Inner-City America Needs a Marshall Plan

It is not so difficult to comprehend that nearly one-fourth of young black males are entrapped in the criminal justice system, if we also realize that nearly one-half of all black children grow up in poverty, one-fourth of young black males are functionally illiterate, and one-half have never held a regular job.

While Congress debates how the “peace dividend” will be spent, the inner cities are being devastated by the crack-cocaine epidemic, street crime and AIDS. While the Bush Administration enthusiastically supports the building of more prisons (which will cost taxpayers more than $2.5 billion a year just to imprison and monitor the black males in the system), it fails to provide adequate funding for college student loans, the Job Corps or any programs to provide these youth with skills to make them economically self-sufficient. While the government spends billions to bail out the savings-and-loan industry, it cannot allocate sufficient funds to improve urban schools or to provide drug-treatment programs for troubled youth.

It is ironic that Congress can find hundreds of millions to encourage development in East Bloc nations and other developing countries in order to stabilize their social, economic and political institutions, yet adamantly assert that there are no additional funds for domestic social programs.

It is time for our government to examine our national priorities versus our international commitments. Demographers predict that black and other minority youths will constitute up to one-third of the labor force in the early 21st Century. If current trends continue, many of these youths will be uneducated, unemployable and unable to assume productive adult roles in society.

To reverse these trends, our federal and state governments must develop a comprehensive and coordinated domestic Marshall Plan to rebuild urban America and to reinvest in human capital to achieve three important goals: to strengthen family resources and improve family functioning for all low-income families in the areas of employment and training, housing, health care, transportation and child care; to provide better educational facilities and economic opportunities to improve life options for at-risk youth; and to ensure the continued growth and competitive viability of the American economy, which will depend on a highly trained and productive labor force.

If our government continues to increase its foreign aid commitments and fails to address the economic and social inequities in our own society, we will not only run the risk of developing a permanently alienated and non-productive underclass, but we will also face the possibility of becoming a permanently indebted and non-competitive nation in the 21st Century.