~---FRICAN AMERICANS HAVE MADE SIGNIFICANT PROGRESS

IN many areas, but they have not kept pace with White Americansin any sectors. African Americans have advanced in formal school-

ing to a remarkable degree, although in most areas residential patterns haveleft many public schools predominantly Black or White. Higher education alsoreflects the legacy of a nation that has operated two schooling systems: one forBlacks and another for Whites. Gains in earning power have barely kept pacewith inflation, and the gap between Whites and Blacks has remained largelyunchanged. African American families are susceptible to the problems associ-ated with a low-income group that also faces dis-crimination and prejudice. Housingin many areas remains segregated,despite growing numbers of Blacksin suburban areas. AfricanAmericans are more likely

to be victims of crimesand to be arrested forviolent crimes. The sub-ordination of Blacks is alsoapparent in health care deliv-ery. African Americans havemade substantial gains inelective office but still areunderrepresented com-pared with their num-bers in the generalpopulation.

ohn and Glenn are alike in almost every way: about the same age, Big Ten col-lege graduates, similar jobs, and active sports enthusiasts. But they find thatthey have very dissimilar experiences in such everyday activities as walking intoa shopping mall to buy shoes or look over the latest CDs.John typically receivesinstant attention when he walks even near the shoe department, but the same

salesperson fails to acknowledge Glenn even though he has been waiting five minutes.A little later John casually picks up some CDs in a record store. At the very same time,Glenn is engaged in exactly the same behavior in the same store, but he is closely shad-owed by a store employee, who observes Glenn's every move.

John is White and Glenn is Black, which makes all the difference even in this every-day shopping behavior. They were part of an experiment conducted by the televisionnewsmagazine Primetime Live in St. Louis to assess the impact of race on the day-to-daylives of average African Americans and Whites. Over a period of three weeks, the pro-gram closely monitored the two researchers, who had been trained to present them-selves in an identical manner in a variety of situations.

In a televised report on this experiment, Primetime Live host Diane Sawyer acknowl-edged that, at times, the two men were treated equally. However, Sawyer added that notonce or twice but "every single day," there were instances of differential treatment. At anemployment agency, Glenn was lectured on laziness and told that he would be moni-tored "real close." John, by contrast, was encouraged to pursue job leads, and staff mem-bers made it clear that he could expect to find a suitable position (ABC News 1992).

Race is socially constructed, but that does not mean that being Black does not haveconsequences and being White carries privileges. Despite the publicity given to obvi-ous discrimination that has persisted well into the present, a superficial sense of com-placency about the position of African Americans in the United States exists now inthe twenty-first century.

As you read this chapter, try to keep in perspective the profile of African Americansin the United States today. This chapter will assess education, the economy, family life,housing, criminal justice, health care, and politics among the nation's African Ameri-cans. Progress has occurred, and some of the advances are nothing short of remark-able. The deprivation of the African American people relative to Whites remains,however, even if absolute deprivation has been softened. A significant gap remains be-tween African Americans and the dominant group, and to this gap a price is assigned:the price of being African Americans in the United States.

The African American population in the United States has placed special importanceon acquiring education, beginning with its emphasis in the home of the slave familyand continuing through the creation of separate schools for Black children becausethe public schools were closed to them by custom or law. Today, long after the old civilrights coalition has disbanded, education remains a controversial issue. Because racialand ethnic groups realize that formal schooling is the key to social mobility, they wantto maximize this opportunity for upward mobility and, therefore, want better school-ing. White Americans also appreciate the value offormal schooling and do not want todo anything that they perceive willjeopardize their own position.

Several measures document the inadequate education received by Mrican Americans,starting with the quantity of formal education. The gap in educational attainment be-tween Blacks as a group and Whites as a group has always been present. Despite pro-grams directed at the poor, such as Head Start, White children are still more likely tohave formal prekindergarten education than are Mrican American children. Later,Black children generally drop out of school sooner and, therefore, are less likely to re-ceive high school diplomas, let alone college degrees. Table 8.1 shows the gap in theamount of schooling Mrican Americans receive compared to Whites. It also illustratesprogress in reducing this gap in recent years. Despite this progress, however, the gapremains substantial, with nearly twice the proportion of Whites holding a college de-gree as Blacks in 2004.

A second aspect of inadequate schooling, many educators argue, is that many stu-dents would not drop out of school were it not for the combined inadequacies of theireducation. Among the deficiencies noted have been:

• Insensitive teachers• Poor counseling• Unresponsive administrators• Overcrowded classes• Irrelevant curricula• Dilapidated school facilities

Although several of these problems can be addressed with more adequate funding,some are stalemated by disagreements over what changes would lead to the best out-come. For example, there is significant debate among educators and Mrican Ameri-cans in general over the content of curriculum that is best for minority students. Someschools have developed academic programs that take an Mrocentric perspective and

1960 1980 2004COMPLETING HIGH SCHOOLBLACKMale 18.2% 50.8% 80.4%Female 21.8 51.5 80.9WHITEMale 41.6 69.6 89.9Female 44.7 68.1 90.1COMPLETING COLLEGEBLACKMale 2.8 8.4 16.6Female 3.3 8.3 18.5WHITEMale 10.3 21.3 32.9Female 6.0 13.3 28.4

Note: Data for Whites are for non-Hispanic Whites.

Source: Bureau of the Census 2005a, 147; 2005c, Table 10.

de facto segregationSegregation that is the resultof residential patterns.

apartheid schoolsAll-Blackschools.

trackingThe practice of placing stu-dents in specific curriculumgroups on the basis of testscores and other criteria.

immerse students in Mrican American history and culture. Yet a few of these programshave been targeted as ignoring fundamentals, as in the debate in Oakland, California,noted in Chapter 7, over recognizing Ebonies as a language in the classroom. Onother occasions, the Mrocentric curriculum has even been viewed as racist againstWhites. The debates over a few controversial programs attract a lot of attention, cloud-ing the widespread need to reassess the curriculum for racial and ethnic minorities.

Middle- and upper-class children occasionally face these barriers to a high-qualityeducation, but they are more likely than the poor to have a home environment that isfavorable to learning. Even Mrican American schoolchildren who stay in school arenot guaranteed equal opportunities in life. Many high schools do not prepare studentswho are interested in college for advanced schooling. The problem is that schools arefailing to meet the needs of students, not that students are failing in school. There-fore, the problems with schooling were properly noted as a part of the past discrimi-nation component of total discrimination illustrated in Figure 3.1.

It has been more than fifty years since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its unanimousruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, that separate educational facili-ties are inherently unequal. What has been the legacy of that decision? Initially, thecourts, with the support of the federal government, ordered Southern school districtsto end racial separation. But as attention turned to larger school districts, especially inthe North, the challenge was to have integrated schools even though the neighbor-hoods were segregated. In addition, some city school districts were predominantlyMrican American and Hispanic, surrounded by suburban school districts that werepredominantly White. This type of school segregation, which results from residentialpatterns, is called de facto segregation.

Initially, courts sought to overcome de facto segregation just as they had de jureschool segregation in the Brown case. Typically, students were bused within a schooldistrict to achieve racial balance, but in a few cases Black students were bused to pre-dominantly White suburban schools and White children were bused into the city. In1974, however, the Supreme Court ruled in Millikin v. Bradley that it was improper toorder Detroit and the suburbs to have ajoint metropolitan busing solution. These andother Supreme Court decisions have effectively ended initiatives to overcome residen-tial segregation, once again creating racial isolation in the schools. Indeed, even inTopeka, one-third of the schools are segregated today (Orfield et al. 1996).

