Disintegration - The Splintering Of Black America Part 5

I hesitate to return to a character who has already become quite familiar in these pages-President Barack Obama-but he is relevant in this chapter, too, because in addition to being the ultimate Transcendent black American, he is also a double Emergent. As the son of a Kenyan, he represents the internationalization of black America (although his father was part of a smaller, precursor trickle of black people from Africa and the Caribbean who were high-powered enough to gain entry before the immigration laws were changed). And, of course, he is also the son of a white woman from Kansas.

When he launched his campaign, Obama was seen-not by the African American public, generally, but by the national media-as perhaps insufficiently "black" to win black America's unconditional support. That quickly fizzled out-it was obvious that Obama's self-identification as a black American was complete and unambiguous, and in any event he didn't look like anyone who could ever be called "white" in the United States. Obama grew up mostly in Indonesia and Hawaii, so it was an act of conscious will for him to adopt his black American ident.i.ty. That was how society was going to brand him whether he liked it or not, but he cultivated his black Americanness (American blackness?) with what looked almost like the zeal of a convert. His skin color and African facial features were always going to be there for everyone to see, and to categorize, but still he might have emerged from his adolescent search for himself as essentially colorless-deracinated, not just in the sense of being raceless but also rootless. He had to be black, but he didn't have to act act black. black.

Instead, he evolved a persona that could best be described as black urban cool. He walks with an easy lope; he plays basketball, not tennis. On the occasions when I've seen him interact with groups that are mostly or exclusively black, he shows no hint of unfamiliarity with in-group gesture, mannerism, cadence, or tone. He strikes no false notes. It is difficult to spell out exactly what I mean, since it has so much to do with affect and vibe. Perhaps this helps: In any setting, if he chooses, he can effortlessly give the impression of someone walking into an upscale jazz club and gliding through the room toward his regular table.

The he's-too-black phase of Obama's campaign-courtesy of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his Trinity United Church of Christ-came a year after the not-black-enough phase. Both were ridiculous, but the too-black meme was a real threat to Obama's chance of winning the Democratic nomination. He responded by giving a remarkable speech in Philadelphia about race and how it fit into the broader American historical narrative. As rhetoric, as political theater, and as a display of erudition, it was stunning. But I was less interested in the broad sweep of Obama's speech than in a few lines that were intensely personal.

At that point, during the first Wright eruption, Obama was not yet ready to cut ties with his longtime pastor. He acknowledged Wright's failings, but he added: As imperfect as he may be, [Wright] has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children...I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother-a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who pa.s.sed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.3 Commentators who picked up on that line accused Obama of "throwing his grandmother under the bus" by alleging she made racist remarks. But I heard something much more interesting: the simple statement that while Obama was a black American, the fact that he was biracial meant that his relations.h.i.+p with white America was necessarily different from mine, in that it was personal. Obama might sit in a pew and listen to the Afrocentric "us versus them" fire and brimstone of Wright's preaching, but he could never fully buy into it. At a fundamental level, for Obama the conflict would have had to be "us versus us," or even "me versus me." For anyone who wants to avoid crippling self-loathing and years of psychoa.n.a.lysis, it's best not to go there.

This is the real question posed by Emergent black America: Do the rapidly increasing numbers of immigrant and biracial African Americans have the same sense of historical injury that other black Americans do? And if not, does it matter? Might it change the atmosphere, and perhaps lower the temperature as well?

I'm reminded of Obama's observation, in my Oval Office interview, that soon-if it is not already the case-there will be more African Americans who have no experience of Jim Crow racism than those who do. This is an important milestone because memories of those pre-enlightened times are more stubborn, more vivid, and more ambiguous in their psychological impact than many people might think. A rough equivalent, I suppose, would be having survived and escaped an abusive relations.h.i.+p. n.o.body would choose to go through that kind of trauma, and n.o.body would wish such an experience for their son or daughter. But having endured and overcome the abuse, one learns. One becomes cautious. One does not give trust or commit lightly. And one never, ever forgets.

When I was growing up, sometimes it seemed as if white folks spent most of their waking hours trying to think up new ways to keep black people down. Given the time and place, South Carolina in the early '60s, that wasn't far from the truth. When the Voting Rights Act gave black people access to the polls, for example, white officials simply gerrymandered the city limits-including white suburban developments, excluding black ones-to ensure that African Americans could not take power at city hall. Any reasonable person would conclude that the great legislative triumphs of 1964 and 1965, as monumental as they were, didn't represent the end of the struggle. They marked the beginning of a new phase in which the adversary would fight with subtlety and nuance, not with burning crosses.

It was easy for some African Americans to slip into something resembling paranoia-indeed, my colleague at The Was.h.i.+ngton Post The Was.h.i.+ngton Post, columnist Richard Cohen, once cautioned me to remember that "the word 'paranoid' has no meaning for blacks and Jews." After Dr. King was killed, did "they" purposely allow the black commercial centers of major cities to burn, thus setting back the quest for economic empowerment? Was it an accident that the heroin and crack epidemics raged in the inner cities but not in the white suburbs?

I never put stock in conspiracy theories, simply because my experience as a reporter taught me that it's almost impossible for three or four people to pull off any kind of secret plot; that there could be thousands or even millions of coconspirators, and that they could keep quiet for decades, is beyond fantasy. But I know that the experience of Jim Crow has left me with a hard little nugget of suspicion and resentment buried deep inside, and that it gives me motivation and strength. It's the feeling that there are people out there who don't want me to succeed, which makes me all the more determined to deny them satisfaction.

African Americans of my generation transmit some of this legacy to our children, either consciously or unconsciously. It's like pa.s.sing down through the family a suit of armor-an heirloom that protects but also burdens. But the fastest-growing segments of black America-the Emergents-have less reason, or perhaps no reason at all, to go through life wearing chain mail.

For black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, the United States may be judged guilty of modern sins, but not the ancient kind that fester in the blood. Immigrants may have complicated feelings about the European colonial powers, but America is seen as an imperfect society that nevertheless offers economic opportunity and political freedom-seen in this light unambiguously, with no historical asterisk. Why else would Jamaicans and Bahamians be so eager to come to this country to join the family members who came before them? Why would Ethiopians or Nigerians leave their homelands and move halfway around the world?

