Disintegration (16 page)

The pressures of the real estate market have begun to push the Abandoned and their attendant problems across the city line into Prince George’s communities such as Capitol Heights. A jurisdiction proudly dominated by the black Mainstream is having to deal with an influx of crime, drugs, and violence—and has proved to be, generally, in no mood to make allowances for the socioeconomic disparities that give rise to criminality. Thirty years ago, the police force in Prince George’s was overwhelmingly white and had a reputation for heavy-handed brutality in dealing with African Americans unlucky enough to be arrested in the county. Now, with the county under black leadership and the police force about half African American, the reputation persists—and many residents ignore, if not encourage, what remains of the old “ready, fire, aim” approach to fighting crime.

In Abandoned zones on both sides of the Anacostia, the Mainstream institutions that held out the longest were the churches. Before the Shaw neighborhood south of U Street began to gentrify, I remember that every Sunday morning the
streets would be all but blocked by double-parked cars with Maryland license plates—parishioners who had moved out of the city but came back, once a week, out of loyalty to the churches they had grown up in and the pastors who had baptized them. But now those churches have begun to migrate to the suburbs—especially Prince George’s—because that’s where most of the membership lives. The traditional congregations have had to take this step for competitive reasons: Mega-churches, mostly Pentecostal in nature, have sprung up in the county and siphoned thousands of members away from Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal, and other traditional denominations. One such place of worship, Jericho City of Praise, claims nineteen thousand members. The church runs its own Christian academy and a host of social-service programs.

On Sundays, the traffic flow is reversed: In the Jericho City of Praise parking lots you will find quite a few cars with District of Columbia license plates. Some of those cars belong to Abandoned black Americans who are convinced that although this life may be hard, the next life will be pure comfort and joy.

* * *

The web of restraints that keeps Abandoned black Americans from escaping into the middle class has been examined from every angle, described in great detail, and lamented ad infinitum. But the web continues to tighten.

It begins in the womb. Poor black women are only one-third as likely as poor white women to have adequate prenatal care. This is partly mitigated by the fact that poor black women are much less likely than their white counterparts to smoke while they are pregnant; indeed, rates of tobacco, alcohol, and drug
use among low-income young African Americans are generally lower than among low-income whites. Still, infant mortality is almost twice as high among African Americans. The incidence of low birth weight is also greatly elevated, and while most studies do not show an ironclad, direct relationship between low birth weight and a decrease in cognitive ability, they do indicate that low-birth-weight children are up to twice as likely to have problems in school. From a very early age, the children of the Abandoned are at much greater risk for several chronic, debilitating conditions—asthma, obesity, childhood diabetes—than low-income white children. Poor black children are behind even before the race begins.

Most infants born into low-income African American families are, of course, of normal weight and go home from the hospital in good health. But what kind of home?

In 1940, only 15.7 percent of African American households nationwide were headed by women who were either single, widowed, or abandoned by their spouses. In 1960, just 22 percent of black children were growing up in one-parent households. Today, an astounding 54 percent of all African American children are being raised in single-parent households
¹²
—and, in almost all cases, it’s the father who is absent while the mother struggles to take care of the family.

It is hugely significant that in most Abandoned black neighborhoods, as in the Lower Ninth Ward, most households are headed by a single woman—with no husband on the premises. In many cases, both the mother and the absent father were themselves raised by single mothers. To the extent that the example set by parents provides a model for children to emulate, girls grow up learning that it would be normal to raise children on their own and boys learning that it would be
normal not to live with the mother—or mothers—of their children. The pattern tends to repeat in the next generation. Being a single parent is stressful, with the mother likely to pass that stress on to her children—along with all the well-documented physiological damage that stress can cause. The complex and subtle psychological impacts of single parenthood might be surpassed, however, by a simpler and more quantifiable economic impact: One low income provides approximately half as much money as two low incomes. This fact of arithmetic limits upward mobility. It also greatly increases instability because the slightest disruption of a household’s one precarious source of cash can create a situation in which the family has to move on short notice. And if a single mother who lacks educational qualifications and marketable skills is fortunate enough to have a steady job, it is unlikely to pay enough for her to afford quality day care. Preschoolers are likely to be cared for by relatives, neighbors, or older siblings, and while these ad hoc caretakers are full of love and good intentions, they will rarely have the skills needed to optimize a child’s early development. As a result of all these factors, children of Abandoned families are at a significant disadvantage, compared to their more affluent peers, when they enter school.

