Many of the manufacturing jobs that spawned the great Northern migration of blacks from the South have fled the cities-and the nation-in a constant stream over the past three decades. They have moved to other, cheaper places. ”Now we find an environment in which no degree of effort related to muscle makes a difference,” said Franklyn Jenifer, president of Howard University. ”In the old days, people trapped in the ghetto always had bootstrap opportunities in which their muscle and willingness would pull them out.”
Opportunity, the elixir that creates comfort out of effort, has disappeared. A new, low-end work force moved in, from Mexico, Central America and Asia, warmly welcomed by employers eager to leave the inner city and its problems behind.
Jobs, education, housing, money-the four elements that play the strongest role in the American mythology-are missing. This reality has rendered powerless an entire segment of society.
”It wasn`t middle-class black people who exploded, even though they were angry,” noted Dr. Alvin Poussaint, a black psychiatrist who has lectured and taught at Harvard University for more than 20 years.
”It was people who feel they have no power.”
Is it any wonder that some blacks speak of conspiracies when they talk about these conditions? Is it any wonder that the ghetto developed its own disastrous politics and economics, fueled by drugs and gang violence, when the ”outside” economy fled?
The U.S. has attacked huge problems before with great success. An entire generation of elderly Americans were pulled from poverty and given the guarantee of a Social Security check.
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But something went sour in America after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act in the mid-1960s-a time of great hope that the century-old promise of equality would finally be delivered.
The consensus that it was the right thing to do disappeared, driven away, perhaps, by the exhaustion of Vietnam, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, which broke the hearts and the backs of two political movements remarkable for their commitment and vigor.
Now the deepest concern from the study of the 1967 riots has become reality.
There are at least two Americas, clearly separated by race and class. The comfortable part watched in horror as the other part burned and looted and murdered in Los Angeles. The riots confirmed every fear white America has ever had about the urban poor.
They presented television images of murderous thieves and reinforced a racist stereotype that infects attitudes in every part of the nation. It took years for the images of 1967 to soften, and they were reborn in full color in an instant. The search for targets to blame began before the ashes of Los Angeles were even cold.
”As I looked at television, I was saddened to see that we were dug in around the politics of blame and scapegoating,” said Milton Bins, chairman of the Council of 100, a conservative national black Republican group.
”There are responsible public officials out there in Los Angeles using this sentence: `I can understand it, but I condemn it.` Let me tell you, I don`t understand it and I condemn it. . . . There are people out there who are catering and pandering to the worst instincts.”
It is almost as though some determined, unidentifiable historical force wanted to remind the nation of another important conclusion in that landmark study of the 1967 riots:
”It will not do to fight misery in the black ghetto and leave untouched the reality of injustice and deprivation elsewhere in our society. The first priority is order and justice for all Americans.”
There is a debate under way across the country in the wake of the Los Angeles riots, a reconsideration of the question of what black people are to become in American society, how they see their own roles.
In one way or another, it touches everyone from the rioters and looters in Los Angeles to the most protected people in the most protected suburbs in the nation.
Los Angeles is causing people to reflect on their own lives, to measure not only the degree of racism they perceive, but also its cause and on whether they feel this problem will ever be solved.
Author Nicholas Lehman wrote ”The Promised Land,” a bestseller that traces the migration of blacks from rural Mississippi to the projects on Chicago`s South Side. His perspective is that wherever races mix, racism is inevitable. The problem is not limited to the U.S.
”People of different races, as a general rule, don`t get along anywhere in the world. Racial harmony is not the standard mode of human behavior. There`s racial and tribal and ethnic tension everywhere in the world,” Lehman said in an interview.
”America is actually less racist than most places. America is one of the only societies that has been built on and struggled with the idea of being genuinely multiethnic, peacefully multiethnic. What`s unusual about America is it has managed to be as peacefully multiethnic as it is.”
A different perspective comes from Michael Franti, leader of one of rap`s most authoritative new groups, The Disposable Heros of Hiphoprisy. His lyrics describe an America in turmoil, a land in which young blacks search in vain for an identity lost on the slave ships centuries ago.
As a basketball star at the University of San Francisco, Franti said, he felt he was being groomed to become a ”disposable hero,” headed for the same fate as generations of other black entertainers and athletes. Calls for order ring hollow, he said, among the groups at the bottom of the economic ladder in the U.S.
”They told people don`t loot, but the S&Ls have been looting us for years,” he said. ”They tell us stay in your homes, but many of us are homeless. They tell us show restraint, but we saw their form of restraint on the videotape” of black motorist Rodney King`s beating by white Los Angeles police.
Franti says superficial symbols of black progress are evident everywhere in American culture, but they are misleading.
The few TV shows about the black middle class, like ”The Cosby Show,”
are fine, he said, but ”the problem is there are no other shows about black life to balance it. Everyone knows that `Dynasty` is not what white society is about, because there are 20 other shows that paint a different picture.”
Messages against violence don`t play well among people who are so aware of the violence they have faced across American history.
”Just look at the (Rodney King) tape,” said Chris Coleman, a senior at Stevenson High School in north suburban Prairie View. ”I can`t see how those police officers can be innocent. The man was lying on the ground. . . . Let`s face it, the brothers in L.A. don`t like this; I don`t like this.
”Martin Luther King tried non-violence and he got shot by a white man. Why should we be non-violent? Why should we just talk? We`ve been coming up short for too long. I don`t know if this means war, but something has definitely got to change.”
Even for those who are wealthy, there is the problem of color.
”People tell me all the time, `Oh, I know you don`t experience prejudice,` ” said Eunice Johnson, secretary-treasurer of Johnson Publishing Co., founded by her husband John, one of America`s wealthiest black men.
”I tell them, `Don`t you believe that.` I go into a store and before they know who I am, they treat me just like they would Rodney King.”
Theodore English lives in yet another world of black experience, with opinions crafted over the passage of time. Still, he expresses some common frustrations.
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”I`m convinced it`s never going to happen as long as there is a difference in our skins,” says English, 64, a skycap for 40 years and now working at O`Hare International Airport. ”I don`t see enough blacks getting out of these limousines in the morning. . . . I don`t see enough blacks in the first-class line. I don`t see enough blacks coming out with their families going on vacation.”
A middle-class white can fly with the family to Disney World, he said.
”How can he do things my 27-year-old son can`t do? It bothers me to know that he lives so good and I live so bad, and this society is supposed to be equal,” English said.
He echoes a sentiment similar to Vonnegut`s on the question of race relations.
”I really don`t care if blacks and whites get together,” English said.
”I just want a fair share of the pie. . . . Until the people in power realize how unfair they`ve been, we`re not going to have (equality). Black people don`t need to make any adjustments. They`ve paid their dues.”
For some, there is a simple wish that the problem would be solved. It plays a dominating role in their lives, one that creates fear and tension.
”People are always tense because of this,” says Helen Krsek, 37, a convenience store clerk in Oak Lawn. She is not certain whether society will even recognize equality should it come, but she thinks she will know it when she sees it.
”I think that`s the day when anybody can walk anywhere without being concerned about being hurt,” she said.
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Next: Police and politics.