The immigrants are anything but ignorant about America's racial history, but they arrive at the theater in the middle of the third act. They don't enter a country that trains fire hoses on black people, they enter one that practices affirmative action and makes a special effort to enroll their children in the best colleges. They don't enter a country that is obviously hostile to black entrepreneurs, they enter one with minority set-asides and small-business loans. The American dream doesn't look like a cinch, but neither does it look like a cruel deception.

I don't want to overstate. The men, women, and children who const.i.tute Emergent black America have no immunity from racial discrimination. If they want to feel a sense of community, they are more likely to seek it-and find it-among the four black Americas than elsewhere. And anyone who might believe that immigrant status confers any degree of protection from the most corrosive residues of history should remember what happened to Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo, two black men, at the hands of New York City police. In 1997, Louima, who was born in Haiti, was arrested outside a Brooklyn nightclub, taken to a station house, and brutalized by officers, including being sodomized with a broken broomstick. Two years later, Diallo, an immigrant from Guinea, was killed-shot nineteen times-as he stood at the front door of his Bronx apartment house; police said they thought he was reaching for a gun, but Diallo, unarmed, was actually trying to take out his wallet and identify himself to the officers. Every black man in America knows he is more likely to be the victim of police brutality or mistaken ident.i.ty than his white coworker in the next cubicle-every black man, no matter where he was born.

But there is a difference for Emergents. No matter how completely and unambiguously I feel a part of the American system, I know that this system despised my parents, and their parents, and the rest of my ancestors stretching back nearly four hundred years. This knowledge isn't oppressive or even particularly intrusive; I don't really think about it, and it certainly doesn't affect the way I go about my day. But it's there, and I don't think I could help feeling differently if I were from an immigrant family whose history was written thousands of miles away.

And biracial Americans? Obama's insight was valuable: How is it possible to hold a cla.s.s of people in contempt-even historical contempt-if your grandmother and grandfather are among them? A generalization such as "white people want to keep black people down" has no meaning if a white mother or father, white aunts and uncles, white grandparents and perhaps white great-grandparents bounced you on their knees.

If current trends hold, most biracial black-and-white Americans will continue to self-identify as African American. But a sense of being somehow divorced, or at least estranged, from the larger society cannot possibly come easily to them. This is a good thing-less racial tension is a goal that we all should be able to agree on. And as the numbers of the Emergent grow, the posture of black America toward the rest of America will evolve-while the once-bright line between black America and the rest of America becomes fuzzy and hard to pin down.

"Funny, he doesn't look Jewish" may be joined by a new observation: "Funny, he doesn't seem black."

9

URGENCY, FOCUS, AND SACRIFICE.

Every year, the National Urban League issues The State of Black America Report The State of Black America Report. Big enough to serve as a doorstop, the doc.u.ment (referred to as SOBA) is a voluminous, meticulously researched a.s.sessment of where African Americans stand compared to the larger society. There are narrative sections that seek to establish context. "The response to the devastation caused by near-record high unemployment for African Americans that threatens to push an already struggling community deeper into poverty and despair must be urgent," said the Executive Summary of SOBA 2010. "Jobs with living wages and good benefits must be the primary goal for 2010 and ahead." But the main focus was, as always, a number: 71.8.1 Urban League researchers compile and a.n.a.lyze data from a variety of sources to calculate the Equality Index-a number meant to quantify precisely where black America stands in comparison to white America. Averaging scores in subcategories that include economics, health, education, social justice, and civic engagement, the Urban League reported that African Americans had attained 71.8 percent of parity with white Americans. This was the first time in four years that the number had shown improvement; for 2009, it had been 71.2.

SOBA is an impressive piece of work, a.s.sembled with great care. But what does it really mean? In 2010 did it mean that I, and every other black citizen, should have felt that the turning of the year brought us precisely .6 percent closer to attaining the American dream?

Imagine a household in which half the men are professional basketball players and half are professional jockeys. A State of the Family report would calculate that the men, on average, are five feet eleven inches tall. But that would hardly tell the whole story. In fact, it would tell the wrong story.

There are approximately forty million African Americans2-more people than live, for example, in Canada, Argentina, Algeria, or Poland. If we were discussing any of those countries, we wouldn't hesitate to evaluate the circ.u.mstances of different economic, social, and cultural sectors. We would consider the rich and the poor, the working cla.s.s and the middle cla.s.s, the native-born and the immigrant. Not doing so would be superficial, like confining ourselves to observing that one country was colored blue on the map and another was colored pink.

Averages and medians can lie. Crude statistics give the impression that the past four decades have seen uneven social progress and only modest economic gains by African Americans. A huge increase in college attendance and graduation rates is partly offset by incongruously high dropout and incarceration rates. The African American poverty rate has fallen, but black family incomes barely seem to have budged at all in comparison to those of whites. The median black household earns about 62 percent of what the median white household earns, roughly the same ratio that was measured four decades ago. That's what the numbers seem to say-yet it could hardly be more obvious that African Americans have seen tremendous advancement and unprecedented change. The affluent neighborhoods of Prince George's County are not a figment of the collective imagination. The election of Barack Obama was not just a dream.

Forty years of disintegration have, in fact, produced a miracle. A thriving black middle cla.s.s has been created, a group that has not yet reached full parity with white America but has come remarkably close. If you look only at two-parent households, for example, African American families now earn about 85 percent of what white families earn.3 It is wrong to minimize this lingering disparity and right to insist that we find ways to eliminate it, but it's nonsensical to ignore the tremendous gains that Mainstream black America has made. It is wrong to minimize this lingering disparity and right to insist that we find ways to eliminate it, but it's nonsensical to ignore the tremendous gains that Mainstream black America has made.