William Raspberry, my friend and former colleague at
The Washington Post
, decided when he retired that blazing a trail for younger African American journalists to follow, becoming one of the most widely read syndicated columnists in the country, and winning a Pulitzer Prize did not constitute enough of a contribution. So instead of taking up golf, he founded a nonprofit and set out to make a difference in his hometown of Okolona, Mississippi, a town of about 3,500 that is 60 percent black, mostly poor, and long since Abandoned.
Raspberry decided to focus on early-childhood education, which is where he thought the greatest return on his philanthropic investment could be made. He soon discovered, however, that before he could effectively educate young children, he had to educate their families. As he learned more, parents became his program’s main focus.

Raspberry’s program, called BabySteps, teaches parents how to prepare their children for success in school. Raspberry found that it wasn’t enough to invite parents to sessions where they would be given instruction. Counselors make home visits to assess the parents’ capacity and demonstrate model behaviors for them to imitate. As Raspberry once explained to me, it does little good to tell parents to read to their children every night if the parents are not capable of reading with any fluency; some boys and girls would be better off if they came regularly to a BabySteps facility where counselors could read to them. Raspberry then discovered that health was another major issue, and BabySteps ended up establishing a weekly health and dental clinic to serve the children of Okolona. This holistic approach seems to be producing real results. If there were a Bill Raspberry for every Abandoned community—and deep-pockets donors willing to fund programs like BabySteps, which costs more than half a million dollars a year—this would be a very different book.

Even if every young child in Abandoned black America had the best possible early preparation, most would encounter schools where expectations are low and performance is even lower. There is no need to describe in detail the abject failure of public education in poor inner-city and rural communities; everyone knows that tragic story by now, and at this point the only part anyone wants to read is the still-unwritten happy
ending. I’ve spent enough time in such schools—as a reporter and columnist, and as a volunteer in a nonprofit college-access program that my wife, Avis, founded—to know that the few kids who overcome their surroundings, going on to success in college and beyond, are preternaturally self-motivated and almost always have solid, consistent, competent support from their parents. All else being equal, boys and girls from intact, two-parent families tend to do better—not just in school but in all walks of life.

There is a temptation, then, to prescribe marriage as the cure for Abandoned black America’s parlous condition. I believe that’s unrealistic. By all means, let marriage be a theme hammered home by every preacher, in every pulpit, on every Sunday. But the decline of marriage and the rise of single-parent households are society-wide phenomena, albeit with their greatest impact among African Americans. “Too bad your father’s not around” is not a policy prescription; it’s a cruel taunt directed at children who are already being victimized by forces beyond their control.

Despite dropout rates of up to 50 percent in some cities, most youths in Abandoned communities do manage to graduate high school. For those who don’t, the information age economy has nothing to offer—you can’t go down to the plant and sign up for a steady, blue-collar, union job with decent benefits, since the plant was shuttered years ago when this country stopped making things. If you’re a young man and you drop out, you spend your days hanging out on the corner; your choice is validated and reinforced by neighborhood friends who took the same route. If you’re a young woman and you drop out, you probably get pregnant and have a child; you want the very best for your baby, like every mother
does, but you have no real idea how to provide it. Those who stay in school and graduate end up with diplomas that are devalued—and with basic skills that qualify them only for episodic, dead-end employment.

