Urban Blight

The crisis in Black America, particularly young black males, has been making a minor stir in intellectual circles these days. Orlando Patterson's article in the Times a week back in particular has got social scientists exercised over his not exactly novel idea that culture has an influence on the cycle of poverty that has lead to high incarceration rates, endemic violence, low academic achievement, etc... in the Black community. He is not dismissing socio-economic forces, he believes they actually create culture, but he wants social scientists at least to incorporate culture into analysis as a variable, something many have shied away from.

Not claiming social scientist status here and these comments are purely anecdotal but the strengths of the arguments seem obvious, culturally speaking there certainly is a pose for many African-American males, call it a hip hop ascetic, that celebrates violence, crime, defiance of any sort of authority and crass materialism. As a high school teacher in a city where 50% of the youth don't graduate from high school, pants rarely stay at waist level and mother fucker is the adjective and noun of choice. And I teach in the second best school in the city. By the way, our school is disproportionately female as we lack male applicants.

The weakness, in Patterson's article, is his belief that economic conditions have somehow improved in central cities since African-Americans have had access to traditional stepping-stone jobs like bus drivers, cops, fireman, teaching, etc... He seems to over estimate the depth of the late nineties, for political reasons?, "economic boom." While some new immigrants have certainly raised their lot in the last 40 years the real condition of the urban United States and the working class, of all ethnicities, has been trending down as a result of the collapse of the industrial base. The union entry level jobs just aren't there any more for 16 year olds in the city and if you don't have at least a college education there is very little social mobility for anyone.

I actually think we know what will work; jobs, health care, equal opportunity, equal pay, etc...