Will a Racial Divide Swallow Obama? - Nation

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by Melissa Harris-Lacewell

On Sunday I went to the Prudential Center in Newark to hear President Obama make the case for Governor Jon Corzine's reelection here in New Jersey. Already a strong supporter of Governor Corzine I wasn't going to be convinced. And I wasn't particularly excited about standing in a long line, on a chilly afternoon to listen to two men I've heard speak dozens of times. But I was determined to go. One year ago I'd been in Newark to hear candidate Obama make his closing arguments, and I wanted to check out what an Obama rally looks like one year later.

Some elements of the atmosphere were familiar: insanely long lines, intense police presence, surprisingly jovial mood despite the chill. One thing was noticeably and distressingly different: the crowd waiting to see President Obama in Newark on Sunday was much less diverse than the crowd that greeted him in the waning days of the 2008 election. By my estimation the supporters in Newark yesterday were not exclusively, but certainly predominately, African American.

The event mirrors recent trends in the polls. Presidential job approval polls by Gallup have tracked two consistent trends in President Obama's ratings: overall decline and a widening racial gap between black and white Americans.

As a public opinion researcher, I am not surprised by this racial gap. Political science has convincingly and repeatedly found a wide and persistent gulf between the political attitudes of white and black Americans.

For example, one of the most consistent finding of public opinion research is how African American partisanship differs from that of whites. African American allegiance to the Republican Party of Lincoln was solid for the decades between Emancipation and The New Deal, but by the 1940s black Americans had become overwhelmingly Democratic in affiliation. At the same time, white voters increasingly moved to the Republican column, particularly in the South.

African Americans are unique both in the direction of their affiliation and in the homogeneity of the attachment. But despite the strength of this attachment, black Democratic partisanship is quite different from that of white Democrats. There is marked racial division of opinion within the party ranks and leadership. The Congressional Black Caucus often finds itself at odds with party leadership, and among voters, black and white Democrats differ on issues of economic redistribution, domestic public policy, and even foreign policy.

This means that President Obama is not the first contemporary president to experience a noticeable racial approval gap. African American animosity toward Presidents Reagan and Bush, who were well liked by most whites, was a salient feature of the 1980s. African American attitudes toward Clinton were quite different. In 2000, black respondents reported average warmth toward Clinton of 79 points, a presidential score, that for the first time, outstripped black American ratings for Reverend Jesse Jackson. The approval ratings among African Americans for George W. Bush made history when they plummeted to single digits in some polls during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

This history suggests that black voter support of Obama is not driven solely by his identity as the first African American president, but instead is rooted in more persistent racial differences in American politics.

Therefore, while my academic-self is unsurprised by this racial gap, my citizen-self is distressed. One of the distinctive and exciting features of the Obama candidacy was the appeal of its multi-racial coalition. I appreciated the Obama yard signs in Hebrew and Arabic, the bumper sticker that read Older White Woman for Obama, the sustaining role of hip-hop music in the campaign, and watching Americans of all backgrounds chant Si Se Puede.

I have always been more impressed by the Obama coalition than by Obama himself. Perhaps this is because as a Hyde Park, Chicagoan I began following Obama's career when he was a smart, but awkward, state senator who endured a tough congressional loss. Perhaps it's because I've always secretly like Michelle better. Whatever his shortcomings, I was thrilled by Obama's 2008 campaign because his candidacy became a space where a real, winning, multi-racial, electoral coalition emerged around progressive issues on the national stage. My greatest hope for this campaign-built-on-hope was for America's racial possibilities if this diverse coalition could be sustained.

I was not alone in my enthusiasm. In the weeks immediately following the election of President Obama, Americans reported significant optimism about the future of race relations and racial equality. But late last week Gallup reported that post-election racial optimism has waned among all Americans, and particularly among black people.

On October 29, Gallup reported responses to the question: "Do you think that relations between blacks and whites will always be a problem for the United States or that a solution will eventually be worked out?" Responses reflected patterns similar to 1963, with 40% of Americans expecting race always to be a problem. And though black Americans had become more optimistic a year ago, they are now significantly more pessimistic about race in America.

These Gallup findings mirror decades of public opinion research showing that African Americans and whites differ dramatically on their perception of the existence of discrimination, and in their assessment of the potential for realizing a racially fair society. These differing perceptions of racial discrimination translate into enormous gaps in support for public policies. These gaps have effectively stymied effective coalitions for progressive policies for decades.

Despite the presence of white and Latino voters at the Newark rally on Sunday, this racial divide felt troubling and present.

Black Americans have become significantly more supportive of President Obama and more pessimistic about the country as the President has endured attacks that seem personal and racially motivated. This trend is potentially troublesome for several reasons. If black voters feel the need to rally around the President to protect him from racial attacks, then they are less able to function as full members of the coalition. Black voters need to be able to both praise and criticize the President in order to ensure their individual and collective interests are voiced.

Further, if President Obama's poll numbers are primarily bolstered by an enthusiastic, but racially isolated core, then his administration becomes more vulnerable to unfairly racialized attacks from opponents. Those opponents could seek to cast President Obama as a protector of identity-group interests, rather than as a broad representative of American interests.

President Obama and his administration may seek to distance themselves from the negative implications of racialized support by enacting social conservatives policies. This was a strategy used by President Clinton during the second half of his first term. It has the perverse effect of punishing African Americans for their political support and loyalty.

Even as Democrats seek to pass health care reform they need also to aggressively rebuild the foundation of mullti-racial enthusiasm that drove the 2008 election. President Obama's efficacy is seriously undermined to the extent that his base shrinks and divides along racial lines.

Even more important, Americans' faith in our capacity to find common ground and achieve collective aims is eroding--quickly.

In S.C., One Road Divides Two Ways of Thinking - washingtonpost.com

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Views on Obama, and Race, Hold Firm

By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 22, 2009

ORANGEBURG, S.C. -- The Bolen and Elmore homes, three blocks apart in opposite directions off Columbia Road in this small city, could not seem more alike. Both are simple brick ranch-style houses occupied by retired couples, the men former police officers, who spend hours a day in dark dens where cigarette smoke wafts beneath the whirl of ceiling fans.

Inside the hush of these rooms, however, their differences become clear. Columbia Road is a long and narrow country highway that serves as the border between the congressional districts of Rep. Joe Wilson, a white Republican who heckled President Obama during a speech, and Rep. James E. Clyburn, Capitol Hill's top-ranking black Democrat, who led the House vote to punish Wilson for it.

Along Columbia Road, and throughout Wilson's and Clyburn's districts, race has long been an inescapable topic of debate. And as Wilson's outburst brought the issue back to the surface, residents here voiced both divergent and hardened opinions. Their emotions are raw, even if cloaked in Southern gentility and graciousness.

The Bolens have seven antique miniature wooden grandfather clocks hanging on their wall. Their den is decorated with metal trinkets and classic Coca-Cola memorabilia. They said they could not bring themselves to watch Obama's health-care address on their 60-inch Magnavox because they think he is a liar. They live west of Columbia Road, in an area represented by Wilson, and they are white.

"Joe Wilson apologized to the president, and the president accepted it. My God, give me a break. I'm sick of this racism stuff," said Barbara Bolen, 66, a retired textile factory manager. "Oh, and Jimmy Carter! I'm so mad about him calling it racism. I think that's awful."

The Elmores have a portrait of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. hanging on their wall. Their den is sprinkled with Obama campaign souvenirs, including a card that reads "Yes We Did." They watched the president's speech together, but they have grown disillusioned, saying that the election of the first African American president has not transcended racial divisions, pointing to a summer of loud and angry opposition to Obama. They live east of Columbia Road, an area represented by Clyburn, and they are black.

"Everybody tries to say that it's merely because of the health care, but there is some underlying, you know, racism," said Joseph Elmore, 66. "The South has its way of covering up racism. They're not used to a black man running America. They're not used to a black man wielding that kind of power. You had 43 presidents who were white, and now you have a black one."

More than two dozen Orangeburg residents interviewed here last week -- white and black, rich and poor, doctors and lawyers and plumbers and biscuit bakers -- had varying opinions about the role of race in the opposition to Obama. Many were outspoken and shared the views of the Bolens or the Elmores, but some offered more nuanced thoughts.

