especially before the assassination of Martin Luther King...
Vol. 24 • September 1977 • No. 4
