"I Feel So Helpless, So Hopeless"

Resentment is building in the nation's black urban ghettos

There is a rising tide of bitterness in black America. It existed well before the vicious race riot last month that killed 16 people and sent ugly plumes of smoke into the night skies over Miami. But the violence caught the attention of white America--and that fact too causes further black cynicism. Black leaders, echoing their pleas of the riot-punctuated 1960s, are asking once again: Do we have to burn our own neighborhoods in order to be heard?

The black voices are angry. "I go out there and see these houses all boarded up. I see some gutted. I see vacant lots and weeds," says Congressman Louis Stokes of Cleveland. "I see these guys standing around doing nothing. I feel so helpless, so hopeless. We're passing from one generation to another a group of people who are hopelessly locked into a permanent underclass."

"In the '60s, young blacks were looking up; they were coming out of the shadow of segregation; they were saying, 'I am somebody,' " recalls the Rev. Thomas Kilgore, who heads a predominantly black group of 218 activist clergymen in Los Angeles. "Now they don't feel that way. The black community does not have the kind of hope it had then."

"It is no wonder young black youths are predisposed to riot," says Ed Irons, a black professor of banking and finance at Atlanta University. "Even when the economy is going strong they don't get hired. You can't attribute this to anything but institutional racism. America does not want to face this. At some point it is going to explode."

An Associated Press-NBC News poll taken after the Miami riot found that 53% of Americans fear that there will be more racial riots in other cities this summer. At the same time, 84% of the whites thought blacks were better off now than ten years ago. But they are wrong, and that is precisely the point; it is the key factor underlying the growing frustration in the ghetto. Despite the programs that raised so much hope, despite the brave talk by politicians about rescuing the cities, despite the thousands of success stories that seem to prove the contrary, urban blacks have been slipping farther and farther behind whites.

In the decade of the 1970s, blacks gained on whites in only one broad area: education. As of 1978, the median for blacks had reached 11.9 years of schooling; it was 12.5 for whites. Yet even these statistics are misleading in one important sense: the quality of public schooling that the blacks are getting in most major U.S. cities has sharply declined. Says Bernard C. Watson, a black vice president of Temple University in Philadelphia: "The education too many children receive in these classrooms is nothing short of a national scandal, an absolute disgrace."

But the pupils who manage to survive in the system are doing better than a decade ago. The percentage of black high school graduates who go on to college (31.5%) has nearly caught up with that of the whites (32.2%). With 11.6% of the total population, blacks now provide 10% of the total college enrollment. True, the many black colleges are still inferior to many white ones, and about half of black college students attend traditionally black institutions. But Watson concedes: "The fortunes of black Americans seeking higher education have improved dramatically. Only a fool or a charlatan would deny that there has been progress."

That improvement actually fuels some of the current black restlessness. While the American dream has long envisaged education as the gateway to the good life, blacks have discovered that the more they gained on the whites educationally, the more they seemed to fall behind economically. To be sure, some of the best-educated blacks have broken into high-income classes. Between 1970 and 1978, for example, the number of families making more than $25,000 grew twice as fast among blacks as it did among whites. Yet only 13.4% of all black families earn that much, compared with 29.5% for whites.

More ominously, black family income in the past decade actually fell relative to that of whites, from 60% of the white level in 1969 to 57% in 1979. One striking reason was that the proportion of white families containing more than one income earner climbed in that period from 53.6% to 55.4%, while the number of black families with more than a single wage earner fell from 57.2% to 46.2%. Black women who head their families had a 5.2% unemployment rate in 1969, but 12.9% were jobless in 1979, and the recession will certainly increase that figure considerably.

To make matters worse, women now head 30% of all black households, a fact stemming partly from the rate of illegitimate births; it is six times as high among black women as white. One startling example: 42% of Chicago's births in 1978 were out of wedlock; 80% of the mothers were black. The welfare rate of black women heading families is a devastating 50%.

Politically, the blacks have made substantial strides in the past ten years. There are black mayors in Los Angeles, Washington, Detroit, Atlanta and New Orleans, and black councilmen and black judges in respectable and growing numbers across the nation--some 4,600 black elected officials in all. But housing is still abominable, health care uncertain and, despite some reforms, too many big-city blacks, particularly the youths, view a white policeman as their natural enemy. The discrimination may be as direct and blatant as a racial slur, or as amorphous and difficult to fight as the hiring record of white employers: the unemployment rate among blacks with college educations is higher (27.2%) than that of white youths who are high school dropouts (22.3%).