Orangeburg lies at the heart of the Old South, a working-class, well-educated and heavily Democratic city in the South Carolina midlands. Blacks outnumber whites by about 2 to 1, and the subject of race still hovers over the sleepy historic downtown, where a monument to Confederate soldiers stands. In 1968, police here fired into a crowd of demonstrators protesting a segregated bowling alley, killing three unarmed black men and wounding 27 others in what became known as the Orangeburg Massacre.

But the city, home to two historically black colleges, has a youthful energy and is attracting businesses. At a fundraiser for the local technical college one evening, many of Orangeburg's well-to-do shushed away questions about race as they sipped fine wine and nibbled on scallops and lamb chops.

"I've known Joe for a long time, and I do not think there was any racism involved," said Brad Hutto, 52, a lawyer and Democratic state senator who is white, but is supported by both black and white voters.

But Linda Blume whispered in a corner that racist sentiments bubble up when she and other white women play bridge twice a month.

"Although they won't admit it, I really think it's prejudice in Orangeburg -- prejudice against blacks," said Blume, 63, who owns an entertainment booking agency and said she supported Obama. "They're all doctors' wives and old Orangeburg society people. They're all good women, but you can't mention anything about Obama or they go crazy. They have fear of outside elements, fear of the unknown, fear of their world changing."

At South Carolina State University, one of Orangeburg's historically black institutions, political scientist Willie Legette said: "I think people are being dishonest if they don't acknowledge that this is to a large degree about race. But what can you do about it?"

South Carolina has been symbolic in this age of Obama, representing both the hope of moving beyond race in the nation and a test of how hard that can be. This is where Obama soared to victory in the Democratic primary with a coalition of black and white voters, defeating Hillary Rodham Clinton by 29 percentage points. It is also where former president Bill Clinton made remarks about Obama that many -- including Clyburn -- believed were racially charged.

But Obama lost South Carolina in the general election, and since then, the Palmetto State has emerged as a hostile check on the new administration's ambition. The governor was the most vocal critic of the economic stimulus package, and one of the state's U.S. senators suggested that health-care reform could be the president's "Waterloo."

Obama's election alone "will not take us to a post-racial society," Clyburn said in an interview. "I think that it's a step in that direction, but my Lord, there's a long ways to go. One election cannot erase the long, sordid history of race that we have in this country."

Longtime state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter (D), who is black, said the euphoria African Americans felt about Obama's election has ebbed. "There was this inference that America had arrived because we elected a person of color as president, but what is incredibly clear is all is not right with the world," she said.

Some residents voiced deep suspicions of Obama and fear about the broadening reach of federal government, and dismissed talk that their opposition may be laced with racism as nonsense.

"I don't think much of him," said Henry Bozard, 83, a retired air-conditioning worker who joined his wife and daughter for the $6.85 baked chicken lunch special at Mama's Kountry Kookin'. "It's not because he's black. I've got nothing against a black man. He's nothing but a big liar who runs his mouth and can't do nothing right."

Bozard, who is white, continued: "Joe Wilson is the only one who has a backbone. He called Obama a liar, and he is a liar."

"Joe Wilson was speaking for me," added Judi Hagan, 56, the restaurant's owner, who also is white. "I don't like what President Obama is trying to do. But it's not a racist thing. No, no, no. We have lots of black customers. It's not like we only serve the whites."

Two miles up the road, at the Brown Derby, another Southern cafeteria, opinions were vastly different. Owner Daisy Brown Orr, 65, said she is disillusioned by what she considers racist attacks on Obama. She leaned across the table and told of growing up as an African American here. Her mother would force her and her siblings to stay quiet after dusk on Saturdays, when Ku Klux Klan members would ride through their neighborhood.

Change, she said, has been too slow.

"I knew [Obama] couldn't turn things around instantaneously," she said. "I knew there were still racists in the closet. I knew that there would still be people out to get him."

Back along Columbia Road, dozens of ranch-style houses like the Bolens' and the Elmores' are tucked off the main street, behind grassy driveways and Baptist churches. On one side are Clyburn's constituents; on the other, Wilson's.

"Joe Wilson was expressing what his constituents think," Joseph Elmore said. "His white constituents are probably saying, 'Hey, anything being done is not appropriate for us because he's black'. . . . But the people over there, I don't think all of them echo his beliefs."

Barbara Bolen sat on a folding chair in her carport, smoking a Seneca beneath an American flag and wind chimes. She said she takes offense at the assumption that because she is a white Southerner her opposition to a black president is rooted in racism.

"I've worked with the blacks all my life," Bolen said. "I'm not a racist. When I go to the grocery store, I talk to the blacks. When I was at the Wal-Mart the other day at 6 in the morning, I saw a black I knew and hugged him."

"Ohhh, don't bring up racism," she added. "It bothers me."

Race, Wealth, and Intergenerational Poverty

Darrick Hamilton and William Darity Jr. | August 17, 2009

Despite an enormous and persistent black-white wealth gap, the ascendant American narrative is one that proclaims our society has transcended the racial divide. But wealth is a paramount indicator of social well-being. Wealthier families are better positioned to afford elite education, access capital to start a business, finance expensive medical procedures, reside in higher-amenity neighborhoods, exert political influence through campaign contributions, purchase better legal representation, leave a bequest, and withstand financial hardship resulting from an emergency.

The wealth gap is the most acute indicator of racial inequality. Based on data from the 2002 Survey of Income and Program Participation, white median household net worth is about $90,000; in contrast it is only about $8,000 for the median Latino household and a mere $6,000 for the median black household. The median Latino or black household would have to save nearly 100 percent of its income for at least three consecutive years to close the gap. Furthermore, 85 percent of black and Latino households have a net worth below the median white household. Regardless of age, household structure, education, occupation, or income, black households typically have less than a quarter of the wealth of otherwise comparable white households.

Since the election of Barack Obama, a growing belief has emerged that race is no longer a defining feature of one's life chances. But the extraordinary overlap between wealth and race puts a lie to the notion that America is now in a post-racial era. The smallest racial wealth gap exists for families in the third quartile of the income distribution where the typical black family has only 38 percent of the wealth of the typical white family. In the bottom income quartile -- the group containing the working poor -- a black family has a startlingly low 2 percent of the wealth of the typical white family.

Those who recognize the racial wealth gap but still embrace the idea of a post-racial America have crafted two explanations for this disparity. The first is that, in search of immediate gratification, blacks are less frugal when it comes to savings. Indeed, in an April lecture at Morehouse College, Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke attributed the racial wealth gap to a lack of "financial literacy" on the part of blacks, particularly with respect to savings behavior.

Such an explanation, however, is not the case. Economists ranging from Milton Friedman to Marjorie Galenson to the recently deceased founder of the Caucus of Black Economists, Marcus Alexis, found that, after accounting for household income, blacks historically have had a slightly higher savings rate than whites. In 2004, economists Maury Gittleman and Edward Wolff also found that blacks save at a moderately higher rate than do whites, again after adjusting for household income. This indicates even greater black frugality because many higher-income blacks offer more support to lower-income relatives than do whites, further reducing their resources to save.

The second explanation given to support the post-racial narrative is that inferior management of assets owned by blacks has resulted in lower portfolio returns. However, recent research finds no significant racial differences in asset appreciation rates for families with positive net worth.

Recessions disproportionately affect black and Latino families. During the 1999–2001 recession, median household wealth fell by 27 percent for both Latinos and blacks, while it grew by 2 percent for whites. The current recession likely will worsen the racial wealth gap. Although whites are more likely than blacks to own their home, the share of black wealth in the form of housing is nearly twice as large as the white share. And with blacks far more likely than whites to have been steered toward sub-prime loans in discriminatory credit markets, the foreclosure crisis is bound to have a more deleterious effect on black wealth than on white wealth.

For example, a recent report on mortgage lending and race by the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota found that black Twin City residents earning over $150,000, in comparison to whites earning below $40,000, were twice as likely to be denied a home loan. Those fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to get a loan were more than three times as likely to have a sub-prime loan.

Economic studies also demonstrate that inheritances, bequests, and intra-family transfers account for more of the racial wealth gap than any other demographic and socioeconomic factor, including education, income, and household structure. These intra-familial transfers, the primary source of wealth for most Americans with positive net worth, are transfers of blatant non-merit resources. Why do blacks have vastly fewer resources to leave to the next generation?

