This Noble Land (6 page)

Let me make my personal attitudes on race clear right now. I was married to a wonderful Japanese woman, born in this country of parents born and reared in Japan who had emigrated here for a better life. In forty years of married life my wife and I never encountered racial hostility, but I sometimes thought it was because I was a writer and was therefore held to different standards by others. In my books I have written at length and favorably about people of all races. I have done so because I truly believe that all men are brothers and that all races can contribute to a classless, color-blind society. Although I am critical of some of the traits and attitudes that I have recognized as being unfortunately characteristic of some of the minority groups in our society who have often led difficult lives, I do not think I can be accused of racial intolerance.

My professional life has obligated me to study intimately five of our minorities: the Hispanics, the Jews, the Native Americans,
the Asians and, above all, the African Americans. The relationship between the Caucasian majority of our population and the Asian and Jewish minorities has been firmly defined; each group knows where it stands in relationship to the other, and for the most part a certain harmony prevails. Our nation’s response to the growing percentages of Hispanics in our society, particularly in border areas and in other areas of high concentrations such as New York and Miami, is sometimes muddled, and we are badly confused as to what the relationship should be between our Native American minority and the Caucasian majority. Many sober students of this imbalance argue that Native Americans thrive best on the reservations that have in general been financially supported by the government. But others, like myself, believe that they do best when they are thrust into the mainstream of American life.

But the greater problem our society faces is the relationship between our African American minority and the Caucasian majority, and this problem has not begun to be solved. The longer we allow it to remain unresolved, the greater danger we face of racial violence.

Even as I drafted this chapter, additional proof surfaced of the persistence of hatred between the races in American life. The federal government announced that a total of thirty-two black Christian churches in the South had been burned. Some people who wish our black citizens ill claim that blacks themselves set the fires. There was a partial verification of this charge when police in a southern town arrested two black men accused of torching and destroying a black church. Others have argued that the acts were not antiblack but anti-Christian, proved by the fact that several of the burned churches had predominantly white congregations. Any tortured reasoning that attempts to explain away the racism simply makes this ugly epidemic more painful.

Just a sampling of statistics shows the dreadful socioeconomic imbalances between the races. Some of the data below come from reports on the 1990 Census, others of sometimes more penetrating quality from the current Bureau of the Census population surveys and the Bureau of Justice statistics. I shall intersperse these sources with data from stories in the media and studies by nonprofit research and advocacy organizations.

Income:
The median income of white males in 1993 was $21,981; of black males, $14,605. In 1993 the median income of white families was $39,300; of black families, $21,542.

Affluence:
According to data from the 1993 Current Population Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau, of the top 5.7 percent of all U.S. households in 1993—those with an annual income of $100,000 or more—92 percent were white and only 3.7 percent were black.

Poverty:
Census data in 1993 also show that only 12.2 percent of the white population existed below the poverty level; of blacks, 33.1 percent. And 9.4 percent of white families but 31.3 percent of black families lived in poverty. The income level for poverty varies by family size; the poverty threshold of a typical family of four, for example, was $14,763 per year in 1993.

Employment:
The employment data are even more divisive than the income data for the crucial group of young males between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine; 8.1 percent of whites were unemployed in 1994, as opposed to 18.1 percent of blacks, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Babies:
According to government statistics, 3.6 percent of white teenage girls between the ages of fifteen and nineteen had babies out of wedlock in 1994, but among the black girls it was 10.1 percent. Of all the births to unmarried teens in this age group a year earlier, in 1993, 17.8 percent of the whites but 31.6 percent of the blacks had had at least one previous child. Another statistic is even more disturbing for both races: in 1994, 67.6 percent of the
babies born to white teenagers aged fifteen to nineteen and 95.3 percent of babies born to black teenagers in the same age range had unmarried mothers.

Criminal behavior and imprisonment:
One statistic is interesting because its shocking implications have resulted in much citing of it and moralizing; I myself was guilty of circulating the statement that more black males are in U.S. prisons and jails than are in U.S. colleges. The statement is true but misleading because it includes
all
black males, even those beyond the normal age for college, according to a Bureau of Justice statistician. When the data are restricted to the age range of eighteen to twenty-four, according to that statistician,

Nevertheless, a recent study by a nonprofit group in Washington that supports alternatives to imprisonment says that nearly one in three black men in their twenties is imprisoned or on probation or parole. According to this report, 32.2 percent of all black men aged twenty to twenty-nine are under some form of supervision by the criminal justice system. Some scholars expect this figure to rise in the next few years.

Fatalities:
There is another related statistic that admits of no argument, the National Center for Health Statistics’ 1992 report on mortality rates: homicide is the leading cause of death among black males aged fifteen to twenty-four.

All of these figures add up to a devastating condemnation of the conditions under which our black minority, particularly our black men, live in the United States. Decisive national action must be taken to improve the lives of our black minority, both
because it is the right thing to do and because it will be necessary if we are to avoid national strife.

Now, I can hear the well-to-do white businessman saying, ‘Many other groups in American history have experienced difficult circumstances and certainly no help was extended to them, but they improved their lives nevertheless. Why should blacks be treated any differently?’

I once made a study of how the Irish immigrants of the mid-nineteenth century adjusted to life in a variety of conservative New England towns. Statistics proved that the Irish initially had been treated just as harshly as the blacks. Political warfare exploded, and again and again the first Irishmen to achieve political office went to jail for theft of public funds or other abuses. Often, I judged, they had been railroaded by their Anglo-Saxon opponents.