In the wake of the Miami riots, Joseph Boyce, TIME's Atlanta bureau chief and a black who was once a Chicago police officer, reported on the status of blacks in his city and elsewhere in the South. Said Boyce: "Blacks are like artifacts in a room seldom used. They are dusted off periodically for a look, especially after a riot, then replaced in the cabinet. The doors close again until the next time."

NEW YORK: BUDGET SQUEEZE

The nation's largest city faces a special handicap in coping with black problems: perched on the brink of bankruptcy for five years, it has had little choice but to curtail services that had once made life more bearable for blacks trapped in some of the bleakest ghettos in the U.S. Blacks occupy 41.2% of the substandard housing in the city and account for about 36% of the 867,173 New Yorkers on welfare. The basic monthly allowance ($476 for a family of four) has not gone up since 1974, but food costs have risen 42.5%, utilities 82%, transportation 50%. Says Arthur Barnes, head of the New York Urban Coalition: "What do these people eat, I wonder. I think a lot of them can't even afford dog food."

The city's public school system, with an enrollment that is 68% black and Hispanic, has cut back its already overworked teaching staffs and eliminated much needed guidance counselors and after-hours tutors--the kind of specialists who gave many black students added incentive to stay in school. Roughly 10% of the city's 1 million public school students are regarded as hard-core habitual truants. On any given day, as many high school students may be roaming the streets as are in class.

The unemployment rate for young blacks is estimated to be as high as 60% and likely to grow as the recession hits small businesses, which form the backbone of the city's economy. Roaming the streets, older youths fall easily into the only readily available "jobs": peddling drugs, pimping, prostitution, mugging, selling stolen goods, running numbers. Once in decline, heroin use is on the rise again.

Although blacks are underrepresented in New York's government (only five blacks on the 43-member city council), black voices do get a hearing in the city, a fact that has helped to ease some ugly situations. Still, there is a growing political apathy among New York's blacks--a feeling that nothing much changes in the ghettos no matter who runs the city government. Warns James Dumpson, a sociologist and assistant director of a private foundation working with the city's black neighborhoods: "When it's perceived that politics isn't serving the needs of the people, people tend to get disillusioned, cynical and despairing."

CHICAGO: POLITICAL CLOUT

A black former newspaper publisher in a gray pinstripe suit drove through the neighborhood on Chicago's far South Side, which he will soon represent in Congress. Gus Savage, 54, who defied the city's once invincible Democratic political machine to win a primary fight and thus ensure his election in November, symbolizes black progress in Chicago. So does his neighborhood. Ten years ago it was 60% white; now it is 85% black. Some of its tree-lined streets run past houses selling for $125,000 or more. Most of the residents have completed at least 13 years of schooling. Boasts Savage: "That's higher than for whites in this city."

Chicago's blacks have never enjoyed so much political clout. Now 40% of the city's population, the 1.2 million blacks helped defeat the late Mayor Richard Daley's selected heir, Michael Bilandic, and thus gave Jane Byrne a tenuous hold on city hall in 1979. A black will probably run for mayor in 1983. Blacks head the city's finance committee and the school board, and the city police department is now 23% black.

But the recent political gains have created little social or economic progress. The dropout rate in high school for blacks is 55%. More than a third of the city's black population is below the national poverty level ($6,700 for an urban family of four). Unemployment for young blacks is put at nearly 60%. The mayor's office recently estimated that 586,000 of the city's teen-agers and adults qualified for federally created jobs: there are exactly 68,700 to be given out this year. To make matters worse, in the past decade Chicago has lost at least 500,000 jobs to the suburbs and the Sunbelt--most requiring the kind of unskilled manpower that attracted Southern blacks to Chicago in the first place.

"There is a new kind of poverty here," says John McDermott, a white editor and publisher of the Chicago Reporter, a monthly newsletter on racial issues. "What we have is a group permanently unemployed and permanently dependent. There is a growing social chaos within this group, complete social isolation. Their only window to America is the television set."

LOS ANGELES: UNEASY TRUCE

In the city that endured the Watts riots of 1965, in which 28 blacks and six others were killed, only an uneasy truce prevails between nearly a million blacks and two traditional sources of racial friction: the police force and the school board. The fact that Mayor Thomas Bradley is black has helped to moderate the clashes, but the City of Angels is no heavenly haven for its blacks.

To its credit, Los Angeles is taking steps to curb what blacks claim has been a quick-triggered police department.