Apart from the national failure to endow ex-slaves with the promised 40 acres and a mule after the Civil War, blacks were deprived systematically of property, especially land, accumulated between 1880 and 1910 by government complicity and fraud as well as seizures by white terrorists. During the first three decades of the 20th century, white rioters destroyed prosperous black communities from Wilmington, North Carolina, to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Restrictive covenants, redlining, and general housing and lending discrimination also inhibited blacks from accumulating wealth.

Given the importance of intergenerational transfers of wealth and past and present barriers preventing black wealth accumulation, private action and market forces alone cannot close an unjust racial wealth gap -- public-sector intervention is necessary.

Indeed, the public sector already subsidizes asset acquisition. A 2004 report by the Corporation for Enterprise Development estimates that, even before the current financial crisis, the federal government allocated $335 billion of its 2003 budget in the form of tax subsidies and savings to promote asset development such as mortgage deductions. This excluded any corporate subsidies and tax savings and was more than 15 times the amount spent on education.

At issue is not the amount but the recipients. Those earning over $1 million a year received about one-third of the entire allocation, while the bottom 60 percent of earners received only 5 percent. Individuals in the bottom 20 percent typically received a measly $4.24 benefit. A more progressive distribution could be transformative for low-income Americans.

The surge in the post-racial perspective has moved us away from race-specific policies. However, wealth, given the racial disparity of its distribution, can be an effective non-race-based instrument to eliminate racial inequality. We could shift from an income-based to a wealth-based test for transfer programs. Policy eligibility based on net worth below the national median would qualify a large proportion of black households. Electronic financial records and publicly available home appraisals now make it easier to estimate net worth, and to avoid savings crowd-out, the program could be structured similarly to the Earned Income Tax Credit program, which uses a phase-out schedule to avoid work disincentives.

These changes in eligibility should be coupled with policies to promote asset building. For example, the American Dream Demonstration program uses individual development accounts to create match incentives for low-income savers. Another initiative, the Saving for Education, Entrepreneurship, and Downpayment, established children's development accounts (sometimes called "baby bonds") to create endowed trusts for children at birth. In the United Kingdom, since 2005, every newborn receives a trust ranging from 250 pounds to 500 pounds depending on familial resources.

In 2004, the American Saving for Personal Investment, Retirement, and Education (ASPIRE) Act was introduced in Congress to establish children's development accounts in the U.S. While the nation's first black president eschews race-specific policies, perhaps a strongly amended ASPIRE bill designed to progressively distribute funds based on familial net worth can be the policy that enables him to "bind ... [black America's] grievances ... to the larger aspirations of all Americans."

We envision a "baby bond" plan of much greater magnitude -- progressively rising to $50,000 or $60,000 for children in families in the lowest wealth quartile and accessible once the child turns 18 years of age. We also would determine eligibility for such a program based upon the net-worth position, rather than the income, of the child's family (all children whose family fell below the national median for wealth would receive baby bonds).

We should strive not for a race-neutral America but a race-fair America. For that to occur, the transmission of racial economic advantage or disadvantage across generations would have to cease. Public provision of a substantial trust fund for newborns from wealth-poor families would also go a long way toward achieving the ideal.

'Postracial' at Princeton

By Andrew Romano and Aku Ammah-Tagoe | NEWSWEEK

Published Apr 18, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Apr 27, 2009

Alexandra Kennedy was on the inside looking out. For much of the evening, streams of Polo-clad students had sped east across the Princeton campus, flooding Prospect Avenue and breaking in waves against the row of imposing mansions, called eating clubs, where most upperclassmen "take their meals"—and where nearly all undergrads go for their regular dose of dancing, drinking and hooking up. Now hundreds filled Ivy, the oldest of the clubs. Among them was Kennedy. After a season spent clamoring at the door for admission like the rest of the rabble, Kennedy, a svelte, self-assured African-American sophomore with straight, shoulder-length hair and a fondness for cable-knit sweaters, had recently emerged from Ivy's Darwinian "bicker" process—a prim rendition of rush—as one of the chosen few: a member of the club.

It was a natural next step in the Kennedy family story. Alex's father, Henry Kennedy Jr., the son of Southern blacks, arrived at Princeton in 1966 from a middling Washington, D.C., public school. Now his daughter had joined a club where all-black waiters had, until recently, served an all-white membership—a place where, as a guest, her own father had "felt very uncomfortable."

Still, change creates its own complications. As a bouncer restrained the hopefuls and '80s rock blared on the sound system, Kennedy resolved to put her new status to use. Tonight, she decided, she would reach across Ivy's intimidating threshold and distribute her share of admission passes to a select group of beneficiaries: "the black people." "I thought about it," she says. "I know how hard it is for African-Americans to feel welcome in these clubs." But as Kennedy ushered the first lucky recipients inside, a cold voice cut through the crowd. "I was literally on my knees signing passes," she recalls, "and this black girl waiting outside was like"—Kennedy adopts a deeper, mocking tone—" 'This club's racist. They're not letting us in because we're black'." She rolls her eyes. "And for me, I'm like, 'I am standing out here trying to get you in. This isn't a race thing. It's a pass thing'."

Two elite African-Americans on either side of a velvet rope: one feeling excluded, the other exhausted. Such is life on the cutting edge of "post-racial" America, where race isn't supposed to matter anymore. Except when it does.

Linked in the public consciousness to Barack Obama, the term "post-racial" has now expanded to encompass the era his election has ushered in. But in the real world, post-racialism is something of a mirage. Detroit is not post-racial. Neither is Congress, nor Wall Street, nor prime-time TV. Black people pretty much refuse to utter the word, Obama included. For most Americans, it's little more than a convenient cable-news catchphrase.

It's only at places like Princeton—selective, self-sufficient institutions that have spent many years (and millions of dollars) cultivating climate-controlled biospheres of diversity—that anything even remotely resembling a post-racial America is supposed to have taken shape. A quarter century ago, the future Michelle Obama, then a Princeton senior, confessed that her time as a Tiger had left her feeling "black first and a student second"—the result, she wrote, of "a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society … never becoming a full participant." But decades of progress have proved that prediction wrong, propelling Michelle to the White House and creating for her descendants a university that boasts 17 tenured black professors, an ambitious new Center for African American Studies and a black population larger and more integrated than the one she left behind. In 1981, 18 percent of her fellow freshmen were minorities. Last year that number hit 39 percent. Back then the university had perhaps 1,000 black alumni; now it's more like 4,000. At Princeton, the periphery has become the mainstream.

But living in a post-racial bubble—a place that expects everyone to have gotten over race—isn't as easy as it looks, especially if you happen to be black. Last month NEWSWEEK asked two of the first multigenerational African-American families to pass through Princeton—Henry Kennedy, '70, and Alex Kennedy, '09; Jerome Davis, '71, and Kamille Davis, '05—to map out, in miniature, how life on the front lines of racial progress has changed over the past four decades. The contrast was stark. The fathers—among the first generation of black students accepted into the upper echelons of society—arrived at a time of political unrest and, whether they engaged or retreated, drew strength from their common challenges. But their daughters—among the first African-Americans to enter Princeton with the same advantages as the most privileged of their white peers—have struggled to satisfy the competing demands of the black world they've inherited and the white world they inhabit. In the Age of Obama, the old battle lines may be disappearing. But in a certain sense, that's only made it harder for the next generation of black elites to know where they stand.

Jerome Davis's standing was never in doubt. On a Thursday night in October 1968, Davis's sophomore year, a student named Reginald Peniston called in a noise complaint against the raucous Rockefeller Suite, then accompanied police as they broke up the party. Unfortunately, Peniston was one of only about 60 black students on a campus of 3,300, while the "Rock Suite" boys, mostly football players, were white—and drunk. When Peniston left the dorm, a suite window swung open and a stream of urine rained on his head; the words "n––––r" and "black bastard" soon followed. Davis smiles as he recalls what happened next. By midnight, all the black men on campus had assembled; moments later they stormed the suite. "We … told them we would kick their f––king asses," says Davis.

The Princeton that welcomed Jerome Davis and Henry Kennedy in the late 1960s had spent much of its history on the wrong side of America's struggle with race. As the school's president from 1902 to 1910, Woodrow Wilson refused to admit blacks, informing African-American applicants by mail that "the whole temper and tradition of the place" made it "altogether inadvisable for a colored man to enter." It wasn't until 1947 that the university, forced to admit four blacks into its wartime ROTC program, became the last Ivy League school (and one of the last colleges in the North) to graduate an African-American. Even then, Princeton accepted few additional black students until Davis, Kennedy and their contemporaries arrived two decades later.

