Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 20 July 2000 — Page 27

The Muncie Times, June 15, 2000, page 27

TO BE EQUAL Despite hardship, black Americans remain resilient, optimistic

“On Edge But Optimistic, Blacks Offer Complex Views in Poll.” So read the headline of the June 28 story in The New York Times about the important survey of black New York City residents just released by our affiliate, the New York Urban League. Make no mistake about it. Although only black New York City residents were polled, this survey, “The State of Black New York,” is of profound national importance. It shreds some myths about blacks that are widely bruited about— always, of course, with no hard data to back up the assertions. It provides some astonishing statistics about how deep and how high the various impacts of bias reach into the black community. It simultaneously issues a warning about the severity of some of the concerns black America has, and offers an easilyunderstood blueprint for how we all can set about resolving them. And it re-affirms an ageold truth about the idealism of the African American spirit. In broad outline, many of the survey’s findings echo those of numerous other surveys. But “The state of Black New York’s” findings may carry even more weight and resonance because of the extraordinary diversity of the survey field. Just over 54

percent of those questioned were U. S.born African Americans. The rest came from all over the African Dispora—from the many nations of black Africa and the Caribbean, from South and Central America, and from Europe. Thus, the New York Urban League survey polled the residents of the greatest melting pot of the African Dispora in the world, says Dennis M. Walcott, my colleague and president of the New York Urban League. For example, the survey found that despite the economic good times, significant numbers of black New Yorkers are worried about the unemployment haunting their communities and their own families. Nearly two-thirds say that blacks are routinely denied equal wages on the job because of racial discrimination, and nearly 75 percent say blacks are unfairly passed over for deserved promotions. More than four or five blacks maintain that affirmative action is necessary in the workplace and schools and colleges, a view that is held most strongly by those blacks who are most affluent. All economic classes of blacks express a deep mistrust of law enforcement agencies. Nearly two-thirds of black

males and more than half of black females said they worry that they will be subjected to police brutality; 89 percent of those surveyed said it was a serious problem, including 96 percent of those with annual incomes above $75,000. But blacks are far from being anti-police. Indeed, the survey indicates that black New Yorkers are strongly in favor of good, effective police: 49 percent said the greatest change needed to improve their personal quality of life would be the assurance of safer streets at night. And yet, the strain of determined optimism among those polled— about the improvement in their own quality of life, including their continued employment — is strong. Walcott said one source of the optimism clearly is that blacks are anchored by their religious faith. Nearly 79 percent said their religion was extremely or very important in their lives. “The State of Black New York” poll comes at an important moment. Soon, the Democratic and Republican political conventions will take place. And so, too, will the National Urban League’s annual national Conference, to be held in New York City itself at the end of July. In one significant sense,

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Hugh B Price

the complexity of perspective and thought — and the unanimity across the lines of class, income, occupation, and educational attainment—is nothing new. It is a characterization that was as true of black America 30 year ago, 50 years ago, a century ago. But it does show for our own time that, as great and cheering as the progress African Americans have made during the last 30 years, great barriers remain to blacks being fully included in the American mainstream. On the one hand, the great problem for America is that these problems continue to stoke a great anger in all classes of black Americans. That is why black America remains, as it has always been, “on edge.” And yet, the great hope for America is that the spirit of the resilient, determined optimism and an allegiance to democratic ideals, continues to inspire black

Americans to, as an old*' popular saying put it, “keep on keepin’ on.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. characterized that spirit more formally and eloquently in his 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech when, after articulating some of his hopes, he delcared that “With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope, [and]...transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.” The New York Urban League’s survey plumbing the feeling of black New Yorkers shows that, despite the problems that still beset America, that faith among African Americans remains vibrantly alive.

Hugh B. Price is president of the National Urban League based in New York City.