The purchasing power of African Americans was on track to surpa.s.s $1 trillion in 2012 before the recession took hold; that milestone may be delayed, but surely not for long. A study conducted for the Magazine Publishers of America found that African Americans are particularly avid consumers. Looking at the habits of young people-who are most coveted by advertisers-the study found that black teens spend more on average than white teens for a number of products, including clothes, video-game hardware, computer software, and casual shoes. Black teens are especially loyal to their favorite brands, and they have greater-than-average influence over household purchases of items from cereal to cell phones.4 Because of desegregation and disintegration, the black middle cla.s.s is not only bigger and wealthier but also liberated from the separate but unequal nation called black America that existed before the triumph of civil rights. The black Mainstream is now woven into the fabric of America, not just economically but culturally as well. The Mainstream has a distinct ident.i.ty-a clear sense of itself as African American-and clings determinedly to its historic inst.i.tutions, like the historically black churches, universities, fraternities, and sororities that were so vital during the long, dark night of Jim Crow. The Mainstream also has a tendency to cl.u.s.ter together in black-majority enclaves, no longer out of necessity but out of choice. But to the extent that any of this might be portrayed as an unusual clannishness or tendency toward self-segregation, such an a.s.sessment would be objectively wrong: It turns out that whites are considerably more likely to live in racially segregated neighborhoods than blacks.

Socially, economically, and culturally, the black Mainstream is part of the American mainstream. Middle-cla.s.s African Americans buy too much on credit and save too little for the future, they burden their children with high and often unrealistic expectations, they drive automobiles that are excessively large and wasteful, they become emotionally attached to professional sports teams made up of wealthy, spoiled, indifferent athletes-in short, they behave just like other Americans. Even though there is still ground to be made up, it is fair to say that for all intents and purposes, Mainstream African Americans have arrived.

The Abandoned, however, have not. And the question is whether they ever will.

As the Mainstream have risen, the Abandoned have fallen. To be black, poor, and uneducated in America is, arguably, a more desperate and intractable predicament today than it was forty or fifty years ago.

I say "arguably" because in terms of material possessions and physical living conditions there has been obvious improvement. Housing is less squalid and overcrowded than it once was for poor black people. The wholesale transfer of manufacturing to China robbed unskilled American workers of jobs, but that phenomenon, plus the rise of discount retailers like Wal-Mart, drove prices so low that former luxuries came within reach of practically everyone-televisions, household appliances, mobile phones, flashy "gold" jewelry made out of nickel or zinc. The poor certainly don't look look as poor as they once did. as poor as they once did.

But in most other ways, the situation and prospects of the Abandoned black poor have worsened. There is no need to list, once again, all the many interlocking problems and crises that afflict impoverished African American urban and rural communities. It suffices to ask one question: How is a teenager living in Abandoned dysfunction today supposed to escape? By following the sage advice of parents and other mentors? The teenager is likely being raised by a single mother, who herself was raised by a single mother. By attending first-cla.s.s public schools, with constructive academic support at home? We know all about the failings of big-city public education. By landing a blue-collar industrial job with security, benefits, and a middle-cla.s.s wage? Those jobs can be found in China or Brazil, not in Cincinnati or Boston. The ladder that generations have used to climb out of poverty is missing its rungs.

Somehow opportunity has to be created where it does not now exist. But first, there is another factor to take into account: personal responsibility. Opening doors only helps those who are ready to walk through.

Not even the most foggy-headed or starry-eyed could deny that wrong choices play a huge role in keeping the Abandoned mired in their plight-and that no policies or programs can possibly succeed unless individuals make better choices. This was the basic message of Come On, People Come On, People, the book by Bill Cosby and Alvin Poussaint that stridently lectured poor African Americans on the need to change their ways. The authors didn't deserve all the criticism they got-for the most part they were just stating, or screaming, the obvious. They pointed out that there is an alarming crisis among black men in this country, and urged young men to do better-to stay in school, cut out the violence, stop fathering children out of wedlock, and generally behave like "real men" instead of caricatures. They advised black women to "hang in there" and provide support that might help change black men's erring ways. They spoke of the need for community and denounced the prohibition, applied with deadly force in some Abandoned neighborhoods, against cooperating with police to help get offenders off the streets. They reminded readers of African Americans' rich history of struggle and triumph, presenting this legacy as an inspiration. They wrote about parenthood and effective child-raising-the responsibilities, the frustrations, the joys. They wrote about the vital importance of education as a means of uplift and escape. Cosby and Poussaint were accused of blaming the victim, but nothing they said was gratuitous or untrue.

In the end, though, Come On, People Come On, People didn't have the galvanizing effect that its authors must have hoped for. It wasn't that they were trying to sell the wrong message but that they failed to get through to their intended audience. The book became fodder for pa.s.sionate talk-show debates. But to the extent that it reached African Americans, the book connected with Mainstream readers. They could either agree with the prescriptions that Cosby and Poussaint outlined, or they could complain that these Transcendent authors were letting the larger society, including inattentive elected officials, off the hook. Meanwhile, in the dysfunctional Abandoned communities that the authors were trying to reach, didn't have the galvanizing effect that its authors must have hoped for. It wasn't that they were trying to sell the wrong message but that they failed to get through to their intended audience. The book became fodder for pa.s.sionate talk-show debates. But to the extent that it reached African Americans, the book connected with Mainstream readers. They could either agree with the prescriptions that Cosby and Poussaint outlined, or they could complain that these Transcendent authors were letting the larger society, including inattentive elected officials, off the hook. Meanwhile, in the dysfunctional Abandoned communities that the authors were trying to reach, Come On, People Come On, People probably made less of an impression than a particularly entertaining episode of probably made less of an impression than a particularly entertaining episode of Judge Judy Judge Judy.

Increasingly, between the Abandoned and the rest of black America, there is a failure to communicate, much less comprehend.

One place where everyone comes together is black radio, where hosts such as Tom Joyner, Michael Baisden, Steve Harvey, Mo'Nique, and Yolanda Adams aggregate audiences that are economically and socially diverse. In 2006, when a group of African American teenagers in Louisiana-the so-called "Jena Six"-were made to face what seemed to be unfairly tough criminal charges after a school fight against white students, Baisden and other African American hosts were instrumental in organizing large protests that drew national attention to the case. But the case looked like a simple, old-fas.h.i.+oned instance of racial discrimination and unequal justice-the kind of thing all four black Americas see in more or less the same light. Day in and day out, black radio hosts do an admirable job of examining the plight of the Abandoned from every conceivable angle. The truth is, though, that they have little impact on either policy or behavior. The gap is just too wide for their reach.

