We established the groundwork for an institutionalized underclass in the United States when we endorsed slavery. Since then we have found many different ways to ensure that that institution was preserved. We are now just about out of rationalization formulas that keep the 15% of our legal citizens in abject poverty and hopelessness. The big question, in my mind, is how much longer this country can endure this number of people economically, socially and morally before the inevitable rebellion experience.
When I was a little boy growing up in and around Cleveland, Ohio, my father drove me down to what we then called the slums, or skid row. He drove slowly with the windows up and the doors locked. The year was 1950. I was eight. He pointed out the raggedy-ness of the people, the buildings, the cars and the stores. "See what can happen if you don't toe the line, study hard in school and obey your elders?" His admonishment was well-intended, but it also sent the message that a certain amount of hopelessness would always be there waiting for me if I was a "bad boy".
We moved to the suburbs when I was 12. I never saw another black person in person until high school. Our school in Willoughby, Ohio had two black families and their kids went to our school. Since there were only two black kids in a school of 1,500, we treated them fairly but at the same time they seemed like our adopted pets. We were, after all, the white majority. We were all safe. We were safe from having to confront the ugliness of what I saw on that drive through with my father. Among myself and my classmates, there was no real consciousness about black vs. white cultures; it was just them and us.
When I went to college, however, I met many black athletes who attended the high schools from the side of Cleveland I visited when I was eight. As part of the athletic department it became also normal to associate with these guys on a regular basis. Again, the black student athletes were in the extreme minority in 1961. We were still safe. There were black only fraternities on campus, but most of the fraternities were exclusively white. There was NO interracial socialization. In high school our teams played some of the inner-city school teams and there was always the trepidation associated with visiting those schools as there must have been when they had to come out to our school. I asked some of the guys from the college teams what that was like for them. They just eye-rolled me and mumbled something about feeling pretty uncomfortable. Now, I would say, "No kidding.", but back then I asked, "Why?" I just didn't know.
Fast forward past the Viet Nam era and into the 70s and 80s. Now I was a working professional, a graduate student, back to working in business and industry and becoming more aware of my social responsibilities and hoping/trying to raise my social consciousness. Now, I had real friends who were black. I dated, hung out and visited back and forth with everyone without a second thought. These were my friends and I loved them. Their race and religion (if any)or social status didn't matter. I was a young hippie, I guess, trying to live the dream of "Peace, Love, Groovy." That was, perhaps, the best period of my life: becoming more or less totally aware of the depth and breadth of our entire society, not just my own little corner of it. Those friends helped me understand more and more about what was wrong and what was right about how we Americans treated each other 100 years, or so, after the alleged end of slavery.
This diary doesn't allow space and time for detailed experiences to enrich the points of that personal growth, but one thing sticks out. The ghettos still existed. They were still sinkholes of dashed hopes and dreams. The people I met who escaped from those inner city depths via athletic, Pell or academic scholarship were inspirational to me in their finding good fortune that I would never completely understand. They became part of the 15% solution.
I wrote a diary earlier this year about how we throw people away in this country. The response was minimal. It didn't seem to touch too many nerves. O.K. But I ask that you count up on your fingers the number of people who have been born to the underclass: the 15% of our population who never escape the poverty cycle for any number of reasons. From a strictly economic and moral point of view, that's absolute madness. It's like not allowing women to vote. We just throw away half of our thinking and give control to those who mostly lust for it. And we know how well that works out in the annals of human history.
As with women's suffrage, why can't we do something dramatic? I know that women had to fight through a few administrations to finally shame Wilson into signing the bill, but it's not the same thing with our underclass. The women who fought that heroic fight were mostly educated middle class, or better. They were the idealists of their time and ... they were almost all white. There is no question that people of color do not receive the same assumed attention and rights that the suffragettes received even though there was blatant brutality from the Secret Service, FBI and others trying to protect the status quo. It strikes me badly that the country that wears its doctrine of freedom on its sleeve so boldly still ignores this or that group's rights when it is convenient for the people in power to do so. Why are we so hypocritical with our own citizens?
At the end of WW II, the cities of Europe and Japan had been mostly blasted and burned to smithereens. The "victors" could have done the same thing they did after the first world war and ignore the infrastructure of the vanquished, letting them fend for themselves. Insodoing after WW I, those vanquished nations fomented hate and revenge against their conquerors as history shows is always the case. WW II was clearly and extension of WW I with a 30 year breather between combats. After the war ended in 1945 Harry Truman asked George C. Marshall to develop a plan to not repeat the mistakes of 1918. The result was The Marshall Plan.
The Marshall Plan may be the most significant human endeavor into social and moral salvation in the history of civilization. We, the United States of America, took our resources, our expertise and our will to Europe and Japan and provided the means for the Germans, the French, the British and the Japanese to rebuild their societies and economies. The result was that these countries became the best allies and economic partners we ever hoped to have. We helped inject hope, vigor and purpose back into those people for their own sake, primarily, and for our sake so we wouldn't have to fight them again. Does anyone think that those billions weren't worth it? How about the return on that investment? Not bad.
So. I look into our inner cities today and I see a blight that staggers even an old hippie like me. Drugs and thugs. Guns and more drugs. Hate and lawlessness. Kids are afraid to go to school. Kids die for a pair of sneakers. Metal detectors and dogs at schools. Schools were supposed to be a safe haven of hope and knowledge for those who wanted to make a better life for themselves in this highly touted land of opportunity. None of that exists for the 15% of the people we throw away every year. How many generations have passed through that portal of discard since 1865? Data shows that the kids who are fed poorly or are scared to death most of their time do poorly at learning. So, what's left for these kids to learn down on the avenue? Survival. Whatever it takes to survive is the learned behavior. No more. No less, unless you make yourself available to be killed. Without reading the statistics, those kids in the ghettos of American cities will tell you that the leading cause of death for African-American males between the ages of 13 and 30 is homicide. Homicide. That means killing one another. Is this what we've left over for 15% of our people?
Rhetorical questions should be followed by solutions. I ask a real question: Why can't we execute a Marshall Plan for OUR cities? They may as well be blasted to smithereens for all the care we've shown them. Why can't we send experts, trainers, lumber, paint, teachers, clothiers, shop owners and real work opportunities there with guided learning to put the local citizens to work building something to be proud of rather than defending turf with guns? Isn't that a pro-life, good Christian approach to a vexing, hellish problem? Where are all the liberal thinkers and doers when we need them the most in our own cities and towns?
Obviously, a massive program like a Marshall Plan for America (MPA) requires leadership and the will to do it. It could start here. Bill Cosby, Ervin (Magic) Johnson and Barack Obama are familiar with what it takes to organize inner-city activism. The rest of us need to step up. Retired carpenters, engineers, teachers, decorators, masons, etc., are everywhere and could become available to do one last great thing in their lives. Professional athletes who come from those inner cities can bankroll hundreds of projects with their mega-millions earned from bouncing, or throwing, or hitting a ball. As Mr. Cosby says, "Come on, people!" There is 15% of our people out there ready to become part of something great; something that dreams are made of: REALITY. The reality of accomplishment, success and, yes, hope for the future instead of an expectation for 9 mm justice.