Racial diversity in individual schools was still largely absent in schools in 2000. Whitestudents typically attend public schools that on the average are 80 percent White. Trenddata since the 1960s indicate that public schools are increasingly becoming all-White orall-Black or all-Hispanic. New initiatives such as charter schools to provide better educa-tion, as well as increases in homeschooling, contribute to greater school segregation.

So enduring has been school segregation, the term apartheid schools has been coinedto refer to schools that are all Black. An analysis released in 2003 by the Civil RightsProject of Harvard University documented that one in six of the nation's Black stu-dents attends an apartheid school, and this proportion rose to one out of four in theNortheast and Midwest. If there has been any trend, it is that the typical Mrican Amer-ican student was less likely to have White classmates in 2000 than in 1970 (Franken-berg et al. 2003; Renzulli and Evans 2005).

Although studies have shown positive effects of integration, a diverse student popu-lation does not guarantee an integrated, equal schooling environment. For example,tracking in schools, especially middle and high schools, intensifies segregation at theclassroom level. Tracking is the practice of placing students in specific curriculumgroups on the basis of test scores and other criteria. It also has the effect of decreasing

White-Black classroom interaction as Mrican American children are disproportion-ately assigned to general classes, and more White children are placed in collegepreparatory classes. It is estimated that about 60 percent of elementary schools in theUnited States and about 80 percent of secondary schools use some form of tracking.Studies indicate that Mrican American students are more likely than White students tobe classified as learning disabled or emotionally disturbed. Although there are suc-cesses in public education, integration clearly is not one of them (Eitle 2002; Hallinan2003; Sadker and Sadker 2003).

A common view advanced by some educators is that the reason Mrican Americans, es-pecially males, do not succeed in school is that they don't want to be caught "actingWhite." That is, they avoid at all costs taking school seriously and do not accept the au-thority of teachers and administrators. Whatever the accuracy of such a generalization,it clearly shifts the responsibility of low school attainment from the school to the indi-vidual and, therefore, can be seen as yet another example of blaming the victim (Fryer2006; Ogbu with Davis 2003).

"Acting White" sparks strong emotions. In 2004, comedian Bill Cosby sparked thelatest round of debates on the subject in a NAACP-sponsored speech he made to markthe fiftieth anniversary of the Brown decision. He criticized Black families for tolerat-ing their children not taking school seriously. Social scientists and pundits quicklyweighed in not only to deal with the issue but also to question the appropriateness ofa Black person criticizing other Blacks in public.

To what extent do Blacks not want to act White in the context of high achievers?Many scholars have noted that individuals' efforts to avoid looking like they want an

acting whiteTaking school seriously andaccepting the authority ofteachers and administrators

? AS1\'YourselfHow common do you think it is forany student to hide his or her inter-est in school or even to underper-form to be cool?

Is there a difference betweenBlack and White schoolchildrenin achievement orientation?Although some feel that AfricanAmerican youth avoid "actingWhite:' research points to nodifference in this respect.Members of high schoolscience clubs, whether Blackor White, are equally likely toovercome being regarded as"geeks" or "nerds."

Pictured here is HowardUniversity, founded in 1867 inWashington DC, continues toserve as pivotal institutions inthe education of AfricanAmericans.

education has a long history and is hardly exclusive to anyone race. Back in the 1950s,one heard disparaging references to "teacher's pet" and "brown nosing." Does popu-larity come to high school debaters and National Honor Society students or to cheer-leaders and athletes? Academic-oriented classmates are often viewed as social misfits,nerds, and geeks and are seen as socially inept even if their skill building will latermake them more economically independent and often more socially desirable. Forminority children, including African Americans, to take school seriously means theymust overcome their White classmates' same desire to be cool and not a nerd. In addi-tion, Black youth must also come to embrace a curriculum and respect teachers whoare much less likely to look or sound like them (Tyson et al. 2005).

The "acting White" thesis overemphasizes personal responsibility rather thanstructural features such as quality of schools, curriculum, and teachers. Therefore, itlocates the source of Black miseducation-and by implication the remedy-in theAfrican American household. As scholar Michael Dyson (2005) observes, "When youthink the problems are personal, you think the solutions are the same." If we couldonly get African American parents to encourage their children to work a little harderand act better (that is, White), everything would be fine. As Dyson notes, "It's hard toargue against any of these things in the abstract; in principle such suggestions soundjust fine."

Of course, not all Whites "act White." To equate "acting White" with high academicachievement has little empirical or cultural support. Although more Whites ages18-19 are in school, the differences are hardly dramatic-64.4 percent of Whites com-pared to 61.9 percent of Blacks. Studies comparing attitudes and performance showthat Black students have the same attitudes-good and bad-about achievement astheir White counterparts. Too often we tend to view White slackers who give a hardtime to the advanced placement kids as "normal," but when low-performing AfricanAmericans do the same thing, it becomes a systemic pathology undermining every-thing good about schools. The primary stumbling block is not acting White or actingBlack but being presented with similar educational opportunities (Bureau of the Cen-sus 2005a: 144; Tough 2004; Tyson et al. 2005).

Higher education for Blacks reflects the same pattern: The overall picture of AfricanAmerican higher education is not promising. Although strides were made in the peri-od after the civil rights movement, a plateau was reached in the mid-1970s. AfricanAmericans are more likely than Whites to be part-time students and to need financialaid, which began to be severely cut in the 1980s. They are also finding the social cli-mate on predominantly White campuses less than positive. As a result, the historicallyBlack colleges and universities (HBCUs) are once again playing a significant role ineducating African Americans. For a century, they were the only real source of collegedegrees for Blacks. Then, in the 1970s, predominantly White colleges began to recruitAfrican Americans. As of 2006, however, the 105 HBCUs still accounted for about one-quarter of all Black college graduates (White House Initiative 2006).

As shown in Table 8.1, although African Americans are more likely today to be col-lege graduates, the upward trend has declined. Several factors account for this reversalin progress:

1. A reduction in financial aid and more reliance on loans than on grants-in-aid,coupled with rising costs, have tended to discourage students who would be thefirst members of their families to attend college.

2. Pushing for higher standards in educational achievement without providing re-medial courses has locked out many minority students.

3. Employment opportunities, though slight for Mrican Americans without somecollege, have continued to lure young people who must contribute to their fami-ly's income and who otherwise might have gone to college.

4. Negative publicity about affirmative action may have discouraged some MricanAmericans from even considering college.

5. Attention to what appears to be a growing number of racial incidents on predom-inantly White college campuses has also been a discouraging factor.

Colleges and universities seem uneasy about these problems; publicly, the schoolsappear committed to addressing them.

There is little question that special challenges face the Mrican American studentat a college with an overwhelmingly White student body, faculty, advisors, coaches,and administrators. The campus culture may be neutral at best, and it is often hos-tile to members of racial minorities. The high attrition rate of Mrican Americanstudents on predominantly White college campuses confirms the need for a posi-tive environment.

Because fewer Mrican Americans complete their higher education, fewer are avail-able to fill faculty and administrative positions. This means that despite increases inthe numbers of Blacks who enter college, there are no more, and perhaps fewer, rolemodels in college classrooms for students from subordinate groups to see.

The disparity in schooling becomes even more pronounced at the highest levels,and the gap is not closing. Only 3.3 percent of all doctorates awarded in 2001 were tonative-born Mrican Americans; that proportion was about the same (i.e., 3.9 percent)in 1981 (Bureau of the Census 2005a, 186; 2005c, Table 10).