On Easter Sunday 2010, President Obama and his family went to church at Allen Chapel AME Church in Was.h.i.+ngton, a lively congregation in one of the Abandoned neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River. The pastor, Reverend Michael Bell, called the presidential visit "a monumental moment for us as a community." Wors.h.i.+ppers had begun lining up before dawn to make it through all the levels of security screening. The Obamas sang, clapped, and rejoiced on the holiest day of the Christian calendar, and then their twenty-two-car motorcade sped back across the Anacostia to the picture-postcard part of town, where the cherry blossoms were gloriously in bloom.

Just a few days earlier, driving past a street corner not many blocks from Allen Chapel, gunmen in a minivan had sprayed bullets into a crowd of people gathered outside a decrepit little apartment building. When all was over, four young black men and women had been killed and five others injured in what was described as the worst ma.s.s shooting in Was.h.i.+ngton in years. The city was stunned, both by the scale and the senselessness of the carnage. Then came outrage and anger at the needless loss of human life and potential; one of those fatally shot was a sixteen-year-old girl, an aspiring chef who by all accounts was full of talent and ambition, but who picked the wrong evening to meet some of her friends at a popular gathering spot. As the story behind the shooting began to emerge, the city's anger seemed to give way to hopelessness and resignation. The pathology involved was so deep and multilayered that it was hard to know where to begin.

According to police, the story began a week before the ma.s.s shooting, when a young man's "gold-tone" bracelet went missing. The bracelet owner believed he knew who had taken it, so he and his brother went to find the alleged thief, a twenty-year-old man. When they found him, they allegedly shot him dead. The bracelet owner was subsequently arrested and charged with the alleged thief's murder.

The bracelet owner's brother was not apprehended. A few days later, someone shot him in the face-probably as an act of revenge or street justice, police theorize. The shooting actually was more of a grazing, and the brother was not seriously injured.

The alleged thief's funeral was an all-day affair, involving a church service downtown, burial at a local cemetery, and finally a repast for family and friends. Some of those friends gathered later at the corner of South Capitol and Brandywine, in front of that decrepit little apartment building-a convenient spot, across from a modest commercial strip, which was known as a safe, no-beefs-allowed demilitarized zone between the territories of several drug-selling "crews."

The bracelet owner's brother and several of his friends, meanwhile, were allegedly cruising the streets on their own mission of justice or revenge. Police say they rented a minivan and went first to a housing project and shot one man, apparently believing that he had some connection to the bracelet affair. Then the shooters happened to drive down South Capitol Street, a major thoroughfare, and recognized some of the alleged thief's friends among the post-funeral crowd.

Through the open windows of the minivan came a deadly spray of indiscriminate gunfire from at least two pistols and an AK-47-style a.s.sault weapon. It is not clear whether the intended targets of the rampage were among the nine people who fell. It is possible that the bracelet owner's brother, still nursing his face wound, was aiming for his a.s.sailant. It is possible that the shooters wanted to eliminate someone who might testify against the bracelet owner at his eventual trial. It is also possible that the shooters believed someone in the crowd had cooperated with police in identifying and apprehending the bracelet owner for allegedly killing the alleged thief. In t.i.t-for-tat violent disputes like this one, "snitching" is a capital offense.

The a.s.sailants led police on a wild, action-movie-style chase that sped into nearby Prince George's County, where three police cars crashed in a spectacular accident, and then back into Was.h.i.+ngton. Finally the a.s.sailants were cornered and caught. The brother of the bracelet owner and another man were charged with murder. Later a third man was arrested on murder charges and a fourth on gun charges for allegedly supplying the a.s.sault rifle. All the suspects were black men between the ages of twenty and twenty-six.5 After Obama's visit to the neighborhood, I went out to the site of the shooting. There I saw an all-too-familiar tableau-a mound of flowers and teddy bears, an impromptu memorial to the dead. In front of a habitually ignored NO LOITERING NO LOITERING sign, there was a collection of liquor bottles-probably a special tribute to one or more of the dead from fellow members of a "crew," which is the euphemism that authorities in Was.h.i.+ngton use when they talk about gangs. I went back to my office to write a column, but I could not find anything original to say. There was the contrast between the presidential visit and the shooting, between hope and hopelessness. But beyond that, what else? What should have happened so that there would have been no sad, improvised memorial on that corner for me to visit? If we could have turned back the clock to keep nine people from being shot, and four of them from dying, what moment would we have chosen in which to intervene? Just before the minivan drove up? Before the bracelet was stolen? Even then would have been too late. The time to avert the killings was before any of the young men involved-as a.s.sailants, victims, or both-came to understand that a missing ten-dollar bracelet was reason to kill or be killed. sign, there was a collection of liquor bottles-probably a special tribute to one or more of the dead from fellow members of a "crew," which is the euphemism that authorities in Was.h.i.+ngton use when they talk about gangs. I went back to my office to write a column, but I could not find anything original to say. There was the contrast between the presidential visit and the shooting, between hope and hopelessness. But beyond that, what else? What should have happened so that there would have been no sad, improvised memorial on that corner for me to visit? If we could have turned back the clock to keep nine people from being shot, and four of them from dying, what moment would we have chosen in which to intervene? Just before the minivan drove up? Before the bracelet was stolen? Even then would have been too late. The time to avert the killings was before any of the young men involved-as a.s.sailants, victims, or both-came to understand that a missing ten-dollar bracelet was reason to kill or be killed.

Obama did not speak at the Easter service, and some critics complained that he should have taken to the pulpit and preached about the killings. I'm not sure what he could have said, though, beyond acknowledging the tragedy and expressing the same shock, horror, outrage, and regret that everyone already felt. Between the White House and Anacostia, the president had traveled just a few miles. But the distance might as well have been measured in light-years.

