Reagan Record on Blacks Denounced

The nation made no progress in reducing economic disparities between blacks and whites during the Reagan years, and blacks face increasing misery from poverty, crime and drugs, the National Urban League reported today.

The report, “The State of Black America, 1989,” is the organization’s 14th annual assessment of the status and conditions of blacks in America.

“The new Bush Administration will need a clear understanding of the large magnitude of the problem of economic disparities as a precondition to finding effective remedies,” David H. Swinton said in the report’s summary of economic conditions.

“No progress has been made in reducing the longstanding economic disparities faced by blacks during the Reagan Administration,” Swinton, dean of the Business School at Jackson State University in Mississippi, wrote. “In fact, racial inequality in American life actually increased by many of the standard indicators.”

At a news conference releasing the report, John E. Jacob, president of the National Urban League, said he is encouraged by President Bush’s selections of what he called a “very centrist Cabinet.” He called on Bush to establish as a goal moving black Americans toward economic parity with whites.

‘Investment in the Future’

“We call for a decade-long massive effort,” Jacob said. “That effort would amount to a national investment in the future.”

In a grim assessment of the outlook for black children in America, Marian Wright Edelman wrote that compared with 1980, black children are more likely to be born into poverty, lack early prenatal care, have a single mother, have an unemployed parent, and not go to college.

A black baby is three times as likely as a white baby to be born to a mother who has had no prenatal care and is more than twice as likely to die during the first year, she said. A black male teen-ager is six times as likely as a white male teen-ager to be a victim of homicide, she said.

“Millions of black children today live in a desolate world where physical survival is a triumph, where fear and hopelessness reign, and where the future holds no promises and few opportunities,” said Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund.

In another section, the report said the number of blacks enrolled in four-year colleges has declined since 1980, while other minority groups showed increases.