If you are a male dropout and you spend a significant amount of your time with like-minded acquaintances on the corner, there is an excellent chance that you will have opportunities to participate in the illegal economy—the drug trade. Whether you participate or not, being in proximity to the drug business when the police come around is enough to put you in contact with the criminal justice system. Out of 1.5 million prisoners incarcerated in the federal and state prison systems in 2008, an estimated 528,000 were black.
¹³
The fact that the “statistic” about there being more black men in prison than in college is false gives only cold comfort, because it is indisputably true that the rate of incarceration for African American men—down substantially since the turn of the new century—is still more than twice the rate for Hispanic men and about six times the rate for white men.

Is this somehow intentional? Is the system rigged to warehouse black men in prison? I would argue that mandatory sentencing laws and the differential treatment of offenses involving crack cocaine versus powder cocaine boost the African American incarceration rate, as does the fact that Abandoned black neighborhoods are generally policed with Fort Apache–style aggressiveness. But I don’t believe these factors are enough to explain the entire disparity. Family breakdown, untutored parenting, failed schools—all the factors that go into creating and perpetuating Abandoned black America have to be invoked to fully explain why our jails and prisons are full of black men for whom incarceration is almost a rite
of passage. The impact is more easily defined than the cause: Ex-offenders have even less chance than non-offenders of ever finding the elusive path that leads to the Mainstream.

And it is in Abandoned neighborhoods where the epidemic of violent crime still rages. The most critical problem was always black-on-black crime, not black-on-white; but it was only when whites and Mainstream blacks felt vulnerable that crime became a hotly debated political issue. Now, for most Americans, crime is distant and much less threatening. For Abandoned black Americans, however, crime is a fact of everyday life. One of the most disheartening developments of the past decade has been the establishment of standard rituals with which to mark the violent taking of a young life—among them, memorial T-shirts with a computer-silk-screened picture of the deceased, along with his or her dates of birth and death. In Washington, such occasions are common enough to make T-shirt shops among the most successful types of businesses in Abandoned black neighborhoods. Along with funeral homes, of course.

* * *

Movie critics loved the 2009 indie film
Precious
. African Americans, not so much.

I shouldn’t generalize. The truth is that
Precious
divided black Americans—and divided us passionately—along what by now are familiar aesthetic and cultural lines. There were those who celebrated the skill and artistry of director Lee Daniels, the powerful and unforgettable performances by Mo’Nique and ingenue Gabourey Sidibe, and even the brave choice by Mariah Carey, a diva’s diva, to appear on-screen in
unflattering makeup that included the subtlest hint of a mustache. With entertainment moguls Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry on board as executive producers—basically providing their imprimatur and their money—a film by and about black people had elbowed its way into Hollywood, the ultimate gated community, and taken the place by storm. Not only was the film wildly profitable, given its small budget, but it was in every sense excellent when judged by Hollywood’s standards of excellence.
Precious
was acclaimed as a great piece of cinema—which is, by definition, a grand illusion. It wasn’t meant to be a documentary. It was art and demanded to be seen and evaluated as art.

Then there were those who said: Sure, right, most of that may be true. The acting was good, depending on how thoroughly you like your scenery chewed, and young Sidibe was truly amazing. But
Precious
wasn’t art, it was a form of pornography.

Precious: Based on the Novel
Push
by Sapphire
is set in a specific milieu: the Abandoned black America of the nation’s most lurid imagination. The story line, said the film’s vocal critics, appears to have no more elevated purpose than the arousal of prurient interest: An obese, functionally illiterate teenager is raped and impregnated by her father—not once, but twice. The child born of the first impregnation has Down syndrome. Meanwhile, the girl is also being horribly abused, both physically and psychologically, by her mother, who is evidently one of the most evil and worthless individuals ever to walk the earth. The mother—also obese, incidentally—is the Angry Black Woman from Hell. She sees her daughter not as the pathetic victim she really is but as a rival for the affections of
the violent, irredeemable monster—the Worthless Black Man from Hell—who so brutally rapes his own daughter.