Sociologist Elijah Anderson, whose 1999 book, Code of the Street Code of the Street, helped explain why some low-income young people make choices that seem illogical or self-defeating, has written that "the story of the inner-city black community...is at heart one of profound isolation-economic, physical, and social."6 Just as a remote island will develop an ecosystem that is functional but perhaps radically different from that of the mainland, so did Abandoned black America-increasingly isolated from the Mainstream-develop a cultural ecosystem that makes sense internally but nowhere else. Outsiders do not often get to see the private behavior that is not just familiar but universal: a mother's tenderness as she combs her young daughter's hair, a boy's nervous indecision as he chooses an outfit for his first day of high school. What we see instead is public behavior that often seems bizarrely self-defeating. Just as a remote island will develop an ecosystem that is functional but perhaps radically different from that of the mainland, so did Abandoned black America-increasingly isolated from the Mainstream-develop a cultural ecosystem that makes sense internally but nowhere else. Outsiders do not often get to see the private behavior that is not just familiar but universal: a mother's tenderness as she combs her young daughter's hair, a boy's nervous indecision as he chooses an outfit for his first day of high school. What we see instead is public behavior that often seems bizarrely self-defeating.

Anderson studied inner-city Philadelphia (which happens to be Bill Cosby's hometown). In a 1998 essay, "The Social Ecology of Youth Violence," he explained: Almost everyone in poor inner-city neighborhoods is struggling financially and therefore feels a certain distance from the rest of America, but there are degrees of alienation, captured by the labels "decent" and "street." Residents use these labels as judgments on themselves or others. People of both orientations often coexist in the same extended family. There is also a great deal of "code-switching": a person may exhibit both decent and street orientations, depending on the occasion. Decent people, especially young people, put a premium on the ability to code-switch. They share many of the "decent" middle-cla.s.s values of the wider society, but know that the open display of such values carries little weight on the street: it does not provide the emblems that say "I can take care of myself." So they develop a repertoire of behaviors that provide that security. Those who are "street," having had less exposure to the wider society, may have difficulty code-switching. They are strongly imbued with the code of the street and either do not know the rules for decent behavior or may see little value in displaying such knowledge.7 In Anderson's lexicon, both "decent" and "street" families in Abandoned black communities understand that they are essentially on their own-and that because of their isolation and estrangement from the larger society, following the "code" is a more urgent imperative than living up to middle-cla.s.s expectations. "At the heart of the code is the issue of respect-loosely defined as being treated 'right' or being granted...the deference one deserves," Anderson wrote.8 Failure to demand the proper respect is seen as weakness-an invitation to further mistreatment. Failure to demand the proper respect is seen as weakness-an invitation to further mistreatment.

This means that not even minor slights can be ignored. Stepping on someone's foot or b.u.mping someone's shoulder while pa.s.sing on the sidewalk can lead to words or even a fight. Maintaining eye contact for too long is seen as an act of aggression. In public, it is never seen as wise to confront the world with anything other than one's game face. In that sense, life is like one long ride on the New York City subway.

This heightened appreciation of respect and disrespect sometimes works in counterintuitive ways. Anderson described an episode he witnessed in inner-city Philadelphia. On a busy street, a woman stopped her car-entirely blocking a lane of traffic-and waited ten minutes for a man, perhaps a husband or boyfriend, to come out of a barbershop. In the suburbs, impatient drivers would have honked their horns and flashed their lights until the offending car moved out of the way. But in North Philadelphia, no one complained; drivers simply maneuvered around the woman's car and went about their business. The calculation was that to challenge her would provoke a confrontation because the woman-or her male friend-would feel compelled to respond with defiance. The inconvenience the woman had caused wasn't worth a potential conflict in which no one would be able to back down.9 For young people especially, material possessions, such as the most fas.h.i.+onable brand-name clothing and jewelry, are important because they command respect. The same is true in Mainstream society, of course, but the stakes are higher in communities where people struggle to afford necessities, let alone luxuries. Any teenager who obtains and flaunts high-status items-the right right North Face jacket, for example, or the North Face jacket, for example, or the right right Timberland boots-has to be willing and able to defend them. Taking such accoutrements by intimidation or force from the owner is the kind of bold action that can enhance another young man's status among his peers, and in turn provide inoculation against those who might be tempted to try something like that with him. Timberland boots-has to be willing and able to defend them. Taking such accoutrements by intimidation or force from the owner is the kind of bold action that can enhance another young man's status among his peers, and in turn provide inoculation against those who might be tempted to try something like that with him.

"Every young person in deprived inner-city black neighborhoods must learn to live with the code of the street," Anderson wrote. "The street kids must prove their manhood and achieve their ident.i.ty under the intricate rules of the code. The decent kids must learn to coexist with it."10 The value system in Abandoned communities has a certain internal logic, but it plays an enormous role in separating the Abandoned from the Mainstream and everyone else. Mainstream youths may listen to the same music, wear the same clothes, and even make a show of displaying the same don't-mess-with-me att.i.tude, but there's a difference between simply listening to violent or misogynistic hip-hop lyrics and actually accepting them as authentic, nonfiction narrative.

To dwell on violence, or the threat of violence, is of course unfair to the great majority of African Americans in Abandoned communities who are law-abiding, churchgoing citizens seeking only a better life for themselves and their families. Never, in more than three decades as a journalist, have I gone into a dangerous housing project or driven down a G.o.dforsaken country road and met a mother who did not love her children and want the best for them. I have met mothers and fathers who were ignorant of how to instruct their children and provide for them, but none who did not want to do so.

Since Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty was allowed to peter out in the 1980s, government policies have essentially left the Abandoned to their own devices. The absence of work and the disintegration of the public schools eliminated traditional routes of advancement; knowing that there were no good jobs and that the schools were dysfunctional made people apathetic and resigned. Still, the unwritten code of insult, umbrage, and retribution that holds sway in Abandoned communities-enforced by a few, but followed by many-plays an enormously destructive role by choking off ambition and creating an atmosphere of randomness and uncertainty.

Those capable of code-switching have a chance of leaping the chasm-those who understand, for example, that while "acting white" in school is seen as a sign of softness and weakness, it is possible to avoid showing vulnerability in public and at the same time earn the kind of grades that make it possible to go to college. Those who cannot live in both worlds, who do not understand both sets of values, are all but lost.

The essential, and tragic, problem is that "keeping it real"-adhering to the code-requires either engaging in all manner of self-defeating behavior or finding elaborate subterfuges to avoid shooting oneself in the foot. The warping of values in Abandoned black America means that being successful requires being duplicitous-being literally two-faced. And that is never an easy way to live.