In summary, the picture of education for Black Americans is uneven-markedprogress in absolute terms (much better educated than a generation ago), but rel-ative to Whites the gap in educational attainment remains at all levels. Fifty yearsago, the major issue appeared to be school desegregation, but at the heart it was toimprove the quality of education received by Black schoolchildren. Today the con-cerns of Mrican American parents and most educators are similar-quality educa-tion. W. E. B. Du Bois (1935) advanced the same point in 1935-that what a Blackstudent needs "is neither segregated schools nor mixed schools. What he needs isEducation" (p.335).

Few but growing in number,African Americans are enteringpositions that few people ofany color reach. Ayana Howard,with an Electrical EngineeringPh.D., sits beside SmartNav, aprototype for the Mars rover, ona set of the planet at NASA'sJet Propulsion Laboratory inCalifornia.

incomeSalaries, wages, and othermoney received.

wealthAn inclusive term encompass-ing all of a person's materialassets, including land andother types of property.

? ASKYaultseliWhat kind of difference do youthink it makes for a typical familyof four to earn just over $64,000annually compared to about$37,000?

FIGURE 8.1 Income Distribution: BlackVersus White

The general economic picture for Mrican Americans has been gradual improvementover the last fifty years, but this improvement is modest compared with that of Whites,whose standard of living has also increased. Therefore, in terms of absolute depriva-tion, Mrican Americans are much better off today but have experienced much less sig-nificant improvement with respect to their relative deprivation to Whites on almost alleconomic indicators. We will consider income and wealth, employment, and MricanAmerican-owned businesses.

There are two useful measures of the overall economic situation of an individual orhousehold: income and wealth. Income refers to salaries, wages, and other money re-ceived; wealth is a more inclusive term encompassing all of a person's material assets,including land and other types of property.

There is a significant gap between the incomes of Black and White households inthe United States. As we saw in Figure 7.5, Black income has been increasing steadily,but so has that of Whites. In 2005, the median income of Black families was $37,005,compared with $64,663 for White non-Hispanic households. Another way to considerthe gap is that Black income today resembles that of Whites more than ten years ago.This lag has been present since World War II. In Figure 8.1, we look at the overall dis-tribution of Black and White household income. Even a casual glance at the figure willshow very different income profiles for Blacks and Whites today.

Note: Income data for 2005 were reported in 2006, andthese data are for White non-Hispanics.

Source: DeNavas-Walt et al. 2006; U.S. Census Bureau.Current Population Reports, P60-231, Income, Poverty andHealth Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005.Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Over$100,000

$100,000

$95,000

$90,000

$85,000

$80,000

$75,000

$70,000

~ $65,000o.5 $60,000

~ $55,000.c~ $50,000~£ $45,000

$40,000

$35,000

$30,000

$25,000

$20,000$15,000

$10,000

$0-5000

$68,603average

$47,138average

$50,784median

$35,467median

12 10 8 6 4 2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16Percent of Households

The underside of the income picture is people trapped in poverty. In 2005, 24.7 percentof Black people lived below the poverty level, compared with 8.4 percent of non-HispanicWhites. Low incomes are counterbalanced to some extent by Medicare, Medicaid, publicassistance, and food stamps. However, that an African American family is three times morelikely to be poor shows that social inequality is staggering (DeNavas-Waltet al. 2006).

Wealth is more difficult to measure because it takes more effort to determine accu-rately how much people own and owe, as opposed to how much they earn in a givenyear. Yet wealth is very important in that it protects individuals against financial hard-ship and may offer a way to pass money or property to future generations, giving thema good start. On the other hand, the lack of wealth or even the presence of debt canplace young people at a severe disadvantage as they seek to become independent.

The wealth picture in the United States shows even greater disparity between Whitesand Blacks than does income. Sociologists Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro (1995)drew on data from more than 12,000 households and conducted in-depth interviewswith a range of Black and White families. There is clearly a significant difference inwealth patterns because generations of social inequality have left African Americans, asa group, unable to accumulate the kind of wealth that Whites, as a group, have. This isparticularly true in the ability to own a home, most people's biggest asset. The inabilityof many Blacks to own a home and develop this asset results not only from lower in-comes but also from discriminatory lending practices, which we consider later in thischapter. Of course, there are poor Whites and very rich Blacks, but the group differ-ences that the researchers documented are unmistakable. The most striking differencesare seen when we compare Blacks and Whites in their thirties and when we comparethe most educated Blacks with the most educated Whites. Both the young adults andthe more educated African Americans would have benefited the most from efforts toreduce inequality, but the gap remains (Shapiro 2004).

As shown in Figure 8.2, most Whites are not in debt in terms of assets, and 30 per-cent have a net worth over $100,000. In contrast, more than 40 percent of AfricanAmericans have a net worth of less than $1,000, with only 8 percent showing assetsworth more than $100,000. Assets are valuable as a means to protect people from fallinginto poverty if all sources of income are interrupted. About 57 percent of all Whites canstay out of poverty for at least six months if all income ends, but only 17 percent ofAfrican Americans are in a similar situation.

41%under $1.000

FIGURE 8.2 Wealth Distribution: Black Versus White Comparing WealthNote: The wealth data for 1988 were reported in 1996.Sources: Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro, Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Equality. Copyright © 1996.Reproduced by permission of Routledge/Taylor & Francis Books, Inc.

underemploymentWork at ajob for which theworker is overqualified, invol-untary part-time instead offull-time employment, orintermittent employment.

Assets are important both to insulate households against short-term crises and tohelp other family members, whether for furthering their education, paying insurancepremiums, buying the latest computer, or even starting to furnish their first home.

This precarious situation for African Americans-the lack of dependable assets-isparticularly relevant as we consider their employment picture. Higher unemploymentrates for Blacks have persisted since the 1940s, when statistics were first documented.Since 1990, the national unemployment rate for Whites has ranged from 3 percent to6 percent, whereas for Blacks it has ranged from 7 percent to 11 percent. This meansthat, even in the best economic times, the Black unemployment rate is still significant-ly higher than it is for Whites during recessions. Obviously, when there is a nationaleconomic downturn, the results for the African American community are disastrous.Recessions take a heavy toll on African Americans (Bureau of the Census 2005a).

The employment picture is especially grim for African American workers aged 16 to24. Many live in the central cities and fall victim to the unrecorded, irregular-perhaps illegal-economy outlined in Chapter 3. Many factors have been cited by so-cial scientists to explain why official unemployment rates for young African Americansexceed 30 percent:

• Many African Americans live in the depressed economy of the central cities.

• Immigrants and illegal aliens present increased competition.

• White middle-class women have entered the labor force.

• Illegal activities at which youths find they can make more money have becomemore prevalent.

None of these factors is likely to change soon, so depression-like levels of unemploy-ment probably will persist.

The picture grows even more somber when we realize that we are considering onlyofficial unemployment. The federal government's Bureau of Labor Statistics counts asunemployed only people who are actively seeking employment. Therefore, to becounted as unemployed, a person must not hold a full-time job, must be registeredwith a government employment agency, and must be engaged in writing job applica-tions and seeking interviews.

Quite simply, the official unemployment rate leaves out millions of Americans,Black and White, who are effectively unemployed. It does not count people so dis-couraged that they have temporarily given up looking for employment. The problemof unemployment is further compounded by underemployment. The termunderemployment refers to working at a job for which one is overqualified, involun-tarily working part-time, or being employed only intermittently.