With fewer than 20 African-Americans per class, "fitting in" wasn't an option. (Each black student went by two names, says Davis, "so people would think there were more of us.") Instead, undergraduates like Davis and Kennedy gravitated toward one of two roles: activist or invisible man. Kennedy chose the latter. A D.C. native, he came to campus without "any expectations in terms of social life." But when his freshman roommate requested a room change to avoid living with a black student, Kennedy realized he wasn't entirely welcome. He coped by retreating into coursework. "My overwhelming sensation," he says, "was one of being 'different'."

In contrast, Davis channeled his "otherness" into political action. As leader of the Association of Black Collegians (ABC), he protested unfair university policies and assembled a mixed-race ticket for student government; it won with 60 percent of the vote. A popular figure on campus, Davis had white roommates and friends, and pursued issues that affected the entire student body. But his fondest memories involved a smaller core of black peers who partied together on weekends and all "agree[d] with the ABC's program." For Davis, the personal and the political were inextricable. "I simultaneously felt alienated from Princeton and deeply in love with it," he says.

Despite their differences, however, Davis, Kennedy and their peers were ultimately bound together by a common challenge: being "black first" in what Davis calls an "enormously white" world. At 6 a.m. on a cold March day in 1969, for example, "all but one of the black men who were currently at Princeton" participated in the takeover of a key campus building to protest the university's investments in South Africa—including Kennedy. Unthinkable today, that sense of solidarity would endure until long after Michelle Robinson (whose freshman roommate, like Kennedy's, demanded a room change) arrived on campus 12 years later. It would even become the subject of her senior thesis—a study that found, to her surprise, that black alumni identified more strongly with fellow African-Americans while at Princeton than before or after. As she recently told the school's alumni magazine, "it's a very isolating experience—period." That said, the experience seems to have been galvanizing as well. Kennedy became a university trustee and federal judge in Washington. Davis became a student-body president, Rhodes scholar, Yale Law alum and Columbia University administrator. And Michelle became first lady.

In most visible ways, race relations at Princeton have improved dramatically since the 1960s, '70s and '80s. While black students used to cluster together in self-defense, their children are active throughout the Princeton community. They room, dine and socialize with diverse groups of classmates. They even join eating clubs. But as racial polarization has declined on campus, a new dynamic has taken its place. And like their fathers, Kamille Davis and Alex Kennedy embody the two primary roles available to African-Americans in Princeton's post-racial bubble—and the confusing challenges they must now confront.

Kennedy is the insider—calm, cool, at ease. One of her earliest memories is the royal reception that greeted her at her father's 25th reunion: the daughter of "someone important," she remembers being treated like the "princess of Princeton." Then 7, she never considered another college, and when she finally arrived on campus after more than a decade at D.C.'s most prestigious private schools, she meshed effortlessly with her upper-crust peers. Soon she was declaring that she'd "love to be a CEO" and jetting to Acapulco for spring break. "I was so accepted partially because I was economically in a better situation," Kennedy says. "I was more relatable." While race may have been swept under the rug at Princeton, class, its not-so-distant cousin, still holds sway. So it's no wonder that Alex says she's been "more than included"—a black girl who "never ... felt like I was the 'black girl'."

But even now, being included can clash with being black. Asked how it felt to be called "racist" that night at Ivy, Kennedy stammers as she struggles not to offend either the students stuck outside the club or the ones huddled inside—then quickly seeks refuge in stats. "My year, we have seven [black members]," she says. "Seven is actually 10 percent of my class … so if 10 percent of the country's population is black, then OK, there you go." Ultimately, Kennedy believes the eating clubs are exclusive, not discriminatory: "a little intimidating" for black students, sure, but "also just intimidating for everyone." When pressed, however, she admits to grappling with occasional pangs of guilt. "There's still some stigma and some obstacles," she says. "I was particularly lucky. I don't think maybe all my black colleagues would have felt the same way." Having to please everyone as she defines herself in two worlds is a heavy load to shoulder, and most of the time Kennedy acts as if it isn't there. But it always is.

Half black, half Puerto Rican, Kamille Davis entered Princeton with the same advantages as Alex Kennedy—Princeton legacy, "mostly white" schools, no real racial barriers to overcome. But unlike Kennedy, she soon drifted away from the white mainstream. "Princeton was the first chance [Kamille] ever had to be around a lot of highly intelligent, broad-interest black kids," says her father, Jerome. "She definitely seized it." An active member of the Black Student Union, Davis spent much of her time volunteering at a local middle school, talking to kids about race, class and violence; she even joined an effort to establish an all-black eating club. As a result, she left Princeton with a social circle much smaller, and much blacker, than her father's, and even now, no one in her self-described "core group of seven [Princeton] friends" is white. Asked to explain why "it looked like all of her friends were black," as her dismayed dad recently put it, Davis emphasizes that Princeton has changed since the time when African-Americans "really had to bond together or [they] would be completely isolated." She's quick to characterize the BSU as "just another group of friends."

Still, there's a reason that Davis felt more connected to her black classmates than their white counterparts: at post-racial, meritocratic Princeton, it's often impossible to say where color ends and exclusivity begins. Like any other a cappella leader, she was upset when her group, Culturally Yours, was rejected from the "arch rotation"—a lineup of eight premier outfits selected to sing together under the school's ancient Gothic portals. Her girls had worked for weeks to perfect their harmonies. But unlike her fellow runners-up, Davis was forced to confront something deeper than disappointment—namely, the suspicion that "maybe it was race-motivated." After all, Davis thought, Culturally Yours is the only all-black, all-female group on campus. After struggling to decide whether to stay silent or risk backlash by protesting, she eventually sent the other a cappella presidents a message detailing the ways "we'd been kind of discriminated against." She received some sympathetic responses—but nothing changed. "It was such a stressful, almost kind of infuriating thing," she admits. It wasn't the last time Davis would feel out of place. In a seminar on discrimination and the law a year later, a white student suggested that Princeton settle the reparations dispute by forcing his fellow Caucasians to serve black classmates as "slaves for a day." Shocked, Davis spoke up, but her peers mistook her protest for hypersensitivity and kept laughing. In both cases, Davis quickly backed down. Even today, she says she feels guilty for complaining.

The problem is, she might've felt the same guilt if she hadn't. In a post-racial bubble, it's no longer the initial incident that makes being black uncomfortable; when everyone has "gotten over" race, any controversy can be easily explained away as a joke, or a misunderstanding, or ordinary, colorblind Ivy League exclusivity. But while Henry Kennedy and Jerome Davis had an outlet for their concerns, Alex and Kamille don't. Even worse, they have the uncomfortable burden of deciding whether they should even be concerned to begin with. As a result, they, like many young, elite African-Americans, can feel boxed in. When injustices do arise, there's pressure to brush them aside. To do otherwise would be to think too clearly in racial terms—to clash too openly with post-racial expectations. Ignoring them entirely, though, might look like a retreat from community obligations. Everyone's a loser and everyone shares the guilt.

There is, of course, no one "black experience." And Princeton hardly represents America at large. But despite its past, the institution and others like it have recently become surprising models for how post-racialism, if it ever arrives, will take shape.

It's clear from the collegiate careers of Alex Kennedy and Kamille Davis that the transition won't be trouble-free. But what's also clear is that this friction may have more to do with us than them. Lucky enough to have grown up as "princesses" in places where race was irrelevant, Kennedy and Davis have the luxury of no longer fighting their father's battles—or living in black and white. But while they see themselves as "students first," the rest of us are still catching up. Even now, we're tempted to typecast these women in stereotypical molds: Davis is defending her roots; Kennedy is retreating into an Ivy fortress. The opposite also has its appeal: Kennedy might seem more progressive; Davis, confined to her comfort zone. Ultimately, it's these conflicting expectations—and not an internal identity crisis—that make the post-racial life so disorienting for members of the new black elite.

Alex Kennedy hasn't tried to hand out passes since that spring evening at Ivy. Now a senior, she'll give them to anyone who asks, but standing outside every night would be impractical. More than that, it would be strange. There's no reason to spend her days helping black students she doesn't know. "In a sense it's privilege," she says. "But it's also just my life." As Kennedy sees it, she's simply asking to be judged for who, not what, she is. Will institutions like Princeton show us how to make that happen? Kennedy sighs. "I don't think," she says, "that we can move too much faster than the world."