Some call it trickle-down, some talk about a rising tide lifting all boats. Whatever metaphor you use for Ronald Reagan's notion of how to run an economy, it obviously hasn't worked for low-income African Americans. I would argue that it hasn't worked for poor, working-cla.s.s, or middle-cla.s.s Americans of any race, creed, or color, for that matter. In the past three decades, the economy has seen enormous growth and wealth-creation-but in boom-and-bust cycles that have destroyed too many industries, communities, and families. Middle-cla.s.s incomes have been as stagnant as an algae-choked pond, while a Niagara of income has cascaded onto the wealthy and the superrich. It is ironic when the wealthy complain of having to shoulder an increasing share of the nation's overall tax burden. Surely they realize that this is because they have an increasing share of the money.

Worsening income distribution has been accompanied by a decline in economic and social mobility, once our nation's great pride and still a cherished element of the American dream. To be born poor and rise to wealth is now a much more difficult and less common feat in the United States than it was forty or fifty years ago, when industries such as automobile and steel factories provided a path into the middle cla.s.s and working-cla.s.s families could easily afford public higher education for their children. It is also increasingly difficult for someone born rich to fall into poverty-although this kind of downward mobility is more common for African Americans than for whites or any other group.

The recession brought on by the bursting of the housing bubble in 2007 demonstrated how precarious the situation of the middle cla.s.s has become-and how much more tenuous middle-cla.s.s status is for the black Mainstream. While joblessness overall climbed just past 10 percent, unemployment for African Americans surpa.s.sed 16 percent; among young black men in Abandoned neighborhoods, the rate was as high as 50 percent.11 Black homeowners were disproportionately likely to find themselves trapped in mortgages they could not pay or legally committed to paying far more than their houses were currently worth, and thus became disproportionately likely to suffer foreclosures and evictions. Black homeowners were disproportionately likely to find themselves trapped in mortgages they could not pay or legally committed to paying far more than their houses were currently worth, and thus became disproportionately likely to suffer foreclosures and evictions.

Meanwhile there is a widespread sense that the things that knit this country together-our political system, our infrastructure, our sense of community-have fallen into disrepair. The ethic of enlightened self-interest works brilliantly for running a capitalist economic system, but a nation is more than its economy. Nationhood also means shared ideals and values, a shared history, and shared resources.

Among African Americans, the successful have always evinced a determination to reach back and bring along the less fortunate. In my lifetime, I have met very few black professionals who did not feel it was their duty to mentor young African Americans and help advance their careers. I have met few African American professionals who do not try in some way to encourage and uplift the Abandoned, perhaps through mentoring programs at their churches, perhaps through volunteer organizations such as Concerned Black Men or the National Council of Negro Women, perhaps through fraternities or sororities. There is a long tradition in black communities of taking in, and caring for, children whose parents are unable to do so. Before disintegration, these organic, informal efforts might have been enough. But no more-not, at least, for the Abandoned.

A black senior vice president at a Fortune 500 firm might be able to significantly increase diversity by hiring and promoting qualified African Americans. But those qualified job applicants are going to come from the ranks of the Mainstream, not the Abandoned. Volunteer and nonprofit organizations have a tremendously beneficial impact on the lives of underprivileged young men and women, but are unable to give them all of what they desperately need-good schools, safe streets, positive parental supervision-and unable to erase the damage that has already been done.

The Transcendent and the Mainstream will continue to do whatever they can. But it is time to be realistic. We are winning lots of individual battles, but we are losing the war. And this fact-that we are losing ground with the Abandoned, rather than gaining ground-raises an issue that many Americans understandably wish would just go away: the future of affirmative action.

It is tempting to celebrate the success of the Mainstream, the advent of the Emergent, and the rise of the Transcendent by declaring affirmative action a thing of the past. The goal, after all, is to reach Dr. King's long-dreamed-of promised land where the legitimate criterion for judging a person is character, not color. It goes against the grain of America's values-or at least offends America's self-image-to deliberately and overtly prefer one group over another. The nation learned the rhetoric of the civil rights movement well, and those same stirring words are now recited on behalf of those who believe that affirmative action does harm to whites: Everyone is equal, discrimination is against the law, fairness is fundamental, unfairness is un-American.

The Obama presidency adds an exclamation point to these complaints. An African American is now the most powerful man in the country-in fact, the most powerful man in the world. For some who have long criticized affirmative action on philosophical grounds, the symbolism of seeing the Obama family in the White House provides the perfect visual to underscore their argument. For others, whose objection to preferential measures is more visceral, Obama's election suggests a more direct question: What more could you people possibly want?

These critics and complainers are actually right, in the long run. But they are premature.

I am a firm believer in the necessity for continued race-based affirmative action. It needs to be modified and modernized, but it should not be eliminated, not yet. I see three reasons. First, there is the historical injury that African Americans have suffered. Many people would like to put all of that behind us-to say, in effect, "All right, we tore down the legal barriers four decades ago and we gave black Americans a leg up. Now we're even-steven. Starting here and now, everybody has to compete for everything on an equal basis, with no preference asked for and none given. That's the American way." This view is understandable and in many ways attractive, but it is also superficial and wrong. Why would anyone expect forty years of redress, at times grudging and halfhearted, to offset nearly four hundred years of deliberate, comprehensive oppression? That so many African Americans have left poverty and ignorance behind, in spite of all the roadblocks and hurdles, is a miracle. But the miracle is still incomplete.

Second, racism and discrimination are radically diminished but not eliminated. In some studies, researchers have found that white employers often prefer white job applicants over black applicants who have clearly superior credentials. In at least one study, employers even chose a white job-seeker with a criminal record over a black man with no record and better qualifications. Aside from whatever overt prejudice remains, psychologists have done startling research on unconscious bias-for example, a doc.u.mented tendency of test subjects to a.s.sociate white faces with positive concepts and black faces with negative ones. This reflex may be conditioned by societal cues, but there are some researchers who believe, controversially, that a preference for light over dark might somehow be hardwired into the human brain. I find this far-fetched-at least I hope it's far-fetched-and I think it's more likely that humans may somehow be programmed to have an affinity with people who look like "us" rather than "them." This effect has been measured to be relatively small, and given how the definition of "us" has widened during my lifetime-"we who are affluent," "we who are middle cla.s.s," "we who live in the suburbs," "we who play golf," "we who work in the same office," "we who see one another at social events," and many other "we's" now include black people-I have to a.s.sume that someday unconscious bias will just fade away. But for the present, it can only make the overt racism that remains more difficult to eradicate.