Studies continue to show the deepening plight economically for young Black men. Inthe nation's inner cities, especially, young Black men often lack the schooling and findappropriate jobs few and far between. In many cities, they face increased competitionfrom immigrants often willing to accept jobs at low pay, no benefits, and no job security.In "Listen to Our Voices," respected sociologist William Julius Wilson describes the em-ployment problem that exists where there are few employers (Eckholm 2006).

The official unemployment rate for African American male high school dropouts isabout 72 percent, well above the 25 percent jobless rate for the nation as a whole during theDepression of the 1930s and the 34 percent unemployment rate of White dropouts. Again,such official statistics do not include youths who have dropped out of the system: those whoare not at school, not at work, and not looking for a legitimate job. If we add to the officialfigures the discouraged job seeker, the rate of unemployment and underemployment of

Itis interesting to note howthe media perceptions of"underclass" values and atti-

tudes contrast sharply with theviews actually expressed by theresidents of the inner-city ghet-to. For example, a 28-year-oldunmarried welfare mother oftwo children who lives in one ofChicago's large public housingprojects described to one of theUrban Poverty and Family Life Study (UPFLS)interviewers how the media create the impres-sion that the people who live in her housingproject are all bad or are thugs and killers.

'Cause a lot of people when theymRetmR, they say, "You live in aproject?" I say ''yeah.'' "Well, youdon't look like the type of person. ""How is a person supposed tolook?" You know, like I tell them,theproject don't make nobody, youmake yourself. Now, if you want toget out thereand carry that projectnamR, be tough and rowdy andsloppy, disrespectful, well, shoot,

that's lowlife. "You don't look like the type thatlives in a project!" "Well, how am I supposedto 100k?''Just becauseI live in a project, thatdon't mRanI have to COmR outside looking likea tramp, because I'm not. But they all, theylike, "You too nice to be living in a project."You know, sOmRtimesI get offended.... That

just reallygets on my nerves. You know, don'tno building make you, you make yourself.You live in a hOmR,you know. Look at allthesepeople that's got Hollywood kids, bustedfor cocaine, o.d. 'in' on it, you know, what'shappened to them?

OK, I don't know whereyou live at, but youread the papers ... they say, ... Oh,Cabrini! Oh, they have gang killings ...they have gang killings on the South Side!But the mRdia and. . . and I guess the pub-lic, you know, they build it up so big. I mRan,it's bad everywhere. Did anyone offend youwhen you came up here? My neighborstoppedyou and gave you the message. You'rewhite, you're white and they don't know youhere,see, see, but you read thepaper and yourparents will say "don't go over there,girl!" Iread where they said, you know, well, I readwhere there they kill blacks . . . whites, andthey do this and they do that, and they, ImRan, we're people, too. But it's ... that'sjust the system. It makes us look like were allthe samR, and were all bad.... But that'snot true.

A 28-year-old welfare mother from anoth-er South Side housing project raised a simi-lar point:

Our research reveals that the beliefs of inner-city residents bear little resemblance to the blan-ket media reports asserting that values haveplummeted in impoverished inner-eity neigh-borhoods or that people in the inner city havean entirely different value system. What is sostriking is that despite the overwhelmingjobless-ness and poverty, black residents in inner-eityghetto neighborhoods actually verbally endorse,rather than undermine, the basic American val-ues concerning individual initiative .•Source: Excerpt from When Work Disappears by William JuliusWilson. Copyright © 1996 by William Julius Wilson. Reprinted bypermission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House. Inc.

African American teenagers in central-eity areas climbs to 90 percent. As discouraging asthese data are, the picture becomes even grimmer as we consider studies showing that un-deremployment remains high for young African Americans (Eckholm 2006).

Although few African Americans have crashed through the glass ceiling and made itinto the top echelons of business or government, more have entered a wider variety of jobs.

~ .. ,~ : Chapter 8 African Americans Today

Occupation

EngineersLawyers and judgesPhysiciansRegistered nursesCollege teachersOther teachersSocial workersManagersSales workersService workersCleaners and servantsFirefightersPolice and detectives

2%23648

1633

176448

5%56

1069

2069

16188

16

The taboo against putting Blacks in jobs in which they would supervise Whites has weak-ened, and the percentage of African Americans in professional and managerial occupationsrose from 4 percent in 1949 to 8.2 percent in 2000, a remarkable improvement. However,most of this advancement came before 1980. Little advancement has occurred since then.

As shown in Table 8.2, Mrican Americans, who constitute 13 percent of the popula-tion, are underrepresented in high-status, high-paying occupations. Less than 6 per-cent of lawyers, judges, physicians, financial managers, public relations specialists,architects, pharmacists, and dentists are Mrican American. On the other hand, theyaccount for more than 15 percent of cooks, health aides, hospital orderlies, maids,jan-itors, and stock handlers.

Even when they enter highly paid, prestigious positions, Black men typically earnless than their White male colleagues in similar positions. For example, Black lawyersmake 79 cents to the "White dollar" and 80 cents compared to White physicians. Thisis not to say they don't do well. Mrican American physicians enjoy high wages-$134,000 annually in 2001-but this compares to $166,890 among White male physi-cians. Although they have high prestige, such professionals must build a client base, anda White professional is at an advantage as he seeks to gain the respect of high-paying,largely White potential clients (Grodsky and Pager 2001; Tran 2001).

Family LifeIn its role as a social institution providing for the socialization of children, the family iscrucial to its members' life satisfaction. The family also reflects the influence, positiveor negative, of income, housing, education, and other social factors. For MricanAmericans, the family reflects both amazing stability and the legacy of racism and lowincome across many generations.

Although it is the conventional view that a female heads the typical Mrican Americanfamily, most children are still in two-parent households. About one-third of MricanAmerican children had both a father and a mother present in 2005 (see Figure 8.3).

• Two-parent families

One-parent families, maintained by father (or other person)

• One-parent families, maintained by mother

Neither parent

FIGURE 8.3 Children Under 18 Years Living ArrangementsNote: Data for 2005 in 2006.Source: Bureau of the Census 2006C. Table C3.

Although single-parent African American families are common, they are not universal.In comparison, such single-parent arrangements were also present in about one in fiveWhite families.

It is as inaccurate to assume that a single-parent family is necessarily deprived as it isto assume that a two-parent family is always secure and happy. Nevertheless, life in asingle-parent family can be extremely stressful for all single parents and their childrenand not just for those who are members of subordinate groups. Because the absentparent is more often the father, lack of the male presence almost alwaysmeans the lackof a male income. This monetary impact on a single-parent household cannot be over-stated (A. Hacker 1995; Tucker and Mitchell-Kernan 1995).

Looming behind the issue of female-headed families is the plight of the AfricanAmerican man. Simply stated, the economic status of Black men has been deterioratingfor several generations. Despite the negative outlook, leaders within the Black commu-nity continue to call on men to assume responsibility for the family. In 1995, Nation ofIslam Minister Louis Farrakhan organized the Million Man March in Washington, D.C.,to assert the role of Black men in their family and in their community. As noted earlierin the chapter, entertainer Bill Cosby and others have raised the issue of "acting White"in criticizing African American youth for not taking on more responsibility.

Historically, female-headed families have not always been a significant economicproblem. Despite the absence of legal protection for the slave family, African Ameri-cans were nevertheless able to establish significant kinship relationships with the shar-ing of economic resources, meager as they might be. After emancipation, menpreferred that their wives remain at home because a working woman was considered amark of slavery. But it was hard for many Black men to find work as anything otherthan strikebreakers, so women were the more important source of wages anyway.

