A Higher Charity
KONVITZ, MILTON R.
A Higher Charity CRISIS IN BLACK AND WHITE By Charles E. Silberman Random House. 370 pp. $5.95. Reviewed by MILTON R. KONVITZ Recently J. Donald Adams called attention to the...
...Silberman is himself aware of the fact that his book is the product of both journalism and scholarship, and says that he finds the union invaluable, for "Scholarship has a dedication to the search for truth which the journalist needs...
...He cites as a successful example of this approach the work of The Woodlawn Organization (TWO), created in Chicago in 1960—"the most important and the most impressive experiment affecting Negroes anywhere in the United States...
...the heads of the narcotics ring met at the center's swimming pool...
...According to Silberman, welfare programs spread dependence...
...I am reminded of what Florence Nightingale said of the hospitals she knew: "The least you have a right to expect from a hospital is that it will not spread disease...
...Silberman's work illuminates many of the factors and forces that contribute to the racial crisis...
...A member of the Board of Editors of Fortune, Silberman is an excellent example of the journalist who is indistinguishable from the scholar, except for the fact that he possesses the scholar's virtues but not his vices or limitations...
...Perhaps his most challenging thoughts are in the final chapter, with the significant title "The Revolt Against 'Welfare Colonialism...
...What is the alternative...
...One important reason for this is that social workers have been preoccupied with doing for people instead of doing with them—"a preoccupation that destroys the dignity and arouses the hostility of the people who are supposed to be helped...
...In the light of the Anti-Poverty Act, what Silberman writes is especially disturbing, for it radically reduces the optimism associated with this new law...
...Reviewed by MILTON R. KONVITZ Recently J. Donald Adams called attention to the phenomenal increase in the adoption of journalistic techniques and style by authors of books, to the point where "the greater part of nonfiction is currently journalistic in aim and content...
...Silberman says that the answer is in getting the Negroes to do things for themselves, to take action on their own behalf...
...While there may be some question about the wisdom of this in a number of the books he cited as examples, there could have been no question had he referred to Crisis in Black and White by Charles E. Silberman...
...Nor could I help thinking of what Maimonides rates as the lowest type as I read some of the arguments in Congress over the Anti-Poverty Bill: "He who gives with bad grace...
...there is love, but also hatred...
...If there is a hero in Silberman's book, it is Alinsky, and I must admit that I have a much more sympathetic view of Alinsky than I had before...
...What is significant about TWO is that it has organized the Negroes of the Woodlawn area into a group with power and the will to use it for a program of self-improvement...
...Silberman's dedication, moreover, is not only to truth but to justice...
...Silberman contends that welfare assistance has contributed to dependence and hostility on the part of its recipients, as well as to their general indifference, and withdrawal...
...Crisis in Black and White was written by a man who is at home in the world of moral values and is thus unafraid of taking sides in a struggle over moral judgments...
...It may well be that Alinsky and Silberman have both learned well the lesson of Maimonides, who classified givers of charity into eight categories, and held that the highest is "he who helps the poor man to sustain himself by giving him a loan or by taking him into business...
...The Negroes in TWO do things for themselves...
...The social workers, as a result, become "alienated" from the people they serve—e.g., the administrators of a large youth center in Harlem felt satisfied with their work and accomplishments but were unaware that the center had become a major contact point for the sale of narcotics...
...He was ignored as a worker, as a neighbor, as a voter, as a man...
...The response to the Negro varies: There is understanding, but also fear...
...I could not help but think of this as I read Silberman's description of the work and accomplishments of TWO...
...They are not the passive recipients of a paternalistic welfare system, TWO'S greatest contribution is that "it gives Woodlawn residents the sense of dignity that makes it possible for them to accept help.' For the help comes "not as the result of charity but as the result of their own power...
...His presence is felt and his voice is heard...
...But now it is different...
...See also the article on Alinsky in the July 20, 1964, Christianity and Crisis...
...and his passion is not only for the relevant and immediate, but also for racial equality, and especially for equality of opportunity...
...journalism has a passion for the relevant and the immediate which the scholar needs.' These qualities are abundantly manifest in this book...
...Much of what Silberman says is a commentary on and validation of Wendell Phillips' judgment that "The Emancipation Proclamation freed the slave but ignored the Negro.' The Negro was ignored in the South and in the North, in Washington and in the states...
...This is one of Saul D. Alinsky's creations, intended to demonstrate that even slum-dwelling Negroes "can be mobilized to help themselves, and that when they are, neither the Negro community nor the city as a whole can ever be quite the same again...
Vol. 47 • September 1964 • No. 19