Third, affirmative action is an investment in America's future. As the nation becomes increasingly diverse, it is in no one's interest to have historically underprivileged groups feeling left out and resentful. And in a global economy that becomes more compet.i.tive by the day, where intellectual firepower is as important as military might, a mind really is a terrible thing to waste.

None of this is meant to deny, however, that indeed there has been a miracle. Proof lies in the existence of the Mainstream and the emergence of the Transcendent. It simply is not possible to defend the position that in a college admissions process incorporating affirmative action, the child of, say, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith should be treated exactly the same as the child of a custodian and a nurse's aide. Affirmative action does two things: It compensates for inequality and bias, past and present; and it creates diversity. Transcendent black America should be ruled out for affirmative action except the kind that rich and powerful white Americans have been enjoying all along-"legacy" admission to elite schools, a la George W. Bush, because Daddy went there; plum sinecures in corporate America, like d.i.c.k Cheney's at Halliburton, that only come from spending quality time in the boardroom or on the golf course with the right people; and, of course, the Park Avenue equivalent of Head Start: a lightly taxed inheritance.

Whether Mainstream black America should continue to benefit from affirmative action is a subtler and more difficult question. On the merits alone, I would argue that it should. The Mainstream's gains are historic, but they are precarious; it will take at least another generation, and perhaps more, to significantly close the wealth gap that leaves Mainstream black Americans, in tough economic times, far too likely to fall and crash. But this is not a question that will be resolved solely on merit. Politics, resources, and priorities demand to be taken into account.

Politically, it is increasingly untenable to tell a middle-cla.s.s white family that a middle-cla.s.s black family across town, with an identical income, is going to be given advantages because of race. Demographic changes-the fact that in some of our biggest states, including California and Texas, whites are no longer a majority-makes affirmative action programs that are based solely on race vulnerable to attacks that they do nothing more than favor one minority over another. Realistically, a political consensus for blunt-instrument affirmative action no longer exists. President Obama dabbled with this idea during the campaign, saying that his daughters, Sasha and Malia, wouldn't deserve any special help when it was time for them to apply to college. But he didn't quite finish the thought. Sooner or later, I believe, he will have to. The fact is that whether the issue is jobs, college admissions, government contracts, or whatever, there will only be so much largesse to go around. Given that context, the big question is one of priorities.

I am convinced that affirmative action must be narrowed and intensified to be used as a tool to uplift the Abandoned. That means eliminating its benefits for African Americans above some specified income level.

This would be a real change. The biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action over the past four decades have been women-mostly white women-who occupy a place in the workforce and the academy that previous generations could not have imagined. (When the feminist revolution came, black women already worked for a living.) Second, in terms of gains, have been middle-cla.s.s African Americans.

When affirmative action programs were launched-goals to diversify college admissions, minority hiring and training programs in many industries, set-aside programs to make sure that minority-owned firms won government contracts, and other such initiatives-opportunities naturally went to those who were best prepared to seize them. In pre-disintegration black America, families with relatively more money and relatively more education-the proto-Mainstream-rushed through the newly opened doors of admissions quotas and minority training programs. The poorest and least educated-the proto-Abandoned-were largely beyond the reach of affirmative action. As disintegration progressed, Abandoned neighborhoods fell apart, public school systems were allowed to collapse, and families with resources decided to move away. All this just reinforced the pattern in which affirmative action favored the Mainstream. Black suburban enclaves, like Country Club Hills south of Chicago or the affluent neighborhoods northeast of St. Louis, were born-and affirmative action, to this day, helps sustain them. While most programs based on numerical quotas are no longer allowed, governments still have initiatives in place to ensure that minority firms partic.i.p.ate in contracts; universities work around Supreme Court decisions to continue ensuring diversity in admissions; and most large corporations have made explicit commitments to increase diversity in hiring and promotions.

Meanwhile, Abandoned black America slid beyond a state of crisis to a condition of literal hopelessness. What is needed now is true affirmative action-policies and programs that reach those who need it most. These new initiatives will have to go far beyond the efforts that universities and employers now make to promote diversity; smart CEOs and university presidents, with an eye toward the demographic future, will continue these efforts anyway. What is needed is a kind of Marshall Plan for the Abandoned-ma.s.sive intervention in education, public safety, health, and other aspects of life, with the aim being to arrest the downward spiral. Otherwise, that phrase I detest-permanent undercla.s.s-will become our permanent reality.

Taking the Mainstream out of the affirmative action equation would inevitably call attention to the compet.i.tion that is already taking place between the Abandoned and the immigrant Emergent, who-like my friend Sentayu, the gym attendant with the brilliant daughter-would qualify for means-tested a.s.sistance. There is already friction between the two groups. Some advocates for the Abandoned say that immigrants should not qualify for affirmative action at all, since they have suffered no historical oppression-on American soil, at least-that merits redress. Meanwhile, immigrants have groused to me that the native-born Abandoned have all the power they need to take charge of their own lives and futures, but that they choose not to do so. The immigrants argue that if their children live in the same troubled neighborhoods, attend the same failed schools, overcome language and cultural barriers, and still end up as their cla.s.s valedictorians and win scholars.h.i.+ps to attend exclusive universities, their achievements should not be marginalized or in any sense diminished with an asterisk-that black immigrant success should be celebrated as an example of how to climb out of dysfunctional surroundings and vault into the Mainstream and beyond.

My view is that affirmative action programs are, by their nature, fairly blunt instruments, and that to try to add national origin as a criterion would be unwieldy at best and probably unworkable. I also believe it would be more trouble than it is worth. If the success of families from Nigeria, Ethiopia, Barbados, and elsewhere at climbing out of poverty suggests that the Abandoned are doing something wrong, or that they are doing many things wrong, the constructive reaction should be to evaluate and process the message, not punish the messenger. As the immigrant Emergent rise in income and status, they, too, would move beyond eligibility for any special a.s.sistance.

