Decade of Progress

"A remarkable development has taken place in America over the last dozen years: for the first time in the history of the republic, truly large and growing numbers of American blacks have been moving into the middle class, so that by now these numbers can reasonably be said to add up to a majority of black Americans--a slender majority, but a majority nevertheless."

That is the provocative thesis of a powerfully argued essay, "Black Progress and Liberal Rhetoric," by Ben Wattenberg and Richard Scammon, that appears in the April issue of Commentary. Presenting a wealth of data, the authors claim that 52% of the nation's black families have by now entered the middle class--a change that is "nothing short of revolutionary."

The article has already stirred opposition from civil rights leaders and others, who charge that it does not sufficiently emphasize that huge numbers of blacks are still in poverty. Critics also contend that the essay relies too heavily on U.S. Census figures, which, they say, tend to underestimate the number of poor blacks in the ghettos.

Census statistics, however, are as reliable as any, and Wattenberg and Scammon are thoroughly at home with them. Wattenberg was an adviser to President Johnson; Scammon, who now heads the privately operated Elections Research Center in Washington, directed the U.S. Bureau of the Census for four years. They collaborated on one of the most influential books of recent years, The Real Majority, which noted that the bulk of the electorate is "unpoor, unyoung and unblack."

During the 1960s, the authors write, income for black families rose 99.6%,* while income for white families increased 69%. In the North and West, young black married couples showed even more striking gains. Where the head of the household was under 35, median income rose from 78% of white income in 1959 to 96% in 1970. Almost one-third of the nation's black families now earn more than $10,000 a year.

Also during the '60s, the number of blacks in low-paying jobs--in private households, in the service trades and on farms--declined from 4,000,000 to 3.5 million. The number who held generally better-paying jobs jumped from 4,000,000 to 5.1 million. The jobless rate for married black men over 20 declined more sharply than it did for the U.S. population as a whole. As in the case of whites, the authors say, at least 95 out of 100 black married men are at work.

The surge into the middle class is evident in education as well. In 1960 slightly more than a third of all young black men finished four years of high school. By the end of the decade more than half were graduating. Black women did even better, with 41% graduating from high school in 1961 and 61% in 1971. College enrollment also climbed. Ten percent of blacks aged 18 to 24 were attending college in 1965. Six years later, 18% were enrolled.

Overshadowing this achievement in the public mind is the rapid increase in the number of blacks on welfare, up from 1.3 million in 1960 to 4.8 million in 1971. Yet the percentage of blacks below the poverty line plunged from 48% to 29%. Thus blacks hardly became poorer during the decade. The needy simply sought public assistance in far greater numbers--and got it. Increased welfare rolls were an indication that society was showing more concern for the poor, not that the poor were growing in number. The appallingly high black crime rate also creates a false impression, say Wattenberg and Scammon. Most of the violent crime is committed in the slums that upwardly mobile blacks have deserted for better neighborhoods. Without the stabilizing influence of working families, ghettos tend to disintegrate. Unhappy as this situation is, it is part of the price paid for progress. Write the authors: "It would be merely demagogic to pretend that the progress of any group of people can be accomplished all at once and without class fragmentation."

Wattenberg and Scammon give American liberalism much of the credit for improvements in black life. "Something did indeed happen in the 1960s: the logjam broke--politically, socially, legally, economically, even spiritually--and there is no going back." They may underrate the role of the decade's booming economy, which made life better for everyone. But they wisely take issue with the apocalyptic view of some liberals that life is inevitably becoming worse for blacks. As long as blacks are portrayed as "stereotyped examples of human misery and degradation," they write, whites will scarcely want to welcome them into their neighborhoods, places of work or hearts. "It makes eminent sense, on the other hand, to demand of white middle-class Americans that they extend a fair and equal chance to those who, like them, earned their way into the middle class, as well as to all those millions who stand ready to do so once given the chance."

*The Census Bureau statistics refer to "Negroes and other races." Since Negroes constitute 90% of this category, Wattenberg and Scammon believe that the figures are reliable.

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