Prometheus 6

Clarence Page has a recent editorial in which he reflects on the National Urban League's recent State of Black America report. I need to jump straight to the end:

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said something about how the true test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time without losing your mind. The challenge for us African-Americans is to hold in our minds the reality of our progress, while not letting it go to our head so much that we forget those left behind.

We have seen, for example, the value of education and responsible adult guidance in helping young people gain the tools they need to escape poverty. We have vastly increased our presence in government jobs more than any other area, the Urban League report points out. We need to use those positions, as well as our new positions in the private sector, to form a new leadership for a new black liberation movement.

This new movement needs to make demands not only of "the system" but also of ourselves to make the improvements in our schools, housing, job opportunities, youth motivation and family supports so that the black American outlook won't have to look so bleak.

This sounds quite reasonable. I believe it to be the Official Moderate Response To Black America's Problems for this decade.
Unfortunately it confuses working on the symptoms with working on the disease. Let me show you why, from the same editorial:

More than 40 percent of the black respondents to an Urban League poll felt "very little" or "no improvement" had been made in economic and social mobility since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed 40 years ago.

[two elided paragraphs]

…And blacks are not the only racial group to feel this thorny pessimism, according to the Urban League poll. Some 35 percent of Hispanics and 32 percent of Asians gave similarly pessimistic responses.

Plus, a similarly large minority of non-white respondents responded grimly to questions about improvement in race relations, housing integration and access to decent jobs over the past four decades.

My observation is that this perception is obviously not something particular to Black folks, so solutions particular to Black folks aren't a solution at all.

Another bit of evidence:

A closer look at census data in the 1990s revealed that the fastest growing sector of black Americans were those making $50,000 or more per year. Unfortunately, The Urban Institute, a Washington-based think tank, found a tripling between 1980 and 1995 of the black "underclass," defined as those who were welfare dependent, high school dropouts, chronically unemployed and regularly in and out of jail.

As black households in the highest and lowest income group grew, so did the gap between black haves and have-nots.

Let's say the Black community addresses this successfully, independent of the mainstream. Doesn't that mean the entire Black community winds up on one side or the other of that gap? I'll leave the speculation as to which side to you, gentle reader.

If the gap between haves and have-nots in the Black community is a problem, the same phenomenon in the mainstream is a problem as well, isn't it? Why isn't THAT being addressed? I assure you Black folks would line up around the corner to get behind a solution that was real and fair and included everyone. Instead what we're basically getting is, "The problem isn't the problem. The problem is the way you react to the problem." As Chaos Lord I can get with that, but it ain't many Chaos Lords in the mix.

Addressing the true, universal nature of the problem is the only approach to solving it…at least without undue finger-pointing and name-calling.