Aim the Race Dialogue at the Poor NASSAU AND SUFFOLK Edition

HONEST AND thoughtful citizens of all racial backgrounds can agree about two things. First, on the whole, working and middle-class African Americans are vastly better off than we were 40 or more years ago. Jim Crow is long deceased, and most black citizens enjoy both mundane social access and genuin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNewsday
Main Author By Christopher H. Foreman Jr. Christopher H. Foreman Jr. is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Long Island, N.Y Newsday LLC 11.05.1998
EditionCombined editions
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Summary:HONEST AND thoughtful citizens of all racial backgrounds can agree about two things. First, on the whole, working and middle-class African Americans are vastly better off than we were 40 or more years ago. Jim Crow is long deceased, and most black citizens enjoy both mundane social access and genuine opportunity to an extent that would have seemed absurd fantasy in the 1950s. Second, despite dramatic positive change, all is not yet well, either within black America or in black-white relations. The bottom-most rungs of the African-American community endure a depressingly familiar litany of problems, including crime, joblessness, disease, inadequate housing, inferior education and social isolation. In important ways, we are uncertain how to uplift African Americans left behind by the civil rights movement and affirmative action. To take one recent example, a study of the federal Job Training and Partnership Act shows that despite years of effort, experts have not found a way to increase employment prospects among high school dropouts.