The five-member police commission has insisted that it will exercise its right to review departmental decisions on complaints against police and to appoint an independent special hearing officer in particularly sensitive cases. Concedes a member of the police commission: "There is apprehension among blacks about confrontations with the police. Within some segments of the black community, the hostility is as great now as it has ever been."

Black attitudes toward the white-dominated school board that acquired a conservative majority in elections last year may be even more hostile. The new members contend they have a voter mandate to fight all plans for busing students to achieve better racial balance in the schools, despite court orders to the contrary. Charges the Rev. Kilgore: "It's a totally politicized board that couldn't care less about educating black children."

On another trouble point, John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League, cites reductions in community services required under California's Proposition 13, particularly a virtual freeze on hiring any new city and county employees. Protests Mack: "Black people are still just trying to get their feet in the door, and now it's being slammed shut again."

WASHINGTON: DUAL SOCIETY

The nation's capital is hardly a showplace of racial equality. The city is developing a two-track society in which a transient group of white politicians and professionals pays scant heed to the more permanent population that is 70% black. The city has a well-established black middle class, but unskilled blacks must compete for menial and clerical jobs in the Government and private business, since there is little industry. Predictably, there are not enough jobs to go around; the unemployment rate for young blacks is about 50%. Many who do not make it in the white world find employment in the underground economy of vice, drugs and crime, which is all too visible just a few blocks from the White House.

A pleasant city by day, Washington has areas that by night are a dangerous wasteland--for both blacks and whites. Says Frank Smith, a black member of the D.C. school board: "I represent places in a ward where I wouldn't walk the street at night without a police escort." In some black neighborhoods, motorists stopping at traffic lights are besieged by peddlers offering a virtual supermarket of drugs. White Washington was shocked last February when 4,000 blacks attended the wake of a black drug dealer who had been accused of killing a white policeman, then later shot by police. Some poor blacks regarded the well-known dealer with sympathy as a man trying to stand up to the system and the police.

Ironically, the process of upgrading blighted downtown neighborhoods has hurt the blacks. Whites are buying houses from blacks and redeveloping them--the process is called "gentrification"--and pushing blacks into even worse areas, where they double up in already inadequate housing.

If greater political power can alleviate black problems, Washington's experience does not prove it. The District finally gained home rule in 1975, lifting control from generally unsympathetic Congressmen. In 1978 the District elected as mayor Marion Barry, a black civil rights activist in the '60s. Barry's budget must be approved by Congress, but many blacks still feel that he and his mainly middle-class black administrators could do more for the poor. Although the community protested, three health clinics in black neighborhoods were closed. They were badly needed: Washington has unusually high rates of venereal disease, tuberculosis and infant mortality.

As in so many large cities, the Washington public school system is woefully inadequate. School Board Member Smith thinks that school administrators have blamed their failures for too long on ghetto conditions and the problems of black family life. Declares Smith: "We've got to stop apologizing for the pedigree, background and families of these kids and educate them. I tell these youngsters their only chance is public education. It's either that or Lorton (the local prison)."

Says Leroy Hubbard, a black social worker: "Things will bottom out before they get any better in this city. There will be a lot more crime, a lot more unemployment and things running rampant before something will be done."

DETROIT: ILLUSION OF PROGRESS

If there is a model city of racial progress in the U.S., Detroit should be it. All the surface signs are upbeat. Since 1974, Detroit has had a black mayor, Coleman Young, whose aggressive leadership is respected nationally and has given him influence in Washington. Six of the nine members of the city council are black, including its president. So is Chief of Police William Hart, as well as Superintendant of Schools Arthur Jefferson and a majority of the county supervisors.

Moreover, that black power has been effectively used. Young has developed a rapport with the city's long dominant white businessmen, including Henry Ford II, and persuaded them to pour millions of dollars into revitalizing the downtown area. Because of the riverfront Renaissance Center and other new convention facilities, Detroit will be the host of such major events as the Republican National Convention in July and share with nearby Pontiac the glories of holding football's 1982 Super Bowl. A downtown that was deserted by 6 p.m. a few years ago now bustles with normal nighttime traffic.

Wayne State University's sophisticated medical center and a network of neighborhood clinics serve the black population, which constitutes 60% of Detroit's 1.2 million residents. New housing projects, many built by black-owned construction companies, have spread mostly into the black neighborhoods. In an unabashed drive to help blacks, Young has openly favored black firms when awarding city contracts. He has insisted that every time a white officer is promoted in the police department, a black one must be elevated too; the 35% of the force that is now black has a high proportion of officers who rank above patrolmen.

