Black Injustice: The Downside of Race in America

Ethnicity and minority groups and their lifestyles are among the most elaborate issues facing American society. Of these issues, black society is one of the most far-reaching. All too often, we hear of black people in poverty, crime and other societal issues. Even hip-hop - a predominately black music and lifestyle culture focusing on what is often called 'bling-bling' and encompassing much of modern rap music - glorifies the all-too-common plight of black society on a frequent basis. So just what is happening with black society?

First, there is the issue of poverty. As a large number of African Americans are either in or close to poverty, this is a serious issue facing black society. Moreover, with the recent chaos in the Southeast this past hurricane season, this is as serious as ever. According to BusinessWeek, the 2000 census showed the Caucasian population in the city of New Orleans as having an average income of $31,971 while blacks had just $11,332 for theirs. However, this is likely higher - and far worse - for these people after Hurricane Katrina. Add to that those people who have lost their homes to the storm and you have a real mess. "The full tally of Katrina's dead," says journalist Mark Naison, "...will no doubt confirm what the television images of rescue operations revealed: that the greatest suffering and loss of life occurred among Louisiana and Mississippi's black poor" (BusinesWeek, 2005).

It is not all that much better around the rest of the nation. Around the United States, well-educated African Americans "have been integrated into the American mainstream: they went to college, got good jobs, have healthy incomes. But at the subcollege-educated level, blacks are not doing so well; and the further we go beneath that level, the worse their situation becomes relative to the rest of the population." This is especially true at the lowest level of black society, or "the black 'underclass,'" where we find ourselves "in a world that is actually worse off in many ways - in terms of crime, violence, substance abuse, broken families, out-of-wedlock briths" and so forth.

As much as poverty is a detriment to black society, crime and violence only serve to make a bad situation worse. Blacks may carry out crimes, or other ethnic groups may carry out hate crimes against their darker-skinned neighbors. Statistics have shown that "blacks commit more crime than whites." In fact, "Most violent crime in our country is committed by blacks. According to U.S. Department of Justice statistics, blacks commit 54% of murders, 42% of forcible rapes, 59% of robberies and 38% of aggravated assaults. For the most part, the victims are black. Ninety-three per cent of murdered blacks were murdered by a black " (America in Black and White, 1997).

However, poverty is not the deciding factor that leads black people to crime. In fact, crime "is a major problem [for blacks] and lies at the heart of other major problems faced by blacks. High crime translates into low rates of business formation in black neighborhoods. That translates into fewer resident employment and shopping opportunities. Unsafe schools compromise black education; it creates incentives for the best teachers and students to go elsewhere. Crime drives upwardly mobile residents out, and the neighborhood loses stabilizing influences".

Crime and poverty have degraded black society into a quagmire of racial discontent, violence and terror against each other, but it should not be this way. It seems, in fact, that we can best describe the problem by admitting that we have forgotten the message of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who envisioned a world where black people would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" (I Have a Dream, 1963). Perhaps we should all reintroduce ourselves to that vision.

"A dream deferred: Martin Luther King's legacy betrayed." Commonweal, January 27, 1995 "High black crime rate? We didn't plant IRA bombs." New Statesman, February 5, 1999 "I Have a Dream" August 28, 1963: http://www.mecca.org/%7Ecrights/dream.html "Black Poverty's Human Face" Business Week, September 19, 2005 "America in Black and White" October 31, 1997