With Brian No

Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/194592

The Assault on the Black Middle Class

Kai Wright | August 4, 2009

When my mom describes it all now--10 months after she walked away from her house of 14 years--she sounds sort of crazy to me. I make her explain again and again, because the depth of her denial about the situation she faced is hard for me to understand. But that's the thing about losing stuff. Whether it's your keys or your life savings, it's tough getting to that moment when you realize something's gone for good.

My mother, Carolyn White, and her husband, Earl, spent the first eight months of 2008 haggling with Countrywide Financial (now acquired by Bank of America), trying and failing to get their sub-prime loan modified into something they could pay. She and Earl, like so many other casualties of the sub-prime disaster, had refinanced their home to take out equity. Then the rate exploded, increasing their monthly payment by hundreds of dollars.

"It was like talking to a brick wall," she complains with a resigned if annoyed tone, which once rang with fury instead. Several months into the effort, when it became clear things weren't going to work out, they started looking for a rental. "Earl had gotten to the place where it didn't matter to him," my mom explains. "But I was fighting it tooth and nail to the end. Even when I was packing to move, I was thinking, 'Well, they're going to come up with something, and we can just unpack.'"

She'd already picked out a townhouse in her same neighborhood, on Indianapolis' solidly middle-class northwest side. She'd dutifully selected three favorites, actually, ranking them and putting in applications. Yet, she never expected to move. Even after they'd finally walked, my brother had to shout her down to keep her from going back and tidying up the property she'd abandoned. "I just couldn't see myself leaving my house," she says.

At age 63, she's starting over on her American dream. A rented townhouse. New, smaller furniture. Family photos edited down and re-hung. A few framed wildlife prints as reminders of the Wyoming retirement home that had once felt within reach. They're middle-aged grandparents and middle-class by all outward appearances. But they're facing life like a couple of hard-pressed newlyweds.

They're of course not alone. More than 10 percent of all mortgages were in default as 2008 ended. We logged more than 800,000 foreclosure filings in the first quarter of 2009, according to the Center for Responsible Lending, which projects 2.4 million this year.

These are big, daunting numbers with which we're all becoming drearily familiar. But less familiar is the fact that this carnage has disproportionately hit people of color, particularly those who were old enough to have built up some equity when the sub-prime boom exploded.

In 2006, African American borrowers at all income levels were three times as likely to be sold sub-prime loans than were their white counterparts, even those with comparable credit scores. The Pew Hispanic Center reports that 17.5 percent of whites took out sub-prime loans but that 44.9 percent of Hispanics and 52.5 percent of African Americans took out sub-prime loans. Blacks like my mom, who could qualify for conventional loans, were targeted for sub-prime ones, which generated higher fees for the lender and higher costs and risks for the borrower.

Many of the places hit hardest by the first foreclosure wave--south Florida, the urban Midwest, cities like Oakland, Phoenix, Atlanta, and Detroit--had dense pockets of black and Latino homeowners, where slowly accumulated equity could be stripped away in ill-conceived refinances. As a result, one in 10 black borrowers is expected to foreclose, compared to one in 25 whites. And a United for a Fair Economy study last year estimated that black and Latino borrowers will absorb at least $164 billion in losses, or about half the nation's overall foreclosure toll.

As devastating as those realities are in individual lives like my mom's, they also point to a broader, perhaps more lasting damage that's gone largely unexplored among policy-makers: The mortgage crisis has further deepened racial inequality in America and should finally reshape our understanding of the relationship between race and class.

***

Homeownership has been a crucial building block of middle-class wealth ever since Jefferson promoted land-tenure laws that favored freeholders and Lincoln signed the Homestead Act. Today, housing represents nearly two-thirds of all middle-class wealth. That reliance on real property always underscored the racial chasm, first in the agricultural era, when blacks were slaves and then sharecroppers rather than landowners, and then later when decades of lending bias created a massive racial disparity in homeownership rates. Before the housing boom, in the early 1990s, 69 percent of whites owned homes compared to just 44 percent of blacks and 42 percent of Latinos.

By 2004, the housing boom had improved those numbers. Fully three-quarters of white families owned homes, as did nearly half of both black and Latino families. As the homeownership picture improved, so too did the wealth picture, though at a glacial rate. The racial disparity in net worth is among the most astounding statistics in modern economics. For every dollar of wealth the median white family held back in 2002, similar black families had just 7 cents, while Latinos had just 9 cents. By 2007, black families had a dime for every dollar of white family wealth, and Hispanics, 12 cents. This was progress, if glacial.

Then came the bust. The housing boom proved to be just another trapdoor in a centuries-long game of Chutes and Ladders for black and brown strivers. By 2007, the black homeownership rate had plunged nearly three points, to 47 percent, a larger drop than among any other group, and is probably lower today. Worse, the damage is concentrated in what were once sturdy black middle-class neighborhoods. in 21st-century America--a society that boasts equality under the law, African American CEOs, and Barack Obama--the black middle-class story is widely understood as a congratulatory tale of uniquely American success. As Obama declared in his first words as president-elect, "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible … tonight is your answer."

Perhaps. It's clear that at all stages of life--from education to workplace to life expectancy--success still tracks closely with race. And the massive black underclass--nearly a quarter of all black households live in poverty, according to the Census Bureau--is proof of lasting structural inequality. But to truly understand the relationship between race and opportunity in modern America, you must take a real look at the seemingly vibrant black bourgeoisie.

Doing so means fundamentally changing the way we measure class. For years, scholars have primarily turned to one of three measures to identify the middle class: occupation, income, and educational achievement. If you're a professional or a manager, if your income falls in the middle 60 percent of the national bell curve, or if you've graduated college, you fit into one or another researcher's definition. And by any of those three measures, my mother's generation posted remarkable gains for people of color.

In 1960, as my mom was entering high school, around 750,000 blacks had middle-class jobs. By 1995, nearly 7 million blacks had such jobs. That's a growth of more than seven fold in one adult lifetime. And the explosion of college-educated blacks is equally impressive. As my mom was finishing college in 1967, just 4 percent of blacks over the age of 25 had matched her achievement; in 2007, 18.5 percent had done so.

Latinos born in the United States went from making up just 3 percent of middle-income adults in 1970 to 13 percent in 2006--the largest increase among any race or ethnic group. They also saw a 17 percent spike on the Pew Hispanic Center's income index, compared to just 6 percent for whites. The American middle-class may still be awfully white, but it's sure gotten some color in my mother's lifetime.

There are, of course, significant qualifiers to all of this. Most important, the gap between black and white rates of achievement in all three areas--occupation, income, and education--has not improved nearly as much as the absolute number of blacks meeting the given standard. But the conventional measures of middle-class status share a much more damning flaw. They all fail to consider the more nuanced characteristics of middle-class life that most everyday families would identify as their most prized treasures: long-term security, social stability, and the ability to pass both on to your kids in greater portions than you've enjoyed them.

These things aren't measured just by how much money you make or by what degree and job title you hold; they're measured by how much wealth you can draw upon when times get tough or an opportunity comes around, and how much you can pass along to give your kids a head start. The upper middle class helps its children with everything from college tuitions to down payments. That wealth cushion is built on financial savings and investments for some. For most, it's equity in a home.

***

The idea of viewing economic progress through the lens of wealth rather than income emerged in the mid-1980s. It allows researchers to calculate what's been called the "asset poverty line"--or being able to maintain a standard of living above the federal poverty level for at least three months without income. When you lose a job or get hit with a huge hospital bill or, well, get socked by a foreclosure, can you cushion the blow while getting a fresh start? Do you have strong enough bootstraps to pull yourself back up, as it were?

The answers are sobering. One in five families that were middle class in 2004 couldn't make it three months on assets alone, according to a Corporation for Economic Development analysis of Census data. In other words, when you look at wealth, the income-based poverty rate doubles. And that was before the housing bubble burst.

If you then apply a racial lens to these asset-based measures, the disparities are awesome. Roughly 40 percent of both blacks and Latinos lived below the asset poverty line in 2004. As pioneering sociologist Thomas Shapiro sums it up in a 2006 paper, "Two families with similar incomes but widely disparate wealth most likely do not share similar life trajectories."