For many single African American women living in poverty, having a child is anadded burden. However, the tradition of extended family among African Americans

Family reunions are importantannual events for many AfricanAmericans.

eases this burden somewhat. The absence of a husband does not mean that no oneshares in child care: Out-of-wedlock children born to Black teenage mothers live withtheir grandparents and form three-generation households.

No one explanation accounts for the rise in single-parent households. Sociologists at-tribute the rapid expansion in the number of such households primarily to shifts in theeconomy that have kept Black men, especially in urban areas, out of work. The phenom-enon certainly is not limited to Mrican Americans. Increasingly, both unmarried Whiteand Black women bear children. More and more parents, both White and Black, divorce;so even children born into a two-parent family end up living with only one parent.

In the midst of ever-increasing single parenting, another picture of Mrican Americanfamily life becomes visible: success despite discrimination and economic hardship.Robert Hill (1999), ofthe National Urban League and Morgan State University, listedfive strengths of Mrican American families that allow them to function effectively in ahostile (racist) society.

1. Strong kinship bonds. Blacks are more likely than Whites to care for children andthe elderly in an extended family network.

2. A strong work orientation. Poor Blacks are more likely to be working, and poorBlack families often include more than one wage earner.

3. Adaptability of family roles. In two-parent families, the egalitarian pattern of deci-sion making is the most common. The self-reliance of Black women who are theprimary wage earners best illustrates this adaptability.

4. Strong achievement orientation. Working-class Blacks indicate a greater desire fortheir children to attend college than do working-class Whites. Even a majority oflow-income Mrican Americans want to attend college.

5. A strong religious orientation. Since the time of slavery, Black churches have beenthe impetus behind many significant grass-roots organizations.

Social workers and sociologists have confirmed through social research thestrengths that Hill noted first in 1972. In the Mrican American community, these arethe sources of family strength (Hudgins 1992).

Increasingly, social scientists are learning to look at both the weaknesses and thestrengths of African American family life. Expressions of alarm about instability date backto 1965, when the Department of Labor issued the report The Negro Family: The CaseforNational Action. The document, commonly known as the Moynihan Report, after its prin-cipal author, sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan, outlined a "tangle of pathology" withthe Black family at its core. More recently, two studies, the Stable Black Families Projectand the National Survey of Black Americans, sought to learn how Black families en-counter problems and resolve them successfully with internal resources such as those thatHill outlined in his highly regarded work (Department of Labor 1965; Gary et al. 1983).

The most consistently documented strength of African American families is the pres-ence of an extended family household. The most common feature is having grandpar-ents residing in the home. Extended living arrangements are much more commonamong Black households than among White ones. These arrangements are recognized ashaving the important economic benefit of pooling limited economic resources. Becauseof the generally lower earnings of African American heads-of-household, income fromsecond, third, and even fourth wage earners is needed to achieve a desired standard ofliving or, in all too many cases, simply to meet daily needs (Bryson and Casper 1999).

Many characterizations of African American family life have been attacked becausethey overemphasize the poorest segment of the African American community. An op-posite error is the exaggeration of the success African Americans have achieved. Socialscientists face the challenge of avoiding a selective, one-sided picture of Black society.The problem is similar to viewing a partially filled glass of water. Does one describe itas half-empty and emphasize the need for assistance? Or does one describe the glass ashalf-full to give attention to what has been accomplished? The most complete descrip-tion would acknowledge both perspectives (Gouldner 1970).

A clearly defined African American middle class has emerged. In 2000, nearly one-thirdof African Americans earned more than the median income for Whites. At least 29 percentof Blacks, then, are middle class or higher. Many have debated the character of this middleclass. E. Franklin Frazier (1957), a Black sociologist, wrote an often critical study of theAfrican American middle class in which he identified its overriding goal as achieving pettysocial values and becoming acceptable to White society (DeNavas-Waltet al. 2006).

African Americans are still aware of their racial subordination even when they haveachieved economic equality. The Black middle class may not be militant, but its newestmembers do not forget their roots. They are more likely than Whites to be first-generationmiddle class, dependent on two or more sources of income, and precariously close tothe lower class both financially and residentially. Yet with their relative success has comea desire to live in better surroundings. The migration of middle-class African Americansout of the ghetto in the 1970s and 1980s has left a vacuum. They may still care about theproblems of the Black poor, but they are no longer present as role models.

Members of the African American middle class do not automatically accept all as-pects of the White middle class. For years, for example, Whites have relied on booksand magazines on infant and child care; such materials treated African American chil-dren as if they did not exist. To counter this neglect, James Comer and Alvin Poussaintwrote Raising Black Children (1992), in which the authors advise parents on how to dealwith questions such as "What is Black?", a child's first encounter with prejudice, and ateenage girl being watched by store security.

Directing attention to the Black middle class also requires that we consider the rel-ative importance of the two components in ethclass, Milton Gordon's concept intro-duced in Chapter 5. The degree to which affluent Blacks identifY themselves in classterms or racial terms is an important ideological question. W. E. B. Du Bois (1952)

classAsdefined by MaxWeber,people who share similarlevelsof wealth.

Black parents have a specialchallenge in raising a child todeal with racism.

argued that when racism decreases, class issues become more important. As Du Boissaw it, exploitation would remain, and many of the same people would continue to besubordinate. Black elites might become economically successful, either as entrepre-neurs (Black capitalists) or professionals (Black white-collar workers), but they wouldcontinue to identify with and serve the dominant group's interest.

Social scientists have long recognized the importance of class. Class is a term usedby sociologist Max Weber to refer to people who share a similar level of wealth and in-come. The significance of class in people's lives is apparent to all. In the United Statestoday, roughly half the lower-class population suffers from chronic health conditionsthat limit their activity, compared with only one in eleven among the affluent. Thepoor are more likely to become victims of crime, and they are only about half as likelyas the affluent to send their children to colleges or vocational schools. When consid-ering class difference, remarkable similarities exist in child-rearing practices betweenBlack and White households (Lareau 2002) .

The complexity of the relative influence of race and class was apparent in the contro-versy surrounding the publication of sociologist William]. Wilson's The Declining Signifi-cance of Race (1980). Pointing to the increasing affluence of Mrican Americans, Wilsonconcluded that "class has become more important than race in determining black life-chances in the modem world" (p. 150). The policy implications of his conclusion arethat programs must be developed to confront class subordination rather than ethnicand racial discrimination. Wilson did not deny the legacy of discrimination reflected inthe disproportionate number of Mrican Americans who are poor, less educated, and liv-ing in inadequate and overcrowded housing. However, he pointed to "compelling evi-dence" that young Blacks were competing successfully with young Whites.

Critics of Wilson comment that focusing attention on this small educated elite ig-nores vast numbers of Mrican Americans relegated to the lower class (Pinkney 1984;Willie 1978, 1979). Wilson himself was not guilty of such an oversimplification and in-deed expressed concern over lower-class, inner-city Mrican Americans' seemingly fallingeven further behind, like those who become a part of the irregular economy discussed inChapter 3. He pointed out that the poor are socially isolated and have shrinking eco-nomic opportunities (1988, 1996). However, it is easy to conclude superficially that be-cause educated Blacks are entering the middle class, race has ceased to be of concern.

HousingHousing plays a major role in determining the quality of a person's life. For MricanAmericans, as for Whites, housing is the result of personal preferences and income.However, Mrican Americans differ from Whites in that their housing has been re-stricted through discrimination in a manner that it has not for Whites. We devote sig-nificant attention to housing because, for most people, housing is critical to theirquality of life and often represents their largest single asset.