The problems of the Abandoned have to be attacked on every level, all at once. It can't be an either-or proposition-either we set up enterprise zones, with tax breaks, to encourage the formation of small businesses, or we intervene directly with government-sponsored jobs programs. We have to do both. We have to accelerate the process of tearing down dangerous, decrepit housing projects and replacing them with units that are less Stalinist in scale and easier to make secure. We have to intervene directly with families to break daisy-chain cycles of teen pregnancy; we have to rebuild and re-staff the schools; we have to give young men and women something to dream about beyond the confines of the neighborhoods where they live.

And speaking of neighborhoods, one part of the solution to the all-but-intractable problems of the Abandoned has to be a wholesale embrace of gentrification. Both the Abandoned and their advocates need to see this wrenching process as both desirable and necessary.

From the point of view of the people being displaced, there is a lot not to like about gentrification. It yanks people out of neighborhoods where their families may have had roots for generations. It entices homeowners to sell at prices that are a fraction of what they could demand just a few years later. It completes the shredding of what once were healthy, vibrant communities.

But neighborhoods that become gentrified have, by definition, already disintegrated, which means that the toxic and seemingly inexorable Abandoned pathology has already set in. Research indicates not just that concentrated black poverty is self-sustaining but that the fact of racial segregation may be the most important impediment to turning around a neighborhood's decline. So to the extent that gentrification breaks up tough knots of Abandoned poverty and scatters people to the winds, including to other areas that might be just as poor but are more racially integrated, the process actually can be beneficial to the displaced-with one big caveat.

The caveat is that the displaced cannot simply be forced into another all-black ghetto-one that is more remote, with even fewer amenities and services. This is largely what has happened in Was.h.i.+ngton and some other cities, and the result is that the problem just gets moved, not solved.

By far the best solution-and, yes, it costs money-is to preserve or create low-income housing that allows the Abandoned to stay in place while the neighborhood gentrifies around them. All this is well-known to munic.i.p.al officials across the nation; the problem is the expense, both in initial outlay and eventual tax receipts. The bursting of the real estate bubble and the implosion of the subprime mortgage industry have not had many positive effects, but the slowing of the gentrification steamroller and the return of property values to more rational levels should provide some breathing room for effective housing policies. An explicit goal should be ameliorating the racial segregation of Abandoned communities, and one way of doing that is to encourage and manage gentrification in ways that create diverse neighborhoods-ones that include not just affluent white newcomers but also low-income black survivors.

A domestic Marshall Plan aimed at Abandoned black America will be expensive, and politically it will be a hard sell. For reasons that I doubt anyone really understands, it seems to be much easier to convince Americans and their elected officials to spend hundreds of billions of dollars for comprehensive nation-building programs in faraway places like Iraq and Afghanistan than to fund comparable initiatives in their own hometowns. We're willing to pay young men in Kabul to hand over their weapons, to build schools for them so they can learn marketable skills, to create jobs for them so they can stop selling drugs. We decline to do the same for young men in Kansas City. Someday, perhaps, someone will explain why this is supposed to make sense.

A Marshall Plan to attack entrenched African American poverty, dysfunction, and violence should be framed as a cognate of the original Marshall Plan: a costly, but ultimately profitable, investment in America's national security. I doubt that it can be sold to the public and to Congress at all unless it is made explicit that the intent is not to give any special advantages to Mainstream black families that most Americans consider to be middle cla.s.s or even affluent. Even given the nation's serious burden of deficit and debt, designing and building a bridge to bring the Abandoned into the Mainstream is not beyond our reach. It took just days to come up with nearly a trillion dollars to save the international financial system. The United States spends almost as much on defense as all the other nations of the world combined-an incredible 48 percent of the global total. We can find the money. We just have to find the political will.

We also have to find the political leaders.h.i.+p.

President Obama has taken the position that his initiatives, to the extent that they are aimed at helping the working cla.s.s and the poor, will inevitably benefit African Americans to a greater degree than most other groups. If black people are less likely to have health insurance, for example, then health-care reform that provides insurance will have a greater impact in black communities; if energy legislation creates thousands of new "green" jobs and black unemployment is nearly twice as high as white unemployment, then African Americans should see disproportionate rewards.

After a grace period of a year or so, some African American activists and intellectuals began to complain that Obama's race-neutral approach was not bold enough to address the crisis in Abandoned black America. Perhaps the most visible and voluble of the critics was commentator Tavis Smiley, who convened a Black Agenda Summit in Chicago, Obama's hometown, to press for more urgent and targeted action. "The bottom line is the president needs to take the issues of black America more seriously because black folks are catching h.e.l.l, number one," he said. "Number two: This theory that a rising tide lifting all boats-that theory was soundly dismissed. Thirdly, because black people are suffering disproportionately, it requires a disproportionate response."12 With equal volume and a.s.sertiveness, Obama was defended by a leader whom many people would have expected to be on the other side of the issue: the Reverend Al Sharpton. There was no need, Sharpton said, for Obama to "ballyhoo" a specific black agenda. He argued, in effect, that progressive policies could be targeted to focus on inner-city or rural communities without being specifically labeled as instruments of black uplift. With equal volume and a.s.sertiveness, Obama was defended by a leader whom many people would have expected to be on the other side of the issue: the Reverend Al Sharpton. There was no need, Sharpton said, for Obama to "ballyhoo" a specific black agenda. He argued, in effect, that progressive policies could be targeted to focus on inner-city or rural communities without being specifically labeled as instruments of black uplift.

Sharpton had the keener sense of public relations and the political moment. Polls showed that the most vehement critics of the first African American president-a majority of Tea Party protesters, for example-already believed that Obama's programs favored black Americans over others. The reality is that some whites were always going to suspect Obama of favoritism, no matter what he said or did. Being a "first black" anything always involves bending over backward not just to be evenhanded but to demonstrate that evenhandedness.

On substance, though, Smiley has a point. The crisis in Abandoned black America is unique: It is profound, multigenerational, and in some ways worsening. Between 2000 and 2005, the segment of black American households at the bottom, earning less than $15,000 a year, grew from 23.1 percent to 26 percent.13 Any president could make a compelling argument for focused and sustained atten