The 2001 recession proves the point. Everybody gained some ground in the roaring 1990s, but not everybody took the subsequent slowdown the same. While the median white household emerged in 2002 with a modest 2 percent increase in net worth, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, Latinos lost more than 25 percent of their wealth between 1999 and 2001. People of color, Shapiro explains, burned through their meager assets and piled on extra debt to make it through the early-century tough times. Many likely got expensive, sub-prime refinances like the one my mom and Earl took out.

***

My mom won't let on about it now, but she always liked saying "my house." She was a renter from the time she and my father divorced back in the mid-1980s until she and Earl bought their house in 1994. I was away at college at the time, and whenever I visited Indy, she'd made some tinkering improvement. Even as she packed last summer, she gamed out how she'd pull up the living room carpet--it was too much to keep clean--and how she'd put in a backyard deck. "I had wanted that since we moved in," she says.

They bought the house for around $120,000, she says, with a fixed-rate, 30-year loan. It's the sort of mortgage that the GI bill and Federal Housing Administration spurred into existence back in the postwar years in order to broaden the American homeownership dream. And it's the sort of loan black families couldn't get for decades, due to banks' redlining of black neighborhoods. Epic fair-lending battles put an end to codified discrimination, and by the time my mom and Earl went looking for money to buy their home, they didn't have trouble finding it.

Nor did they have a problem in 1996, when they first took out some equity, in an effort to catch up on less-sensible debt. Their payments went up a bit, but they got the money out and paid some things off and, all things considered, were rolling along. They started vacationing out West, discovered their shared love of the peaceful dessert landscape, even bought a gas-guzzling RV to travel back and forth. They still subscribe to a Jackson Hole, Wyoming, newspaper.

The problems didn't start until they got a second refinance as the 2001 recession waned. Earl had hoped to use the equity to make some new investments, make their money grow in slow times. But a few years later, their rapidly inflating loan payments were eating their monthly budget. It was a steep, rapid decline from there to zero equity, re-accumulated debt, and a delayed retirement.

Their experience and those of millions of others point to a confounding irony that home equity has presented for efforts to close the racial wealth gap. On the one hand, because homeownership was key to 20th-century wealth, the huge racial disparity in ownership rates helped drive the disparity in wealth, too. On the other hand, the wealth blacks and Latinos have managed to accumulate is dangerously dependent on home equity alone, leaving them vulnerable in times like these. According to Shapiro and his research partner, Melvin Oliver, while homeownership accounts for 63 percent of average black net worth, it accounts for just 38.5 percent of average white net worth. We cannot afford the $1.19 trillion in American home equity taken out in refinances between 2003 and 2007.

***

If nothing else, the wealth perspective on economic progress challenges America's creation myth of hardworking pilgrims, self-made frontiersmen, and brass-balled industrialists. In reality, our middle class looks an awful lot like an aristocracy built on inherited middle-class advantage.

For his 2004 book, The Hidden Cost of Being African American, Shapiro culled through household survey data for the early 1990s--pre-sub-prime boom--and found this gem: Just about half of all white buyers said they got assistance from their parents to make a down payment, while just 12 percent of black buyers said the same. This matters. Put down more money, and you get more house, less debt, more wealth with which to start your life. In researching the book, Shapiro found the same pattern across the board on family finances: young black households were far more likely to spend resources helping out their parents and siblings, while young white ones were more likely to be receiving help from their parents.

This offers a key example of the way in which racial inequality is passed on from generation to generation--and has been shepherded along by government policy. It started with Reconstruction's failures and has tumbled forward generation after generation.

Black abolitionists viewed emancipation as more than the end of slavery; it was also to involve the creation of economic opportunity. The idea of "reparations" seems silly 150 years removed, but the nation faced a massive debate over land redistribution following the Civil War. As one freedman told a reporter, "Give us our land and we can take care of ourselves, but without land the old masters can hire us or starve us, as they please."

The administrations of first Abraham Lincoln and then Andrew Johnson, however, envisioned freed blacks as wage laborers, not landowners. When Johnson ordered Dixie's land returned to Southern planters in 1865--and thousands of freed slaves evicted--it solidified a governing perspective that would echo forward to the modern era: People of color would receive subsistence aid, but wealth-buttressing subsidies would be limited to whites.

The examples are myriad, as Meizhu Lui of the Insight Center for Community Economic Development points out in a recent paper. The Homestead Acts of the 1860s, for instance, took vast swaths of land from Native American tribes and gave it away in 160-acre plots to white settlers, to jump start the agricultural sector; for freedmen, land never materialized. More than a century later, 400 black farmers won a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Agriculture for its systematic racial bias in providing loans and other assistance to farmers throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Lo and behold, at the turn of the 21st-century, white Americans still held 97 percent of the nation's agricultural land value.

The New Deal programs that created today's middle class, meanwhile, are also directly responsible for today's wealth gap. Name a massive government investment, and you've got an initiative that explicitly or implicitly excluded people of color. By 1965, 98 percent of the 10 million homes public money had helped buy through loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration were owned by whites. Government then spent years more ignoring private lenders' redlining of black neighborhoods.

The proven racial bias in today's sub-prime lending, then, is more normative than exceptional. As Lui wrote in a March Washington Post op-ed, "The chips on the table reflect the fact that the game was fixed. It's time to start an honest game with a new deck."

So how do we do that? A black president aside, the feds aren't likely to hand out that 40 acres and a mule anytime soon.

Sadly, congressional Democrats and the White House have not yet shown enough political courage to merely stop the mounting foreclosure losses, never mind start building new wealth. They have repeatedly allowed the banking lobby to block any measure, such as loan modifications by a bankruptcy judge, that would give struggling borrowers enough leverage to demand a fair deal. And there's little evidence, thus far, that the billions in incentives President Obama has begun handing the mortgage industry will spur enough real mortgage modifications to keep pace with foreclosures.

Meanwhile, even before policy-makers figure out how to slow foreclosures, communities that have been overwhelmed by them--in abandoned houses, increased crime, falling home prices, and more--are going to need significant public investment. The $6 billion Congress has allocated in the past year for "neighborhood stabilization" is clearly a mere down payment and will need to be spent creatively.

But more broadly, at some point the public sector is going to have to make the same massive investment in wealth creation for people of color that it has made for generations of whites. In some cases, that means tweaking existing policies--the home-mortgage tax deduction, for instance, is currently useless to people who don't make enough to itemize. But it's also going to mean recreating big, bold initiatives like those that created the wealth gap in the first place.

Whatever the plan, it will not be a small endeavor. My mom's outlook these days reveals just how much ground has been lost--not just in dollars and cents but in the emotional toll millions of families have paid. She's traveled all the way from denial to resignation and now wants out of the maddening ownership conversation altogether. "If I don't get another house, I don't really care," she scoffs.

She's prepared to approach opportunity like generations of black folks before her--living on the money she makes, pooling family and community resources when that's not enough. So after retiring from 28 years of teaching grade school, she's gone back to the classroom as a teaching aide. "I won't say I'm happy," she concludes, "but I'm content with it." The real question, of course, is whether America is equally content with the legacy of inequality this housing meltdown has deepened. If not, are we prepared to finally confront it?

Kai Wright is a writer and editor in Brooklyn, NY, whose work explores the politics of sex, race, and health. He is author of Drifting Toward Love: Black, Brown, Gay and Coming of Age on the Streets of New York (Beacon Press). You can read more about his work at www.kaiwright.com.

Poor Neighborhoods Key in Income Difference, Study Finds

By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 27, 2009

Researchers have found that being raised in poor neighborhoods plays a major role in explaining why African American children from middle-income families are far more likely than white children to slip down the income ladder as adults.

The Pew Charitable Trusts Economic Mobility Project caused a stir two years ago by reporting that nearly half of African American children born to middle-class parents in the 1950s and '60s had fallen to a lower economic status as adults, a rate of downward mobility far higher than that for whites.

This week, Pew will release findings of a study that helps explain that economic fragility, pointing to the fact that middle-class blacks are far more likely than whites to live in high-poverty neighborhoods, which has a negative effect on even the better-off children raised there. The impact of neighborhoods is greater than other factors in children's backgrounds, Pew concludes.

Even as African Americans have made gains in wealth and income, the report found, black children and white children are often raised in starkly different environments. Two out of three black children born from 1985 through 2000 were raised in neighborhoods with at least a 20 percent poverty rate, compared with just 6 percent of white children, a disparity virtually unchanged from three decades prior.