When I asked a notable Irish politician to explain how the Irish had broken free, he laughed: ‘We Irish had a trick up our sleeves. Still do. We produced a steady supply of handsome young men who could play football, and just as many beautiful girls who would grace any salon. The Irish boys went to Harvard and Yale, where they played on the teams and married their teammates’ Protestant sisters. At the same time the Irish football heroes introduced
their
teammates to their beautiful Irish sisters. In time this produced a heady mix out of which grew Irish political freedom and power.’ He then added a caveat that has affected my thinking: ‘The tremendous advantage, however, that we Irish had over the blacks was that we were white. Our children could mix in without being visibly stigmatized. The black stands out inescapably and he cannot lose himself in the mass. I would not like to be a black. Being Irish was bad enough.’

Because of my experiences with the Irish of New England, I have often told groups of young blacks I’ve met with in schools
or assemblies: ‘I’d love to be a teenaged black boy with intellectual gifts or athletic skills. Believe me, I would play this white society like a violin. Everybody would want to be my friend. Doors would be opened. Colleges and universities would seek me out and shower scholarships on me. And when I finished graduate school in law or business or science, businesses would be fighting to employ me. I’d be much more valuable to them than the ordinary white young man.’

I still believe this without question. America would be hungry to get such a young black man, but then I have to admit the folly of the fantasy. A black boy would still be black with all the impediments that that involves in American life. He could not, like the Irish boys in New England, mask his color. He might play football for Harvard or Yale, but his white teammates still might not take him into their homes during vacations or introduce their sisters to him.

The uninformed attitude that blacks should simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps is clear in that oft-repeated complaint: ‘Why don’t those big black guys on food stamps and unemployment handouts get themselves jobs and go to work?’ The complainer fails to realize that we are all to blame for having structured our society in ways that make it extremely difficult for the uneducated young black man to find a job. Much of the factory work that he used to do for a reasonable salary is now being done down in Mexico or in Taiwan or Korea. There are, simply but tragically, too few jobs for the young African American male trying to make his way in the world.

White privileged society contributes to the problems of the black community by the cruel practice of redlining, whereby bankers refuse to lend money to businesses in black areas because the risk of theft, riots and fire is too great. Redlining is a cruel procedure that condemns a district to destructive deterioration.
In the bigger cities the hardworking Koreans move in to provide the required services while incurring the hatred of the African Americans they are serving. Ghettoization is a horrible way to organize a city, but I conclude that it has been willfully orchestrated by whites who refuse to see that the nation must take responsibility for improving the conditions in which much of our black minority lives. We cannot, as so many would like to do, wash our hands of them.

Too few realize that the results of ghettoization are destructive not only to those within the ghettos but also to those without. I live in Austin, Texas, the state capital and one of the fine smaller cities in the United States. It has a university of nearly fifty thousand students on campus, a vibrant social, political and cultural life and a surprising mix of whites, blacks, Hispanics and a huge number of students from foreign lands. (Sometimes at the university when classes change and students fill the corridors it looks like an Asian university.)

The city is divided east and west by a north-south double-deck superhighway, I-35, on which traffic is constant, noisy and smelly. West Austin contains many of the finest houses in the state, but Austin east of the highway has many characteristics of a ghetto. It’s an exciting area, but residents in West Austin rarely venture eastward beyond I-35. Because I know I might want one day to write about Austin, a city I have grown to cherish, I have spent many afternoons probing the sectors: south, where the Hispanics center; northwest, where the big houses are; southwest, with moderate housing; and northeast, where the African Americans live. At the city’s center are the state capitol, the university and the homes of many of the descendants of the early European settlers who played such a large role in Austin history. This geographic description is something of an oversimplification, but it does roughly represent the differences throughout the city.

Of special interest is the southern end of the city where the Hispanic families seem to concentrate. In no sense do they form a standard immigrant concentration; many of their families lived in Texas a hundred or more years before the first Caucasians arrived. They are the social elite of the city, or behave as if they were, living by their own patterns and too often refusing to send their children on to college.

I found in that section a remarkable Hispanic woman, Amelia Vargas, to help as my housekeeper after my wife died. She has proved a jewel, and we were passing our days quietly in my house in the university/residential area, ignoring the turmoil in East Austin, until the morning when she came to work in tears. Her seventeen-year-old grandnephew, a wonderful boy with a winning personality and good marks in school, had been killed by shots fired at random from a car passing through his neighborhood. Thus the social disarray in the ghetto area intrudes into even the more tranquil parts of our city.

Dallas, our sister city to the north, has its own ugly version of the confrontation between the affluent residential area—to the north in that city—and the ghetto, which lies to the south. A policeman explained it: ‘A pair of unemployed black youths steal an ordinary used car, say a Ford or a Chevy. At dusk they start prowling the center of the city where businessmen work, trying to spot the wealthy fellow who drives a Mercedes or a Porsche or one of the very expensive new Italian cars. Inconspicuously they trail him to his home in north Dallas and watch as he drives his car to the detached garage well to the back of the mansion.

‘As he gets out to park his car, they jump him, wrestle him for the car keys, steal his car and take off, one driver in the big car, the other following in the car stolen earlier that night. They whisk both vehicles to a secret shop that specializes in taking cars apart and shipping them illegally to South America or the
Caribbean. Two days later the Mercedes or Porsche may be on its way to Colombia or Venezuela.’