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The Role of the Black Elite in Outreaching to the Black Lower Class... - Bob Herbert’s Cogent Discourse On Black Social Crises

Page 5 of 14

Bob Herbert’s Cogent Discourse On Black Social Crises

It is clear that from the early 1980s onward, African-American society has experienced a kind of two-tier bifurcation of its social class pattern. Within this bifurcated class pattern entailing a “static-stratum” sector (e.g., weak working-class and poor families) and a “mobile-stratum” sector (e.g., middle-class and professional-class families), what might be termed a “troubled Black America dynamic” can be found. For example, while middle-class and professional-class African-Americans inhabiting the “mobile-stratum” (around 60% of Black Americans) have advanced up the American social mobility ladder, those African-Americans inhabiting the “static-stratum” (weak- working-class and poverty-level ranks) seem to dwell in a “vegetated state-of-social-crises”, so to speak. What the articles by the African-American columnist for The New York Times have uniquely provided over the past decade is a cogent and sharp vista on the “troubled Black America dynamics”.

Bob Herbert’s cogent and sharp vista on contemporary Black American social crises can be found especially in his New York Times columns that appeared March 5 and March 15, 2007. These articles (one titled “Education, Education, Education" — March 5 — the other “The Danger Zone” — March 15) discuss the nitty-gritty details of contemporary Black American social crises, especially the Black-youth social crises. The Black-youth social crises probed by Bob Herbert are:

The crisis in education opportunities and thus in education performance and outcomes.
The job-market and job-opportunity crisis.

In his March 5 column “Education, Education, Education”, Bob Herbert details in graphic ways the education status of Black males, showing first the education benefits among Black males associated with education achievement, and then showing the horrible downside associated with high dropout rates. Herbert summarizes new research from a study produced by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston as follows:

For males in each of the three race-ethnic groups (blacks, Hispanics and whites), employment rates in 2005 increased steadily and strongly with their educational attainment. This was especially true for black males, for whom employment rates rose from a low of 33 percent among high school dropouts to 57 percent among high school graduates, and to a high of 86 percent among four-year college graduates.

From here Bob Herbert discusses the consequences of poor educational attainment among Black males. Here his tone is dire and foreboding:

The fact that only one of every three young black male high school dropouts was able to obtain any type of job during an average month n 2005 should be viewed as particularly distressing, since many of these young men will end up being involved in criminal activities during their late teens and early 20s. [They’ll face] severe economic consequences for convictions and incarcerations over the remainder of their working lives.

…For anyone deluded enough to question whether education is the ticket to a better life for black boys and men, consider that a black male who drops out of high school is 60 times more likely to find himself in prison than one with a bachelor’s degree. Black males who graduate from a four-year college will make, over the course of a ifetime, more than twice the mean earnings of a black high school graduate…more than a million dollars. [Also college-educated] black males…are more likely to marry and live with their children…. (Emphasis added)

Bob Herbert concludes his Education, Education, Education article with what might be viewed as an injunction to middle-class African-Americans to outreach-to-Black-lower-class-crises. Here’s how Herbert put it:

This is not a close-call issue. It is becoming very hard for anyone to succeed in this society without a college education. To leave school without even a high school education, as so many males do — specially black males…is extremely self-destructive. The effort to bolster the education background of black men has to begin very early. It’s extremely difficult to turn a high school dropout into a college graduate. This effort can succeed on a large scale only if there is a cultural change in the black community — a powerful change that acknowledges as the 21st century unfolds that there is no more important life tool for black children than education, education, education. (Emphasis added)

I might add to Herbert’s discussion of today’s education crisis that’s crippling Black youth another set of facts relating to this crisis. These facts are from USA Today (August 6, 2007), reporting that “fourth-graders reading below the basic level” number 59% among African-Americans, compared to 25% among White Americans. Clearly, as Bob Herbert observed, the “effort [to reverse today’s education crisis] can succeed on a large scale only if there is a cultural change in the black community….”

When Bob Herbert takes up the subject of the job-market/job-opportunity crisis facing lower-class African-Americans, he again strikes a quite dire and foreboding analytical tone. He commences his New York Times article “The Danger Zone” (March 15, 2007) thus:

What I’m talking about is extreme joblessness — joblessness that is coursing through [black] communities and being passed from one generation to another, like a deadly virus. …In big cities, more than half [black male youth] do not even graduate from high school. Their employment histories are gruesome. Over the past few years, the percentage of black male high school graduates in their 20s who were jobless (including those who abandoned all efforts to find a job) has ranged from well over a third to roughly 50 percent. Those are the kind of statistics you get during a depression. For dropouts, the rates of joblessness are staggering. For black males who left high chool without a diploma, the real jobless rate at various times over the past few years has ranged from 59 percent to a breathtaking 72 percent.

In the second half of “The Danger Zone” article, Bob Herbert discusses the faint beginnings of federal-level leadership interest in addressing the dreadful job-market-job-opportunity crisis facing Black males. This faint federal-level interest we owe, no doubt, to the fortuitous Democratic Party victory in the 2006 congressional elections, and especially to the first-ever rise of 4 African-American U.S. legislators heading major Congressional Committees and 16 frican-American legislators heading Sub-Committees, and an African-American chosen as Congressional Whip to boot. Herbert commences this discussion by reference to new Congressional Hearings held at the end of February 2007, by Congress’s Joint Economic Committee on the joblessness crisis among African-American males. He quotes the chair of that committee, Senator Charles Schumer of New York:

“Seventy-two percent jobless [for school dropout black males]! This compares to 29 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts.” Senator Schumer described the problem of black male unemployment as “profound, persistent and perplexing.” Jobless rates at such sky-high levels don’t just destroy lives, they destroy entire communities. They breed all manner of anti-social behavior, including violent crime. One of the main reasons there are so few black marriages is that there are so many black men who are financially incapable of supporting a family. “These numbers should generate a sense of national alarm,” said Senator Schumer. (Emphasis Added)

Bob Herbert continues “The Danger Zone” article discussing how little is being done by either the private economy or public policy programs to address the unique and horrendous job-market/job-opportunity crisis of Black males. “However much this epidemic of joblessness may hurt,” observes Herbert, “very little is being done about it.” In regard to the private economy, he notes that “According to the Labor Department, only 97,000 new jobs were created in February [2007]…not even enough to accommodate new entrants to the work force.” And even when there may be a high number of new jobs in a month [e.g., over 300,000 in July 2007] or economic quarter, Herbert observes that, according to studies by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, “the only groups that have experienced a growth in jobs since the last recession are older workers and immigrants. …Steady jobs with good benefits are going the way of Ozzie & Harriet. Young workers, especially, are hurting, which diminishes the prospects for the American family. And blacks, particularly black males, are in a deep danger zone.”

Bob Herbert concludes his “The Danger Zone” article (The New York Times, March 15) with a critical jab at the indifference of the Republican controlled Congress — through most of the 1990s down to the November 2006 congressional elections — to produce public policies that might help remedy the joblessness crisis facing Black males. As Herbert put it:

Instead of addressing this issue constructively, [Republican] government officials have responded by eviscerating programs that were designed to move young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into the job market. Robert Carmona, president of Strive, an organization that helps build job skills, told Senator Schumer’s committee [Congress’ Joint Economic Committee] – “What we’ve seen over the last several years is a deliberate disinvestment in programs that do work.” What’s needed are massive programs of job training and job creation, and a sustained national effort to bolster the education backgrounds of disadvantaged youngsters. So far there has been no political will to do any of that.

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