Although Black housing has improved, as indicated by statistics on home owner-ship, new construction, density of living units, and quality as measured by plumbing fa-cilities, Mrican Americans remain behind Whites on all these standards. The quality ofBlack housing is inferior to that of Whites at all income levels, yet Blacks payout a larg-er proportion of their income for shelter.

Housing was the last major area to be covered by civil rights legislation. The delaywas not caused by its insignificance; quite the contrary, it was precisely because hous-ing touches so many parts of the American economy and relates to private propertyrights that legislators were slow to act. Mter an executive order by President Kennedy,the government required nondiscrimination in federally assisted housing, but this rul-ing included only 7 percent ofthe housing market. In 1968, the Federal Fair HousingLaw (Title VIII of the 1968 Civil Rights Act) and the U.S. Supreme Court decision inJones v. Mayer combined to outlaw all racial discrimination in housing. Enforcementhas remained weak, however, and many aspects of housing, real estate customs, andlending practices remain untouched.

Residential SegregationTypically in the United States, as noted, White children attend predominantly Whiteschools, Black children attend predominantly Black schools, and Hispanic children attendpredominantly Hispanic schools. This school segregation is not only the result of the fail-ure to accept busing but also the effect of residential segregation. In their studies on segre-gation, Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton (1993) concluded that racial separation"continues to exist because white America has not had the political will or desire to dis-mantle it." (p. 8) In Chapter 1,we noted the persuasiveness of residential segregation as re-flected in Census 2000 (refer back to Figure 1.4). This racial isolation in neighborhoods hasnot improved since the beginnings of the civilrights movement in the 1950s (Massey2005).

Zoninglawsthat maystipulateexpensivebuildingmaterialshelp keep out the less affluent,whoare more likelyto beAfricanAmericanhome buyers.

redliningThe pattern of discriminationagainst people trying to buyhomes in minority and racial-lychanging neighborhoods.

zoning lawsLegal provisions stipulatingland use and the architectur-al design of housing, oftenused to keep racial minoritiesand low-incomepeople outof suburban areas.

What factors create residential segregation in the United States? Among the prima-ry factors are the following:

• Because of private prejudice and discrimination, people refuse to sell or rent topeople of the "wrong" race, ethnicity, or religion.

• The prejudicial policies of real estate companies steer people to the "correct"neighborhoods.

• Government policies enforce antibias legislation ineffectively.• Public housing policies today, as well as past construction patterns, reinforce hous-

ing for the poor in inner-city neighborhoods.• Policies of banks and other lenders create barriers based on race to financing

home purchasing.

This last issue of racial-basis financing deserves further explanation. In the 1990s,new attention was given to the persistence of redlining, the practice of discriminationagainst people trying to buy homes in minority and racially changing neighborhoods.As we noticed in "Listen to Our Voices" in Chapter 3, Patricia Williams eloquentlyspoke about her being a victim of discrimination of housing lending practices.

It is important to recall the implications of this discrimination in home financingfor the African American community. Earlier in the chapter, we noted the great dis-parity between Black and White family wealth and the implications this had for boththe present and future generations. The key factor in this inequality was the failure ofAfrican Americans to accumulate wealth through home buying. Now we see that dis-crimination plays a documented role in this barrier to what is possible; in 2004, justunder half of Blacks were homeowners, compared with 73 percent of non-HispanicWhites (Bureau of the Census 2005a, 39, 41).

Although the African American concentration in the central cities has increased, asmall but growing number of Blacks have moved into suburban areas. By 2000,39 per-cent of the nation's metropolitan African Americans lived in suburban areas. Al-though more than one out of three seems significant, it compares to 71 percent ofWhites, 58 percent of Asians, and 49 percent of Latinos. Yet the most significantgrowth in the percentage of suburban African Americans has come from movementinto suburbs that are predominantly Black or are adjacent to predominantly Blackareas. In many instances, therefore, it represents further ghettoization and spilloverfrom city slums; it is not necessarily a sign of two carS and a backyard pool. In many in-stances, the suburbs with large Black populations are isolated from surrounding Whitecommunities and residents have less satisfactory housing and municipal services but,ironically, pay higher taxes (Logan 2001b).

A dual housing market is part of today's reality, although attacks continue againstthe remaining legal barriers to fair housing. In theory, zoning laws are enacted to en-sure that specific standards of housing construction will be satisfied. These regulationscan also separate industrial and commercial enterprises from residential areas. How-ever, some zoning laws in suburbs have seemed to curb the development of low- andmoderate-income housing that would attract African Americans who want to move outof the central cities.

For years, the construction of low-income public housing in the ghetto has fur-thered racial segregation. The courts have not ruled consistently in this matter in re-cent years so, as with affirmative action, public officials lack clear guidance. Even ifcourt decisions continue to dismantle exclusionary housing practices, the rapidgrowth of integrated neighborhoods is unlikely. In the future, African American hous-ing probably will continue to improve and remain primarily in all-Black neighbor-hoods. This gap is greater than can be explained by differences in social class.

Criminal JusticeA complex, sensitive topic affecting Mrican Americans is their role in criminal justice.It was reported in 2005 that Blacks constitute 4.7 percent of the lawyers, 15.7 percentof police, 17.1 percent of the detectives, and 28.4 percent of security guards but39 percent of jail inmates (Bureau of the Census 2005a, 219, 399-401).

Data collected annually in the FBI's Uniform Crime Report show that Blacks accountfor 28 percent of arrests, even though they represent only about 13 percent of thenation's population. Conflict theorists point out that the higher arrest rate is not surpris-ing for a group that is disproportionately poor and, therefore, much less able to affordprivate attorneys, who might be able to prevent formal arrests from taking place. Evenmore significantly, the Uniform Crime Report focuses on index crimes (mainly propertycrimes), which are the type of crimes most often committed by low-income people.

These numbers are staggering but, as dramatic as they are, it is not unusual to hearexaggerations presented as facts, such as "more Black men are in prison than in col-lege." The reality is sobering enough. About one in sixteen White males can expect togo to a state or federal prison during his lifetime, yet for Black males this lifetime prob-ability is one out of three (Bureau of the Census 2005a, 39, 41; Gaines 2005).

Most (actually 70 percent) of all the violent crimes against Whites are perpetratedby Whites, according to the FBI. In contrast to popular misconceptions about crime,Mrican Americans and the poor are especially likely to be the victims of seriouscrimes. This fact is documented in victimization surveys, which are systematic inter-views of ordinary people carried out annually to reveal how much crime occurs. TheseDepartment of Justice statistics show that Mrican Americans are 35 percent more like-ly to be victims of violent crimes than are Whites (Catalano 2006).

Central to the concern that minorities often express about the criminal justice sys-tem is differential justice; that is, Whites are dealt with more leniently than are Blacks,whether at the time of investigation, arrest, indictment, conviction, sentencing, incar-ceration, or parole. Studies demonstrate that police often deal with Mrican Americanyouths more harshly than with White youngsters (Engen et al. 2002; E. Lotke 2004).The "Research Focus" considers the application of differential justice to the harshestjudgment that can be made in the legal system-the death penalty.

There is also a reluctant acceptance that the government cannot be counted on toaddress inner-city problems. When a schoolchild walks into a cafeteria or schoolyardwith automatic weapons and kills a dozen children and teachers, it becomes a case ofnational alarm as with Columbine. When children kill each other in drive-by shoot-ings, it is viewed as a local concern reflecting the need to clean up a dysfunctionalneighborhood. Many Mrican Americans note that the main difference between thesetwo situations is not the death toll but who is being killed: middle-class Whites in theschoolyard shootings and Black ghetto youth in the drive-bys.

