On Being

The first event was the wholesale destruction of black neighborhoods by the Federal Urban Renewal and Federal Interstate Highway programs. Urban renewal was an attempt to improve decaying center cities by transforming them into new, architecturally pleasing areas. Because of the minimal political power held by African Americans at that time, black ghettos (and other poor areas) were usually chosen as sites for urban renewal. Large, inner-city black ghettos were razed. Some of the poorer people from the "renewed" areas were moved into public housing, but these were usually large apartment buildings reserved only for the poor. But the rest simply squeezed into remaining ghettos areas.

The same phenomenon occurred when the Interstate Highway Program started during the Eisenhower administration. When these superhighways went through cities, poor black areas were usually the ones disrupted. Either the area was simply razed and the former inhabitants moved into public housing or the highway was placed so as to create a physical boundary between the black ghetto and other areas of the city, effectively isolating the inhabitants.

A second event facilitating the disintegration of the ghettos was the gradual loss of jobs that paid a living wage. The major structural changes in the American economy over the last four decades have almost all been detrimental to poor people. By the middle of the 20th century, the United States had become the overwhelming leader in worldwide manufacturing, and many of these factories were located in the large cities of the North. They offered good employment for workers who entered the job market with little education and few skills. High levels of unionization meant that the jobs were secure, wages were relatively high, and the chances for advancement were good if one stayed with the company. Blue-collar jobs were a primary way out of poverty for many African Americans.

But soon Europe and Japan had rebuilt themselves after the destruction of World War II, and their manufacturing competed, often quite successfully, with American companies. Later on, less developed countries, such as Korea and Taiwan, expanded their manufacturing, too. More recently, the globalization of the economy and the development of large, multinational companies have led to the loss of manufacturing in the United States as plants have moved to the Third World, where salaries are lower, environmental regulations are few, and expensive regulations for worker protection almost non-existent.

With the increasing computerization and mechanization of manufacturing worldwide, moreover, the well-paying jobs that remained wen to those whom William Julius Wilson calls the "symbol manipulators," those who analyzed data, wrote computer programs, managed people, administered organizations, or performed other tasks for which higher degrees of formal education were required. Increasingly, the only jobs remaining for poorly trained or educated people were in the service sector—as domestics, janitors, clerks, salespeople, nursing aides, and so on—where wages had historically been low and benefits poor. To make matters worse, the wages in the service sector were declining even further relative to other sectors of the economy, so even full-time workers were finding it difficult to stay out of poverty.