Despite all that, there are many black leaders who feel that little has really changed to make life for most blacks better since the dreadful days in 1967 when riots killed 43 people and left 5,000 homeless. "There is an illusion of progress," says Roy Williams, president of the Detroit Urban League. "Blacks have been deceived into thinking they have made more progress than they really have."

Why the doubts? For one thing, Detroit's black leaders point to the public school system, which is 85% black. By the time a Detroit student is in the eleventh grade, he has fallen two years behind the national norms in reading. Lamont Crenshaw, a black clinical psychologist, echoes a point made by urban educators across the country: "There are kids getting out of school who can't read, who can't write, who can't fill out an unemployment form. What are they going to do?"

What many do is wind up jobless. The rate of unemployment among blacks in Detroit is estimated at 30%--more than twice that of whites. Already thousands of black autoworkers have been laid off in the current recession.

Despite good intentions and hard work by white and black leaders, frustration, fear and anger are growing among blacks. Crenshaw has little faith in future progress: "In the year 2000, we'll have a mall with two big stores and a glamorous riverfront. But you will still be able to go up to the top of one of the Renaissance Center towers and look out on one of the worst ghettos you'll ever see."

With local variations, the same sorry pattern exists in most of America's larger cities. While Atlanta still boasts that it is "a city too busy to hate" and racial friction seems mild, there is tinder in the deterioration of its public housing. About 50,000 blacks occupy such buildings, which are heavily rat infested. City officials have detected some 10,000 housing code violations in just one project.

In Birmingham, Ala., blacks have elected a black mayor and wield much more power than in the days of the celebrated civil rights crusades. Yet black anger at the white-dominated police force is almost as intense as it was when Police Commissioner Bull Connor and his snarling dogs gained national notoriety.

Racial hostility is so high in Boston that blacks fear to walk into South Boston, citadel of the city's Irish, as much as whites fear going into black Roxbury. Even in boomtown Houston the frame shacks of the city's blacks still stretch for blocks almost within the shadows of the tall new office buildings.

All this is bad enough, but America's racial inequalities and tensions could get worse. During the reforming '60s there was a commitment by many white politicians and officials, indeed by whites in general, to the principles of civil rights. This gave blacks good reason to believe that their lives would improve, slowly but steadily. In terms of personal freedoms--access to the ballot, public accommodations and transportation--there was great improvement. But these gains did not bring with them economic success--or a fair share of the American dream.

Today the optimism of the '60s has disappeared, and there is little hope that the problems of the ghettos are about to be tackled anew, let alone solved. The problem is not a resurgence of white racism in America. Instead broad impersonal trends have converged to shift the attention of America away from its ghettos. The energy crisis, the threat of growing Soviet military power and Soviet adventurism abroad, the decline of the U.S. dollar, the fall of U.S. productivity, the nation's vulnerability in a more complex world, as evidenced by events in Iran, the rise in inflation and the onset of recession--all have prompted a reordering of national priorities. The country has become more conservative, and not just because of lingering doubts, stemming from the experience of the '70s, that expensive social programs can solve the obdurate problems of the ghettos. There is no likelihood that extensive Federal funds will be pumped into the cities when the drive for a balanced budget and a strengthened U.S. military remain so strong. The poor of any color will suffer.

Understandably, many black leaders deeply resent these political shifts. M. Carl Holman, president of the National Urban Coalition, expresses that sentiment in excessive terms. Says he of the nation's black communities: "There are raw wounds out there and a blind officialdom keeps flicking those wounds with a whip as if to see what will happen."

What could happen if most blacks perceived white officials as acting so callously is a frightening prospect, for blacks and whites alike. Even some of black America's most fiery leaders warn strongly against any resort to violence.

One is Chicago's Rev. Jesse Jackson. A strong advocate of the theory that white America not only is racist but is losing any feelings of guilt, Jackson urges blacks to turn inward and help themselves. "You must aim high," he has advised. "You must believe you can become a doctor or lawyer or nurse or the alderman for your ward." After the Miami riots, Jackson told his followers in Chicago: "Our young people must not consider it a badge of courage, with blood in their eyes, to run headlong into an organized military brigade, and to run from genocide to suicide. It's a bad strategy and it will not work."

Instead of rioting, Jackson said, blacks should "march in large numbers." If they do, "they would also get attention. Massive voting gets attention too." Yet one of the great uncertainties in American race relations is whether blacks will listen any more carefully to the voices of such leaders than whites listen to the angry voices being raised today in the ghettos.

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