1 When hope dies, its heirs are desperation and despair. A decade has passed since Dr. James B. Conant first warned of the "social dynamite" planted in our cities by the enforced idleness and empty expectations of hundreds of thousands of young people. By now, Conant's "hundreds of thousands" of the workless without hope have multiplied; in the hot summers the dynamite frequently explodes: and his warning has not yet been heeded. oper. Another summer is upon us. The schools are closing but the streets are At the height of this country's economic boom in 1969, more than one * Since 1969, the softening economy has led to a serious deterioration in the overall employment situation. But its effect on black youths has been a disaster. There are about 1.2 million black teenagers and 1.3 million blacks between the ages of twenty and twenty-four in metropolitan areas with over 250,000 population. * As against a white adult unemployment rate of 5 per cent in March, 1971, the overall rate of For black adults between in the poverty areas it was 41.2 per cent. cent. Even so, the official figures do not portray the extent of the problem. merators. At the very least, 100,000 young black people - a most have given up hope and have stopped looking 2 for jobs. * A step above the dropouts from the labor market and the unemployed are those who have found jobs. But for many the step leads no higher. Their jobs provide fewer hours of work than those of whites, less pay, little permanence and fewer prospects for advancement. Delayed, in some instances, but not in the end denied, they have not escaped the frustration of a dead-end work life. * Compounding the hardships of slack in the job market and the handicap of race is the sex disadvantage with which black women must contend. They are held back by multiple layers of discrimination. The highest unemployment rates of any group are those for black female teenagers in low income areas of central cities. Their unemployment rate in * recent years has seldom been below 33 per cent and is often as high as 50 per cent. A growing minority of black youth now have the preparation to enter and complete junior or senior college or to acquire a manual or technical skill that can aid them in a job search. But they too continue to face major discrimination in the world of work, which takes its toll by forcing them to accept jobs at lower incomes, with less opportunity for advancement than the jobs for which they are qualified. * While many black youths in urban ghettos are on tracks that do not lead into society's mainstream of legitimate gainful activity, their rural brothers in the farmlands and small towns of the South have even fewer employment prospects. * After Dr. Conant's warning, two factors decelerated but did not negate the growth of black youth unemployment. One was the economic expansion of 1961-69, the longest in our history, which generated an average 3 * of 1.5 million new jobs each year. The other was the expansion of the armed services which drew more than a million additional young men, many black, out of the labor force. But the moderating influence of these factors no longer exists. Now, opposite trends are at work. The urgent problem of race in a surplus and discriminatory labor market Teenagers among blacks and other minority groups will increase from about 2.1 million in 1970 to 2.6 million in 1980 a gain of 24 per cent. Among young adult blacks aged twenty to twenty-four, the projections show an in - crease from under 2.2 million to about 3 million cent. - a gain of 36 per Only at the gravest peril to our society can the American people continue to ignore the growing frustration, despair and hostility that characterize more and more young black people. After a childhood and adolescence stunted by deprivation, rejection and neglect, these young people want the opportunity to support themselves and live useful lives. But, as the reports of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other government agencies 4 underscore, many desirable training and employment opportunities remain closed to black youth. Many black young people have grown up in households with only one natural parent. They have lived in slum housing in slum neighborhoods where violence and crime are commonplace. They have attended schools where teachers do not teach them, where the curriculum is irrelevant and where there are no performance standards. The family that should have nurtured them, the school that should have instructed them, the community that should have opened opportunities for them, the democratic society whose professed faith should have encouraged them all have failed. They reach adulthood with - one basic achievement not to be despised: they have survived their environ ment. -- or worse - What they most need is a second chance to find themselves, to fit into a society which, through neglect has seriously handicapped them. If there are walls they cannot scale that keep them out of jobs or confine them to the drudgery of ill-paid dead-end work, then they are doomed to live permanently as marginal workers, to exist forever on welfare, to dwell in the twilight zone of illegal employment or to exist as criminals in and out of prison. A society that turns its back on them invites only the enmity of the young and puts its own future in grave jeopardy. To be black in a society that is only slowly shedding its racist past is a handicap. To be poor in a society where the important developmental opportunities that parents provide for their children depend on money is a handicap. To be female in a society that continues to treat girls and women as inferiors is a handicap. As if the lack of social justice was not enough, the disequality creates a malignancy that puts at risk the established social order. 5 The American people have not been willing to respond to the RandolphRustin Freedom Budget of some years ago that called for investing $100 billion over ten years to rebuild the ghetto areas and to relocate the adults and children who were trapped in them. Instead, there is now another modest federal gesture acknowledging that the hot summer approaches. In early spring, the President requested a supplemental appropriation of $64.3 million for summer jobs for 514,000 young people. $105,0 Congress, at the end of May, voted million for 609,000 jobs. About 40 per cent of the young people who will get summer jobs under this program will be black or other minority youth in low income areas of our large cities. While these young people will get a little work experience and a few may even acquire modest skills on these summer jobs, most of them will profit primarily from the approximately $350 that they can earn if they work the entire summer, giving them and their families a little extra cash. This annual pattern of pseudo-resolution of the crisis is now well established. The President, the Congress and the American people hope that with money in their pockets the summer workers will not take to rioting. But large numbers of black youths will be left without jobs and income; the private sector is not able to come even close to meeting the needs of those who will not be federally employed. II The absence of desirable employment and career opportunities for large numbers of black youths is a failure that our society must correct without delay. There is urgent need for constructive action because of the widening gap between the expectations of black youth for full participation in American society and the realities of their continued exclusion, deprivation and discrimination. Over the longer term, the American people must address them |