New York City, the “micro” United States, features one of the most diverse populations across the country and thus must hustle to survive the more direct diverging forces that can destroy it from the inside out. Most urban environments deal with these contemporary national issues on a more direct level, but none do so on such a level as New York City with its massive population density of 27,013 people per square mile (69,468 within Manhattan itself) (US Census 2010). One of the most pressing issues is the current position of the black man in our society and his upbringing. Our nation’s one percent is a well-known issue; their power and influence carry much more sway than the majority of Americans. Their rise in wealth has been occurring as the wealth of others decreased. This income inequality parallels directly with this racial issue and may even be the direct cause of it.
In order to begin to address and potentially solve any large-scale societal problem its origins must be understood. The black man in the United States has had a long and turbulent history. Many had addressed the “Negro question,” however, in talks and debates blacks were rarely ever held to be equal to whites. Blacks were subject to brutal violence and outright discrimination by those that shared their lower class ranks (one such incident was the New York Draft Riots). They were believed inferior, unfit of democratic responsibility. In emancipating the slaves, Lincoln did not wish to benefit the blacks but instead simply to keep the Union together: “What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union (Lincoln, 1862).” Even after the freeing of slaves, blacks were not greeted with open arms as fellow citizens, but were still discriminated against. The greatest evidence of institutionalized discrimination came from the Jim Crow South, in which laws were passed that helped the states maneuver around the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. By passing laws that required literacy tests and poll taxes many of the recently freed slaves found little benefit in their newly acquired freedom.
Many believed these “Jim Crow” laws were confined to the South, however, New York state was also notorious for its own fair share of Jim Crow Laws. New York, like many other states after the ratification of Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, had required the disenfranchisement of individuals that committed certain crimes. Although these laws had applied to all those in New York that had committed these crimes, the list of crimes was specially crafted tog to target the newly freed slaves, including crimes that they were thought to commit the most such as: “bigamy, vagrancy, petty theft, and burglary (Wood et al.).” These laws still exist to this day and are expected to result in “one in three of the next generation of black men [to] be disenfranchised at some point during their lifetime.” These statistics simply do not match up to the democracy that America claims to be.
These laws have such a lasting effect due to the fact that the lack of the ability to vote and the right to participate in municipal governments can disenchant past felons, making it hard to readjust to life outside of prison. However, in the revision of these laws it is possible that these new rights will give felons that served their time a greater “likelihood of a smooth transition from “felon” to stakeholder and productive citizen (Wood et al.).” This will aid in preventing recidivism, which is currently a bleak topic for blacks as, currently, blacks are the most likely to be arrested again within 3 years, with a rate of 73 percent (Langan & Levin, 2002). This, however, is only one fix for a single issue that plagues blacks in New York City.
Another significant issue is education and the believed inferiority of black individuals. Blacks since being freed have not been accepted by society, a significant social repercussion of hundreds of years of slavery. This discrimination can be seen in the de facto segregation in NYC’s past and present. Groups of different people would live in their own distinct communities with income and wealth being a major factor in location of residence. Blacks tended to be poor, being freed with little assets or money to their names and thus were forced to lived in low-income areas and neighborhoods. The public school system thus was also segregated as enrollment was based on neighborhood. Black children attended schools that were considered inferior to schools in wealthier areas as funding for schools generally directly correlated with the school’s budget (Rosenbaum). It was not until Skipwith v. New York City Board of Education, was it decided that the public school system was faulty, providing inept teachers to schools with a non-white majority. Although this encouraged the Board of Education to intervene and fix the problem, de facto segregation did not disappear from the New York City school system. In fact, even today New York City is considered to have the most segregated public schools in the country (Fessenden). The continuous repression of black development has developed into the theory of the culture of poverty, that blacks and other low-income individuals are so disenchanted about their position in society that their work ethics are directly affected. An article by Gorski, however, discredits this theory and all believed causes of it. Instead he believes instead of an even more dangerous culture of classism, in which individuals outside of lower classes develop “low expectations for low-income students” (Gorski). He offers numerous examples of this classism across the country. These only further impair the ability of blacks to achieve an education. According to NYC Department of Education Statistics, 9.6 percent of blacks dropout from public schools, compared to 6.1 percent of whites that dropout which does not reflect a large difference, however only 7.0 percent of blacks received an Advanced regents diploma compared to 31.0 percent of white students graduating with the same diploma (NYC Dept. of Education). In America’s well-developed Hour Glass economy it is essential to eliminate the education gap between blacks and whites to help eliminate the racial divides.
Although there are numerous other causes for the failure of advancement of blacks in society, I believe it is education that must be reformed the most. The hour glass economy mentioned provides an abundance of high skill, high paying jobs and no skill, low paying jobs but very little in between. It makes education important in closing the wage gap that can be seen with average national white households earning approximately 100 percent more than black households (Lowrey). The misbelieved theory of the culture of poverty, in which the poor are believed to be harder to teach, only further exacerbates this income gap. The only way to revise this issue is the wide-scale spread of awareness of this issue. It is not right that those that live in already desperate situations must be continuously pushed down by those that should be encouraging them to better themselves through a higher education. Only when the education gap closes, can racial equality finally be achieved. This means more funding for schools that serve low-income students, more access to resources, such as the Internet and free tutoring services, for low-income youth through public libraries, teaching staff that are willing and ready to encourage learning and the pursuit of post-secondary education, development of college readiness offices in publics schools that assist students in applying to universities and colleges, and improving overall welfare to low-income families, allowing students to focus on school-work rather than issues city youth should not have to worry about until they themselves are the adults (healthcare, shelter).
This is not an all-inclusive list of issues that are faced by the NYC black demographic, however, these are large and prominent issues that survive to this day that prevent racial equality. There is no evolutionary reason why blacks are behind whites in our society, like Social Darwinists would like to believe; instead the sole reason is because of our city’s lack of care to address the real issues that face blacks due to either outright bigotry or its desire to remain ignorant. In a city that no longer has a white majority, it simply is not democratic that the non-majority continues to remain a dominant force in city life.
Works Cited
FESSENDEN, FORD. “A Portrait of Segregation in New York City’s Schools.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 10 May 2012. Web.
Gorski, Paul. “The Myth of the “Culture of Poverty”” Educational Leadership 65.7 (2008): 32-36. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Web.
Langan, Patrick A., Ph.D, and David J. Levin, Ph.D. “Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1994.” ICPSR Data Holdings (2002): n. pag. U.S. Department of Justice, June 2012. Web.
Lincoln, Abraham. Letter to Horace Greeley. 22 Aug. 1862. MS. N.p.
Lowrey, Annie. “Wealth Gap Among Races Has Widened Since Recession.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 28 Apr. 2013. Web.
Rosenbaum, Judith. “Sharing StoriesInspiring Change.” De Facto Segregation in the North: Introductory Essay. Jewish Woman Archive, n.d. Web.
“United States Census Bureau.” New York County QuickFacts from the US Census Bureau. N.p., n.d. Web.
Wood, Erika, Garima Malhotra, Liz Budnitz, and Charles J. Ogletree, Jr. “Jim Crow in New York.” (n.d.): n. pag. Brennan Center for Justice. Web.
