My city’s Urban League this week released its first “State of the City” report in a decade. There is the usual listing of black-white disparities and the continuing concern that the white community is not doing enough to help. But there is something new this year, a hint that perhaps blacks share in responsibility for their individual situation, good or bad.
First, though, a reminder of what is always missing from such reports, e.g., that disparity is not necessarily discrimination. It starts off well enough in that regard, with the league president stating, “We cannot change what we do not measure; we cannot solve problems we are not willing to confront.”
But it gets problematic from there on, with any “confronting” being decidedly selective. For instance, the report does not address the elephant-in-the-room disparity that Black Americans (13–14 percent of the population) account for roughly half of homicide offenders and victims. The most recent national data show the black victimization rate is eight times that of whites, with the great number of black crimes being intra-racial. That would be something you would think an organization dedicated to black advancement would want to address.
And a reader is left with the impression that discrimination by the white medical community is somehow responsible for the higher rate of black infant mortality in our city. In fact, national studies show that black infants get more medical attention, and that relatively low birth rates rather than bigoted white physicians are the cause of the higher mortality.
Finally, there is the lamentation that blacks don’t do as well in our schools — a serious problem, granted, but one aggravated by three generations of educators pursuing the impossible goal of social justice rather than practical classroom learning. Not mentioned is a national study finding that blacks with comparable IQ scores achieve the same income levels as other groups.
Perhaps that last was on the Urban League director’s mind when she said, “It’s about accepting responsibility. After nearly a decade without this report, we have an opportunity to establish a renewed understanding of where we are today.”
Encouraging, or so one must hope. — tcl