Even middle-class black children have been more likely to grow up in poor neighborhoods: Half of black children born between 1955 and 1970 in families with incomes of $62,000 or higher in today's dollars grew up in high-poverty neighborhoods. But virtually no white middle-income children grew up in poor areas.

Using a study that has tracked more than 5,000 families since 1968, the Pew research found that no other factor, including parents' education, employment or marital status, was as important as neighborhood poverty in explaining why black children were so much more likely than whites to lose income as adults.

"We've known that neighborhood matters . . . but this does it in a new and powerful way," said John E. Morton, who directs Pew's economic policy unit. "Neighborhoods become a significant drag not just on the poor, but on those who would otherwise be stable."

Patrick Sharkey, the New York University sociologist who wrote the report, said researchers still need to pinpoint which factors in neighborhoods matter most, such as schools, crime or peer groups. But overall, he said, the impact of the contrasting surroundings for black and white children was indisputable.

"What surprises me is how dramatic the racial differences are in terms of the environments in which children are raised," he said. "There's this perception that after the civil rights period, families have been more able to seek out any neighborhood they choose, and that . . . the racial gap in neighborhoods would whittle away over time, and that hasn't happened."

The Pew researchers argue that the report buttresses President Obama's agenda, which includes proposals for "promise neighborhoods" that would replicate the Harlem Children's Zone, where an intensive array of investments -- beginning with prenatal care -- is meant to transform an entire area. Such an approach, Pew says, holds more promise than dispersing poor families into middle-class neighborhoods by giving them housing vouchers, a strategy that has had mixed results and could be difficult to implement on a large scale.

Sharkey and Morton said policymakers can take heart in one finding: Black children in neighborhoods in which poverty fell by 10 percent had higher incomes as adults than those who grew up in areas where the poverty rate stayed the same. This is a sign, they said, that simply improving the overall economy and quality of a given neighborhood can have beneficial effects on those growing up in it.

The report does not address whether middle-income blacks should move to low-poverty areas for the sake of their children's future prospects. It is a thorny question -- many middle-income blacks have remained in high-poverty areas partly because of segregated housing patterns. And if they were to move elsewhere, the poverty rates in the areas left behind would rise.

Ideally, said several scholars who read the report, investments in struggling neighborhoods would improve them to the extent that the middle-income families would not feel the need to leave.

"These findings do suggest that those with the means or resources should try to escape these neighborhoods," said Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson. "But . . . the exodus of middle-class families from poor black neighborhoods increases the adverse effects of concentrated poverty."

Obama Voices Regret to Policeman

By Michael A. Fletcher and Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 25, 2009

President Obama, attempting to quell a mushrooming racial controversy that threatened to eclipse his top domestic initiative, expressed regret Friday for saying that police "acted stupidly" by arresting black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home near Harvard University.

Making a surprise appearance before reporters at the White House, Obama said that he had unwittingly fanned smoldering racial resentment with his response to a question at a news conference Wednesday night. The president said he conveyed that sentiment in a five-minute telephone call to Sgt. James Crowley, the police officer who arrested Gates after being called to the Harvard professor's home to check out a suspected burglary.

"I want to make clear that in my choice of words I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically -- and I could have calibrated those words differently," Obama said. "And I told this to Sergeant Crowley."

The Wednesday comment had become politically costly for the nation's first African American president, who has sought to cast himself as a clear-eyed arbiter of the nation's racial divisions.

That image was challenged once before, in a controversy surrounding another Obama friend. When the racially charged sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. became a lightning rod, candidate Obama gave a rare speech that directly addressed the country's racial wounds, and he cast aside Wright, someone he had once called a father figure.

This week, as a growing clamor from conservative critics and police representatives painted Obama as siding with his friend Gates in a battle with the police in Cambridge, Mass., Obama moved swiftly to remove himself as a combatant.

The president said he continues to think the arrest was an "overreaction" by the officer, but he said Gates "probably overreacted as well."

"My sense is you've got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve the incident in the way that it should have been resolved," Obama said, adding that he hoped the controversy would become a "teachable moment" for improving racial understanding.

Though he tried to remove the bite from his earlier statement, Obama described an uneasy relationship between African Americans and law enforcement.

"Because of our history, because of the difficulties of the past, you know, African Americans are sensitive to these issues," said Obama, who sponsored legislation to track the racial breakdown of drivers stopped by police when he was an Illinois state senator. "And even when you've got a police officer who has a fine track record on racial sensitivity, interactions between police officers and the African American community can sometimes be fraught with misunderstanding."

But the president rejected the notion that, as Crowley said Thursday, he was wrong to take a position on the incident. Any president, he insisted, has a responsibility to contribute constructively to the discussion of racial discord, which he called "a troubling aspect of our society."

"There are some who say that as president I shouldn't have stepped into this at all because it's a local issue. I have to tell you that that part of it I disagree with," he said. "Whether I were black or white, I think that me commenting on this and hopefully contributing to constructive -- as opposed to negative -- understandings about the issue is part of my portfolio."

The controversy has become a lesson for Obama's young presidency, reminding him of the raw sensitivities surrounding race and its ability to distract. Determined not to let the issue distract from the discussion of health care, his top domestic priority, Obama moved within 48 hours from shrugging off the controversy surrounding his comments to coming before the cameras to recalibrate them.

From the moment the word "stupidly" slipped through Obama's lips Wednesday night, debate over Gates's arrest became a polarizing national issue. Obama's top advisers said the president quickly became aware that his words had been received in a way he had not intended.

"We all read the newspapers," said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Obama. "It was obvious from [Thursday] morning on that this discussion had taken on a life of its own."

The morning after the news conference, conservative blogs and police union representatives pummeled the president for not being more supportive of law enforcement. At first, the White House was publicly dismissive of the controversy.

In an interview with ABC News's "Nightline" on Thursday, Obama defended his words, saying that he was surprised at the controversy they had stirred. "I thought it was a pretty straightforward commentary that you probably don't need to handcuff a guy, a middle-aged guy who uses a cane, who's in his own home," he said.

On Thursday, just hours before Obama spoke to reporters, press secretary Robert Gibbs said the president had not made any attempt to talk to Gates, Crowley or anyone else involved in the case.

"If he realized how much of a overall distraction and obsession it would be, I think he would probably regret distracting you guys with obsessions," Gibbs said.

He added: "I think he's said what he's going to say on this."

Aides would not say what finally convinced Obama to revisit the issue.

Shortly after Gibbs's remarks, police officers in Cambridge denounced the president's statement and demanded an apology in a news conference carried live on cable news channels. Dennis O'Connor, president of the Cambridge Police Superior Officers Association, said the Cambridge police "deeply resent the implication" that race was a factor in the decision to take Gates into custody.

"The president used the right adjective but directed it to the wrong party," O'Connor said.

Axelrod hinted that the police news conference at least in part prompted Obama's remarks.

"We live in a dynamic world. You can see issues evolving and how they are evolving. He was well aware of that," Axelrod said. "His reaction is: 'You know what? Let's deal with it. Let's confront it.' "

It was not the first time that Obama has been forced to quell a public relations storm he created with comments that, in retrospect, seemed less than well considered. Early in his term, he said huge bonuses awarded to executives by companies that had taken bailout money were "shameful" and "the height of irresponsibility."

But when his words helped fuel a congressional effort that almost resulted in legislation banning bonuses, Obama quickly moved to tamp down the criticism.

In March, he drew criticism for jokingly invoking the Special Olympics in describing his bowling skills to Jay Leno on "The Tonight Show."

On Friday, Obama said he and Crowley had talked about "having a beer" at the White House with Gates. Later in the day, he called Gates and invited him to join them.

"I think the president is doing the right thing by trying to lower the temperature in this matter and trying to make sure that this leads to an opportunity for constructive dialogue," said Charles Ogletree, Gates's attorney and a friend and confidant to Obama.

Ogletree said: "I don't think that Skip drinks beer, but I think he would welcome the invitation."

Judge Says New York Is Unfair to Minority Firefighter Recruits

By DIANE CARDWELL

New York City used tests that discriminated against black and Hispanic applicants to the Fire Department and had little relation to firefighting, a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled on Wednesday, dealing a blow to the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

“These examinations unfairly excluded hundreds of qualified people of color from the opportunity to serve as New York City firefighters,” wrote Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, referring to two tests administered in 1999 and 2002.

