The true character of a nation can be judged in part by the way it treats its weakest or most vulnerable members. Nowhere has this test been more relevant than in the quest for civil rights by black Americans.
With the passage of civil rights law, one-third of black Americans - those prepared by family status, education, or economic circumstances - walked through the doors of opportunity once they were opened. For unprepared blacks, however, removing racial barriers did not enable them to join the mainstream of the American economy. Their problems were and remain economic; continued attempts to apply race-specific solutions to their problems do nothing to advance economic progress for poor blacks.
The real questions for black leaders, then, is the one they are rarely compelled to answer. Why have the civil rights gains of the past twenty years bypassed poor blacks, even in those cities politically controlled by blacks? Traditionalist black leaders rarely challenge themselves with that question. Instead, they continue to appeal to white America for fairness. Fairness toward blacks, defense cuts, and increased government spending on social programs, affirmative action, and job training are all summed up in the call for more "jobs, peace, and freedom."
Despite their lack of involvement in the design of its structure, the black leadership embraced the war on poverty as an extension of the civil rights movement. The basic dichotomy, however, between promise and practice surfaced early. In the 1960s, many of the programs of the Office of Economic Opportunity, inspired by the President's Commission on the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency, attempted to alleviate the problem by removing social, educational, and economic barriers that hindered achievement of many young people. Through the creation of the Job Corps, VISTA, and local youth development projects, emphasis was placed on education and job training for inner-city youth. A key ingredient in the success of such community-based efforts was the active involvement of the affected populations. The cornerstone of this approach was the concept of local control. Ironically, the federally funded and directed poverty program ignored this most valuable resource of grassroots participation. On the contrary, it initiated what, in effect, might be seen as a service industry that was often out of touch with the authentic needs of the communities it was designed to serve and that had as one of its priorities the self-perpetuation and even expansion of the system itself.
Kenneth Clark, then a leading spokesman for the Harlem community, characterized the power plays between politicians and social workers.
The "systems change" theories, while espousing the need for the mobilization of community residents and for their active involvement in social change, resulted in political battles between Washington officials and local politicians over policies and money, competition among professional social work groups over control of the programs, and only selective cooperation of the indigenous leadership. The bulk of the money went not to the poor, but to the traditional social work agencies, with headquarters and policy making outside of the targeted area.
The late M. Carl Holman once said that twenty-one liberal white men sat around a table on the eighth floor of the Justice Department and
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