INNER CITIES, OUTER POLITICS AND UNDERCLASSES : Politics by Distortion

When White House officials drummed up a crack bust in Lafayette Square a few weeks ago to supply a theatrical prop for President Bush’s speech to the nation on drugs, they also distorted the reality of the social crisis in America today.

To make their bust, undercover agents had to entice the pusher out of the inner city and into the park across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. The territory was so unfamiliar to the pusher that he had never seen the White House before and did not know who lived there. But Bush, wagging a packet of crack at the cameras, made viewers feel that drugs had become so pervasive that an addict could buy a fix under the glare of White House floodlights.

Yet when you look hard at drugs--and most social problems--in the United States, it soon becomes obvious these are not general ills that afflict most Americans alike. There are really two Americas, suffering in different ways--a middle, mainstream America beset by troubles but managing to cope, and an impoverished, growing underclass, mainly but not exclusively black and Latino, battered and laid low.

For the first America, these problems impose a frustrating burden; for the second America, they impose a disaster. That does not make the crisis in America any lesser. But it does cry out for proper focus. To close your eyes and ignore the heart of the anguish only makes the disaster worse.

The recent extravaganza of Bush and the nation’s governors at the University of Virginia is an astounding example. It is hard to recall a moment in history when so many leaders have simultaneously enveloped themselves in as much fog as these American politicians at their education summit.

Everyone seems to agree that American education is in a sorry, woeful state. Foreign students outscore U.S. students on international tests in mathematics and science. One out of every four young Americans fails to finish high school. More than 20 million Americans read and write so poorly that they are classified as illiterate. Corporate executives complain that young job applicants so lack basic skills they cannot be trained for the complex jobs in modern industry. America, these executives warn, cannot compete in the world market with such an inadequate work force. In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education called us “a nation at risk”; no one disputes that now.

Yet the issue is more complex than these generalities. In fact, the critics, in their fervor, often betray a misstep in logic. Roger Porter, the presidential assistant who organized the summit, deplores American schools as inadequate yet praises our colleges and universities as “the marvel around the world.” Many governors proudly echo his sentiment.

But that raises a puzzling question. How can a school system so inadequate produce students and professors good enough to make the universities a marvel?

The answer is obvious. At their best, American high schools turn out a group of students--perhaps 10% to 20% of the total--who can hold their own with other students in the world. Perhaps they have less information crammed into their minds than French students who pass baccalaureate examinations or British students who pass A-levels. But the top U.S. students have a creativity, an energy, a sense of initiative and a breadth of interest often lacking among graduates of more rigid educational systems in other countries.

The real despair in American education is at the bottom--the lower 20% to 30%. When corporate executives complain about the school system, they do not mean we are not turning out adequate heart surgeons or artists or novelists or lawyers or computer programmers or entrepreneurs. The executives complain about the dropouts and high school graduates who lack the basic skills to start at the bottom of the ladder in a world of high technology. These are the youngsters who swell the terrible statistics about functional illiteracy in America.

Poverty and race lie at the heart of much of this problem. The House Select Committee on Children reports that 45% of all black children in America and 39% of all Latino children live in poverty. In fact, 20% of all children, no matter what color or heritage, live in poverty. Child mothers drop out of school to bring up children who will have even less chance to succeed. Education, in any case, does not always promise them much. A white high school dropout has a better chance of getting a job than a black high school graduate, according to Department of Labor statistics.

Critics of American education do not use these ominous figures as a battle cry for an onslaught on the root causes--poverty and racism--that tear at the soul of this country. Instead, they use the crisis as a handy stick to drum up excitement for their pet theories about education. They would rather squelch American educational philosophy than poverty.

There are three fashionable ideas among critics these days, and all won strong support at the education summit: national performance goals to keep schools and teachers on their toes; parent choice of schools for their children, and a restructuring--really a breakup--of bureaucracies that run school districts.

I have suspicions about all three ideas. National performance goals could encourage the kind of rigidity that stultifies education in other countries. Choice could turn into a subterfuge--white parents trying to take their children out of schools with large minority populations. The venom against bureaucracies could become an excuse for not spending more money on schools. But even if my suspicions proved groundless, the three goals would still be irrelevant to the debasing poverty that spawns the real crisis in American education.

The double nature of the American social crisis becomes obvious no matter what problem is analyzed. Although far too many upper-class and middle-class Americans embrace drugs with abandon, their troubles seem somewhat manageable in the long run. Propaganda and education are slowing down their drug use, and there is enough expensive treatment available to give affluent addicts at least a slim hope for cure. The lesson of John Belushi is lost only on fools.

But the problem seems impervious to treatment in the inner cities. The underclass craves crack cocaine out of despair. And these hopeless people will continue to crave it until the despair is lifted.

Meanwhile, the crime and murder that engulfs the drug scene frightens and infuriates Americans. There is a constant demand to stamp out the violence, but the Bush Administration refuses to spend more than a pittance to alleviate conditions that nourish drugs and violence. Nonetheless, like many administrations before it, this one will spend hundreds of millions on police and prisons in a ballyhooed “war on drugs.” Since the battleground is the inner city, as the late Harvard psychiatrist Norman E. Zinberg once warned, such a war seems close to becoming a war on blacks.

Our health problems also reflect the despair of the underclass. We have one of the highest rates of infant mortality in the industrialized world. For every 1,000 children born, more than 10 die before they are a year old. Other Western nations--and many in Asia--do better. Children do not die because of the quality of our doctors; they die because of poverty and our society’s refusal to deal with it. The infant mortality rate for blacks is double that of whites. About 37 million Americans--12 million children--have no health insurance.

Why does this society and its leaders turn their backs on American poverty and the underclass? The answers are varied--and simple. The enormity of the problem is so overwhelming, so enduring, so seemingly intractable that it strikes many as too futile to dwell on. On top of this, although no one really knows what needs to be done, it is obvious that the solutions will probably cost a great deal of money. That is looked on as a forbidden topic in an era of budget restraints.

Another answer is shamelessly political. There are no votes to be won in trying to persuade middle-class Americans to sacrifice for the good of the poor, especially poor blacks and Latinos. Finally, many leaders simply do not believe the crisis is as calamitous as others paint it. They look on the complainers as fuzzy-minded, do-gooding Jeremiahs and patiently wait for the problems to sort themselves out over time.

None of these answers are good enough. The disastrous plight of the underclass and the poor is weakening the United States. We may not yet know how to grapple with it. We may not have enough resources to deal with it. But our only hope is to face it, with an understanding and an awareness far more acute than a foolish summit on education and a gimmicky war on drugs.