The price of being an Mrican American took on new importance with the release ofashocking study in a prestigious medical journal revealing that two-thirds of boys inHarlem, a predominantly Black neighborhood in New York City, can expect to dieyoung or in mid adulthood-that is, before they reach age 65. In fact, they have lesschance of surviving even to age 45 than their White counterparts nationwide have ofreaching age 65. The medical researchers noted that it is not the stereotyped imagesof AIDS and violence that explain the staggering difference. Black men are much morelikely to fall victim to unrelenting stress, heart disease, and cancer (Fing et al. 1996).

victinrlzationsurveysAnnualattemptsto measurecrimeratesbyinterviewingor-dinarycitizenswhomayor maynot havebeen crimevictims.

differential justiceWhitesbeing dealt with moreleniently than Blacks,whether at the time of arrest,indictment, conviction,sen-tencing, or parole.

victim discountingTendency to view crimeas less socially signifi-cant if the victim isviewed as less worthy.

The death penalty in the United Statesis enormously controversial partlybecause many states do not even per-

mit it and because increasingly the UnitedStates is marginalized as more of the world'snations have ceased to rely on it as a methodof punishment. But given that the deathpenalty continues to be used in the UnitedStates-sixty executions in 2005-what roledoes being African American play in its use?

Although Blacks and Whites are relativelyequal in numbers of homicide perpetrators,a U.S. Department of Justice study indicatedthat Blacks were the defendants in 72 percentof the cases in which the attorney general ap-proved the death penalty. As disturbing as thisfinding is alone, it also points to the clearestand most consistent research finding-therace of the victim is the best indicator ofwhether an execution will occur. If the victimis White, the defendant is more likely to betried under the death penalty and later exe-cuted than if the victim is Black. This reflectsthe broader concern that the Black-on-Blackcrime was not being dealt with as seriously aswhen Whites were victimized. Researchers on

crime have come to call this victim discount-ing, which is society's tendency to view crimesas less socially significant if the victim isviewed as less worthy.

Clearly the use of the death penalty is themost extreme form of victim discounting.Numerous studies show that homicide defen-dants are more likely to be sentenced to deathif their victims are White rather than Black. Soeven in a murder case, a Black death countsless. About 79 percent of the victims in deathpenalty cases are White, even though only50 percent of all murder victims are White.

There is also some evidence that Blackdefendants, who constituted 42 percent ofall death row inmates in 2006, are more like-ly to face execution than Whites in the samelegal circumstances. There is even evidencethat capital case clients receive poor legalservices because of racist attitudes of theirown defense counsel. Although racism inthe criminal justice system is never accept-able, it is particularly devastating when theprocess results in an execution .•

Sources: Cole 1999; Death Penalty Information Center 2006;Swarns2004.

The morbidity and mortality rates for Mrican Americans as a group, and not justHarlem men, are equally distressing. Compared with Whites, Blacks have higher deathrates from diseases of the heart, pneumonia, diabetes, and cancer. The death ratefrom strokes was twice as high among Mrican Americans as it was among Whites. Suchepidemiologic findings reflect in part the higher proportion of Blacks found amongthe nation's lower classes. White Americans can expect to live 75.0 years if male and80.2 years if female. By contrast, life expectancy for Mrican Americans is only 68.6years for males and 75.5 years for females (Arias and Smith 2003).

Drawing on the conflict perspective, sociologist Howard Waitzkin (1986) suggeststhat racial tensions contribute to the medical problems of Mrican Americans. In hisview, the stress resulting from racial prejudice and discrimination helps to explain thehigher rates of hypertension found among Mrican Americans (and Hispanics) thanamong Whites. Death due to hypertension is twice as common in Blacks as in Whites;it is believed to be a critical factor in Blacks' high mortality rates from heart disease,

kidney disease, and stroke. Although medical experts disagree, some argue that thestress resulting from racism and suppressed hostility exacerbates hypertension amongMrican Americans (Cooper et al. 1999).

The previous section noted that Mrican Americans are underrepresented amonglawyers in the criminal justice system. A similar phenomenon is visible in health care.Blacks represent about 6 percent of practicing physicians. This is especially significantgiven that communities with a high proportion of Mrican American residents are fourtimes more likely to have a physician shortage than are White neighborhoods. There islittle reason to expect this to improve soon. Among the students entering medical schoolin the fall of 2004, only 6.5 percent were Mrican American. There is also evidence of adeclining presence of minorities among medical school faculty members; currently 3.1percent are Black, reflecting disenchantment with rolling back of affirmative action inmany professional schools (Association of American Medical Colleges 2005).

Related to the health care dilemma is the problem of environmental justice, whichwas introduced in Chapter 3 and again in Chapter 6 with reference to Native Ameri-cans. Problems associated with toxic pollution and hazardous garbage dumps aremore likely to be faced by low-income Black communities than their affluent counter-parts. This disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards can be viewed as partof the complex cycle of discrimination faced by Mrican Americans and other subordi-nate groups in the United States (Pinderhughes 1996).

Just how significant is the impact of poorer health on the lives of the nation's lesseducated people, less affluent classes, and subordinate groups? Drawing on a variety ofresearch studies, population specialist Evelyn Kitagawa (1972) estimated the "excessmortality rate" to be 20 percent. In other words, 20 percent more people weredying than otherwise might have because of poor health linked to race and class.Using Kitagawa's model, we can calculate that if every Mrican American in the UnitedStates were White and had at least one year of college education, some 58,000 fewerBlacks would have died in 2005 and in each succeeding year (author's estimate basedon Bureau of the Census 2005a).

Here in the WhiteHouse in1997, after receivingan officialapologyfrom President BillClinton,is HermanShaw,age94, one of the last knownsurvivorsof the infamousTuskegeeSyphilisstudy.Thisfederal governmentstudyknowinglyinfected Blackmenwithsyphilisto observe theprogression of the disease.Despite discoveryoftreatments, the men werenevergiven medical assistanceuntilthe programwas revealeddecades later. Such eventscause contemporaryAfricanAmericansto be particularlyleery of the medicalestablishment.

gerrymanderingRedrawing districts bizarrelyto create politicallyadvanta-geous outcomes.

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Mrican Americans have never received an equal share of the political pie. Mter Re-construction, it was not until 1928 that a Black was again elected to Congress. Now,more than seventy years and several civil rights acts later, there are still only thirty-eightMrican American congressional representatives. Recent years have brought some im-provement. In fact, between 1970 and 2001, the number of Black elected officials hasincreased by more than fivefold (Figure 8.4).

Yet there are major problems in the continued success of African American politi-cians. Locally elected Black officials find it difficult to make the jump to statewide office.Voters, particularly non-Black voters, have difficulty seeing Black politicians as anythingother than representatives of the Black community and express concern that the view ofWhites and other non-Blacks will not be represented by an Mrican American.

The political gains by Mrican Americans, as well as Hispanics, had been placed injeopardy by legal actions that questioned race-based districts. Boundaries for elective of-fice, ranging from city council positions to the U.S. House of Representatives, have beendrawn in such a way so as to concentrate enough members of a racial or ethnic group tocreate a "safe majority" to make it likely a member of that group will get elected.

The creation of these minority districts redrawn in this manner raised cries ofgerrymandering. A practice dating from 1810, gerrymandering is the bizarre outlining ofdistricts to create politically advantageous outcomes. Although creating race-based districtsmay seem discriminatory, boundaries have routinely been drawn based on a commonalityof interests, such as rural versus urban interests, or even to maximize the likelihood ofelecting a representative from a certain political party. For over a decade, the legality ofthese actions has been debated, and finally in 2003, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that astate might consider overall minority influence in the political process. In Figure 8.5, welook at the admittedly bizarre shape of one congressional district (Bendavid 2004).

