The Underclass: Enduring Dilemma

Anybody who looks at a slum knows that not all blacks have made impressive economic and social advances, that huge numbers are weighed down by weariness and desolation. Indeed the nation's 24 million blacks are split into three groups of roughly equal size. Almost one-third have family incomes of $10,000 or more and enjoy many of the amenities of middle-class status. Another one-third, earning between $4,500 and $10,000, are either on the lower edges of the middle class or stand a fair chance of lifting themselves into it. Beneath them lies still another group: the one-third of black America that struggles by on less than $4,500 a year and makes up the troubled underclass. In recent years the underclass has made some economic and social gains, but its progress has been fitful.

Measured by the Government's official classification of poverty, the size of the underclass shrank fairly steadily since the Depression but reached a hard-to-penetrate floor several years ago. In the early 1960s, for example, just over half of all blacks were below the poverty line; the figure declined to about one-third of all blacks in 1969 and has hovered there ever since. In 1972, 33% of America's black families fell below the poverty line. (The current poverty line, recently revised upward from $4,275 due to a rise in the consumer price index, is an income of $4,500 for a nonfarm family of four.) Inflation has hurt the black poor particularly cruelly because they have to spend a larger percentage of their income for food and shelter than middle-income people do, and prices for these basics have been spiraling. A Congressional Joint Economic Committee study concludes that last year people in the poverty category suffered about one-third more inflation than middle-and upper-income earners.

After some encouraging gains in the early 1970s the job situation for poor blacks has lately turned worse. Historically, the ratio of black unemployment to white unemployment has been 2 to 1. That ratio declined in 1970 and 1971 when an expansive economy, coupled with pressure for equal opportunity, provided openings for a larger number of black workers. But when the economy soured last year, the old 2-to-1 ratio reappeared. The current unemployment rates are 9.5% for blacks and 4.7% for whites. One-third of black teen-agers are jobless, which is more than double the rate for white teenagers.

Just over 50% of black workers are unskilled or semiskilled, and need for them is declining as technology advances. Less than 40% of the U.S. labor force holds such jobs today; more than 25% of all jobs are professional and managerial. This means there are great opportunities for educated, middle-class blacks, but severely narrow options for the underclass.

The Government's costly programs to train unskilled blacks and other hard-core unemployed had mixed results, and these efforts have been cut back. Six years ago, almost half of the people enrolled in the programs were black; today only one-third of the trainees are black. One reason is that many in the underclass have become discouraged with the programs. The Labor Department reports that 160,000 blacks are no longer even bothering to look for work because of what it calls "discouragement over job prospects." Says Robert S. Browne, director of the Black Economic Research Center based in Harlem: "I look out my window and see streets lined with people looking hopeless. Unfortunately, I think that that group is growing larger."

About 5 million blacks collect some form of public welfare payments. The number of black families receiving aid for dependent children rose from 737,000 in 1969 to 1,093,000 in 1971. The total of black families headed by women has also increased. Seven years ago, 27.7% of poor black families were in this category; last year the figure had jumped to 34.5%.

The black underclass has scored some surprising gains in housing. The Department of Housing and Urban Development reports sharp declines since 1960 in both overcrowding in black ghetto housing and in the number of houses and apartments without complete plumbing.

There are also some brighter signs in education. Though reading scores in ghetto elementary schools remain 15 to 19 points below the national norm, test scores in New York City show that the decline has been at least temporarily arrested in the past year. Since 1967 the percentage of black ghetto males who drop out of high school has fallen from 24% to 18%. To its credit, the Nixon Administration since 1969 has more than doubled federal aid to black colleges, to $242 million this year.

There has been virtually no change in that most emotional issue in racial relations: the high level of black crime. In 1968 and again in 1972, blacks were arrested for 27.5% of all crimes. Some decline was registered in the rate of arrests for crimes against property--burglary, larceny, auto theft. But, distressingly, there was a slight rise in the arrest rate for aggravated assault, forcible rape and murder. Thus the ghettos continue to bear a disquieting resemblance to battlefields.

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