ABSTRACT
It appears almost trivial, if not belittling, today to claim that Afro-American urban communities are in crisis. The word “crisis” just does not adequately capture the catastrophic doom that pervades so much of contemporary black life. One need only confront the myriad of statistics about urban black life: high rates of unemployment; malnutrition; Third World levels of infant mortality; the return of polio and other immunizable diseases among elementary school children; the phenomenal spread of AIDs, particularly among intravenous drug users; homelessness; widespread substandard housing; underfunded public schools; frightening rates of illiteracy; rates of incarceration exceeding rates of college enrollment; alcoholism; epidemics in drug addiction, particularly crack cocaine; unwanted children; teenage parenthood; commonplace child abuse and the routine abuse of the dependent elderly. Black urban communities are engulfed in an everyday violence unheard of in the history of humankind except during periods of extended warfare. For instance, in Washington, D.C., and neighboring Prince Georges County, Maryland, which has a sizable poor black population, 3,000 murders have been officially recorded in the last five years. The murderers and murder victims were overwhelmingly young blacks, particularly young black men. To fathom the murder of approximately 3,000 young people within a five-year span, one might want to imagine this death toll as the equivalent of two Washington, D.C., high schools disappearing from the face of the earth. 1 However, the violence in poor black neighborhoods is far more extensive than murder statistics convey. Armed robbery, wife battering, rape, assault with intent to kill, and simple assault occur at staggering rates. The Washington Post reported that 75% of all black men in Washington, D.C., will at some point in their lives have some type of formal interaction with the city's criminal-justice system. 2 Stabilizing elements in poor communities are being overwhelmed by state callousness and racist indifference to the lives of the black and Hispanic poor. 3 As a result, a nihilism has grown in the black community. 4 Anomie reigns in some small but growing sectors. 5 Black urban communities are simultaneously under assault and self-destructing. Yet, given the tremendous odds against escaping the impact of the violence, drugs, and social decay, most inner-city blacks cling to deeply held humane values and lifestyles. 6