The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department in 2007 after a federal complaint by the Vulcan Society, an association of black firefighters, led to an investigation into the Fire Department’s hiring practices.

The judge said he would determine later what remedies to require of the city. They could include payment of lost wages, retroactive seniority for some minority employees and affirmative action hiring. Noting that the court had ruled against the city in past decades in lawsuits brought over its hiring practices, Judge Garaufis wrote that even as the city’s black and Hispanic population had increased, “the overwhelmingly monochromatic composition of the F.D.N.Y. has stubbornly persisted.”

Like firefighting forces in several other big cities, New York’s has remained disproportionately white, despite pressures and efforts to diversify. According to the city’s Law Department, at the end of May, roughly 3 percent of the 11,529 firefighters were black, and about 6 percent were Hispanic. Federal census estimates put each group at roughly 27 percent of the city’s population.

“If there was any doubt that the city did have problems with its hiring process, it’s now been decided that in fact they do,” said Darius Charney of the Center for Constitutional Rights, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs. “Now it’s hard for them to argue that they in fact are not discriminating.”

But city lawyers argue that the suit covers only tests no longer in use, and that their recent efforts to integrate the department are bearing fruit.

“Through extensive and persistent outreach, the F.D.N.Y. increased the number of minorities who took and passed the firefighter exams,” Georgia Pestana, chief of the Law Department’s labor and employment division, said in a statement.

Since the city began administering a new test in January 2007, the statement noted, racial minorities now comprise 38 percent of the candidates on the passing list; 33 percent of the top 4,000 on that list, who are most likely to be offered a job; and a third of the most recent graduating class of probationary firefighters.

It is unclear how a recent United States Supreme Court decision in a case from New Haven will shape efforts to determine a remedy. In that case, the court found that white firefighters who scored well on a promotional exam on which black firefighters had fared poorly were subjected to racial discrimination when the city threw out the results. Additionally, the court found that the possibility of a lawsuit from minority firefighters was not enough to justify ignoring the test results. That will make it harder for employers to discard results in the future, even if they have a disproportionately negative effect on members of a given racial group.

Last week, when Mr. Bloomberg testified at Senate confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee — who had joined a federal appeals court decision on the New Haven case that the Supreme Court ruling reversed — he volunteered his thoughts, saying that he disagreed with New Haven’s approach.

“I really do believe that that’s a better way to solve the diversity problem, which does affect an awful lot of fire departments around this country,” he said, “rather than throwing out tests and thereby penalizing those who passed the test.”

Judge Garaufis addressed the Supreme Court decision in his ruling, arguing that the New Haven case did not raise the legal question that the New York case did: whether the city’s use of the exams “actually had a disparate impact upon black and Hispanic applicants for positions as entry-level firefighters.”

Lawyers for the city did not say whether they would appeal the decision or seek a settlement, but if the ruling holds, the city could end up paying tens of millions of dollars, Mr. Charney said. The administration faces another phase in the suit to determine whether the discrimination was intentional, which could open the door to paying damages.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said they hoped that the city would negotiate, and take the opportunity to diversify the force.

“I think this has the potential to very quickly change the demographics of the Fire Department, which has been something that’s been a long time coming,” said Dana Lossia, a lawyer for the Vulcan Society. “Really what this decision says is, the exams you were using don’t pick the best-qualified people. What they really don’t do is pick the people who would best protect the city.”

Minority Turnout Was Critical to Obama's Election, Data Show

By CONOR DOUGHERTY

Census Bureau data released Monday show the extent to which strong minority-voter turnout in the 2008 election helped President Barack Obama win over swing states and make inroads into Republican strongholds.

About five million more people voted for president in November than four years earlier, with minorities accounting for almost the entire increase. About two million more black and Hispanic voters and 600,000 additional Asians went to the polls.

While the figures reflect a long-term demographic shift, they also attest to the success of the Democrats' extensive campaign to register their supporters and get them to the polls. Overall, the 64% turnout was unchanged from four years earlier.

The data also show an increase in turnout by young voters. Those between 18 and 24 had a 49% turnout rate, up from 47% in 2004 -- the only age group to see a statistically significant jump at the polls.

Strong minority support helped Mr. Obama's campaign win swing states such as Ohio and pick off Republican redoubts including Virginia, Nevada and Indiana, according to an analysis of poll and Census data by William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution who blended the Census data on voter turnout with poll data from Voter News Service.

The data are the latest to highlight the demographic conundrum facing the Republican Party, which in 2008 lost several red states to Mr. Obama largely because it couldn't compete among minority voters. This demographic challenge isn't going away, as non-Hispanic whites are expected to account for less than 50% of the U.S. population by 2042.

To be sure, Mr. Obama's victory also relied on white voters: In 19 states including California, New York and Massachusetts, a majority of white voters cast ballots for Mr. Obama.

"Democrats are getting the growing parts of the population: Young people, minorities and states people are moving to," Mr. Frey said.

Mr. Frey cautioned that while the long-term demographic changes favor any candidate that can best harness minority voters, Mr. Obama's success in 2008 doesn't mean an easy road to victory awaits him in 2012. Whites accounted for 76% of voters in 2008, down three percentage points from 2004 but still a substantial majority. His rival, Sen. John McCain, won white voters by 12 percentage points, versus the 17 percentage-point margin enjoyed by George W. Bush in 2004. A Republican candidate who could capture a larger share of whites could neutralize the minority edge that went to Mr. Obama.

"President Obama can continue that momentum only if he continues to hold onto minorities and also hold Republicans at bay among white voters," Mr. Frey said.

Mr. Frey found minority voters made the difference in several key states: North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Nevada, Ohio, Indiana, Maryland and New Jersey. Mr. Obama's ability to win over minorities there overcame white voters who favored John McCain.

Write to Conor Dougherty at conor.dougherty@wsj.com

Harvard Scholar Henry Louis Gates Arrested

By Krissah Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation's most prominent African American scholars, was arrested last week at his home near Harvard University after trying to force open the locked front door.

According to a report by the police department in Cambridge, Mass., Gates accused police officers at the scene of being racist and said repeatedly, "This is what happens to black men in America." The incident was first reported by the Harvard Crimson.

Gates, the director of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Studies, has been away from his home much of the summer while working on a documentary called "Faces of America," said Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor and friend of Gates who is working as his lawyer. Gates returned from China last week and had trouble opening the front door with his key.

Gates, 58, was arrested Thursday by police looking into a possible break-in for disorderly conduct "after exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior" at his home, according to the police report. Officers said they tried to calm down Gates, who responded, "You don't know who you're messing with," according to the police report.

Ogletree said Gates was ordered to step out of his home. He refused and was followed inside by a police officer. After showing the officer his driver's license, which includes his address, Ogletree said Gates asked: "Why are you doing this? Is it because I'm a black man and you're a white officer? I don't understand why you don't believe this is my house." Ogletree said Gates was then arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and racial harassment.

Gates did not return calls to his office Monday, and the police department would provide no further details on the arrest. He was released four hours later, and arraignment has been scheduled for Aug. 26, but Ogletree said they hope to resolve the case sooner.

Gates is resting on Martha's Vineyard, according to Ogletree, and will soon resume traveling. He is scheduled to interview cellist Yo-Yo Ma, whose genealogy he was researching in China.

Gates, is a founder of the Root (http://www.theroot.com), a Web site owned by The Washington Post Co. He is also host and co-producer of "African American Lives," a Public Broadcasting Service show in which he uses genealogical resources and DNA testing to trace the family lineages of prominent black Americans. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1981 and was among Time magazine's "25 Most Influential Americans" in 1997.

Gates's arrest points to broader racial disparities in the criminal justice system, said Ryan S. King, a policy analyst at the Sentencing Project, a think tank that researches incarceration rates.

"If you look at every stage of the criminal justice system from initial police contact all the way through sentencing and incarceration, you see that African Americans are disproportionately impacted by each stage," King said. "What we ultimately see as disparate incarceration rates are contributed to by all of these factors."

As news of the arrest spread Monday from Harvard into broader academic circles, one professor who follows Gates's work said the arrest was both "not surprising" and "disheartening."

"I felt bad that I would hear about something like this happening, especially to someone as recognizable and distinguished as [Gates], but in the academy we still sometimes encounter that. I've been in situations where I encounter people who don't believe I'm a college professor," said Jelani Cobb, an associate professor of history at Spelman College in Atlanta. "We have obvious signs of progress, but we're not there."