As was noted in Chapter 3, in the wake of the very close 2000 presidential electionbetween George W. Bush and Al Gore, another long-standing legal issue and a trou-bling example of institutional discrimination came to the forefront nationally. Ex-felons are barred from voting for life after leaving prison leaving 13 percent of Blackvoters disenfranchised. Although little progress has been made to reform this area,other national legislation has been more promising.

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FIGURE 8.4 Black ElectedOfficials, 1970-2001Although the rate of increase has leveled off, the number of Black elected officials has steadilyincreased over three decades.Source: From Black Elected Officials: A Statistical Summary 2001 by David Bositis. Reprinted by permission of the Joint Center forPolitical and Economic Studies.

1-- -- -- -L:::-O;N:;;:r:li;;;:;h-C:;::i:n~t- - - - - --I

\~----------------------~FIGURE 8.5 Developing a Minority District: North Carolina 12thIn areas with a history of keeping African Americans from voting. courts have approved oddly drawndistricts to increase the likelihood of a Black being elected to office. The 12th CongressionalDistrict in North Carolina zigzagsalong 1-85 from Charlotte to Winston-Salemto create a districtthat is 45 percent Black and has consistently elected a Black to the House of Representatives.

In 2006, President George W. Bush signed into law the Fannie Lou Hamer, RosaParks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Reauthorization and Amendments Act of2006. Congress and the president rejected attempts to dilute the original intent of thebill and passed a "clean" reauthorization bill, which renews key provisions of the Vot-ing Rights Act dating back to 1965 that would have otherwise expired in 2007. For ex-ample, one potent provision requires jurisdictions, whether a school district or anentire state, with significant histories of discrimination in voting to get federal ap-proval of any new voting practices or procedures and to show that these procedures donot have a discriminatory purpose or effect.

The changing racial and ethnic landscape can be expected to have an impact on fu-ture strategies to elect Mrican Americans to office, especially in urban areas. However,now that the number of Hispanics exceeds the number of Blacks nationwide, observerswonder how this might play out in the political world. A growing number of majorcities, including Los Angeles and Chicago, are witnessing dramatic growth in the His-panic population. Latinos often settle near Black neighborhoods or even displaceBlacks who move out into suburbs, making it more difficult to develop safe MricanAmerican districts. For example, South Central Los Angeles, the site of rioting in 1992described in the previous chapter, is now largely a Latino neighborhood. The full im-pact has not been felt yet because the Latino population tends to be younger, withmany not yet reaching voting age. Even more significantly, many Latino adults have notyet obtained their citizenship. As the Hispanic population becomes eligible to vote, theimpact is going to be particularly felt by Mrican Americans, who have just begun toenjoy success in local elections (Schodolski 2002).

lack and White Americans have dealt with the con-tinued disparity between the two groups by endors-ing several ideologies, as shown in Figure 8.6.

Assimilation was the driving force behind the civil rightsmovement, which sought to integrate Whites and Blacksinto one society. People who rejected contact with theother group endorsed separatism. As Chapter 2 showed,both Whites and Blacks generally lent little support to sep-aratism. In the late 1960s, the government and variousBlack organizations began to recognize cultural pluralismas a goal, at least paying lip service to the desire of manyMrican Americans to exercise cultural and economicautonomy. Perhaps on no other issue is this desire for con-trol more evident than in the schools.

As the future of Mrican American people in the UnitedStates unfolds, one element of the population generallyunnoticed thus far may move into prominence. An ever-growing proportion of the Black population consists ofpeople of foreign birth. In the 1980 census, 816,000 for-eign-born Blackswere counted, or 3.1 percent of the Blackpopulation, the highest level ever recorded. By 2000, thenumber had tripled to 2,100,000, which constituted 8.6percent of the Black population. In cities such as NewYorkCity, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and Boston, the foreign-bornpopulation of the Black community is at least 25 percent.The immigration numbers are expected to increase, as is

SEGREGATION

I

the proportion of the Mrican American population that isforeign born. Diversity exists to a significant degree in theBlack community today (Logan and Deane 2003).

Twice in this nation's history, Mrican Americans havereceived significant attention from the federal govern-ment and, to some degree, from the larger White society.The first period extended from the Civil War to the endof Reconstruction. The second period was during thecivil rights movement of the 1960s. In both periods, thegovernment acknowledged that race was a major issue,and society made commitments to eliminate inequality.As noted in Chapter 7, Reconstruction was followed bydecades of neglect, and on several measures the positionof Blacks deteriorated in the United States. Although the1980s and 1990s were not without their successes, race isclearly not a major issue on today's national agenda.Even inner-city violence only diverts much of the nation'sattention for a few fleeting moments, while attacks onschool integration and affirmative action persist.

The gains that have been made are substantial, butwill the momentum continue? Improvement has oc-curred in a generation inspired and spurred on to bringabout change. If the resolve to continue toward that goallessens in the United States, the picture may becomebleaker, and the rate of positive change may declinefurther.

EXTERMINATIONor genocide

II,II

Victim discounting

Medicalexperimentation

SECESSIONor partitioning

FUSIONor amalgamationor melting pot

PLURALISMor multiculturalism

Actingwhite

Blackelectoraldistrict

Redlining

Zoning laws

Tracking

Apartheid schools

De jure school segregation

Key Termsacting White 231apartheid schools 230class 242de facto segregation 230differential justice 245

gerrymandering 248income 234redlining 244tracking 230underemployment 236

victim discounting 246victimization surveys 245wealth 234zoning laws 244

Review Questions1. To what degree have the civil rights movement initiatives in education been real-

ized, or do they remain unmet?2. What challenges face the Mrican American middle class?3. What are the biggest assets and problems facing Mrican American families?4. How are differential justice and victim discounting related?5. How is race-based gerrymandering related to affirmative action?

Critical Thinking1. Without the comparison to John, Glenn might have taken the shoe salesman to be

merely incompetent at hisjob rather than purposefully avoiding selling to MricanAmericans. Drawing on the case of John and Glenn, what are other types of situa-tions in which people may be victims of discrimination but be unaware of it?

2. What has been the ethnic and racial composition of the neighborhoods you havelived in and the schools you have attended? Consider how the composition of onemay have influenced the other. What steps would have been necessary to ensuremore diversity?

3. How are the problems in crime, housing, and health interrelated?

Internet Connections-Research Navigator™To access the full resources of Research Navigator™, please find the access codeprinted on the inside cover of OneSearch with Research Navigator™: Sociology. You mayhave received this booklet if your instructor recommended this guide be packagedwith new textbooks. (If your book did not come with this printed guide, you can pur-chase one through your college bookstore.) Visit our Research Navigator™ site atwww.ResearchNavigator.com.Onceatthissite.click on REGISTER under New Usersand enter your access code to create a personal Login Name and Password. (Whenrevisiting the site, use the same Login Name and Password.) Browse the features ofthe Research Navigator™ Web site and search the databases of academic journals,newspapers, magazines, and Web links.

For further information relevant to Chapter 1, you may wish to use such keywordsas "defacto Segregation," "Historically Black Colleges and Universities," and the re-search engine will supply relevant and recent scholarly and popular press publica-tions. Use the New York Times Search-by-Subject Archive to find recent news articlesrelated to sociology and the Link Library feature to locate relevant Web links orga-nized by the key terms associated with this chapter.