LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW : Hugh Price : Rebuilding the Urban League--and the Inner City, as Well

The Urban League no longer has the national presence it had when Whitney M. Young Jr. and Vernon E. Jordan Jr. championed jobs and civil-rights for black Americans moving from the fields of the South to the factories of the North. The battlegrounds have now shifted from legally segregated schools, workplaces and communities to economically isolated inner cities. The Urban League has also lost much of its federal funding as Washington ignored the cities and tightened its belt.

Hugh B. Price, new head of the National Urban League, must raise the profile of his organization, along with millions of dollars to improve the lot of poor blacks. Fighting poverty is as high on his agenda as fighting prejudice. Rather than “go hat in hand” to business and philanthropies, Price prefers to start with successful black Americans and then challenge others to give as deeply.

Price wants the millions of middle-class African Americans to contribute $500 to $1,000 to a youth-development fund to help poor black children. Only by marshaling their significant resources and giving of their time, Price says, can affluent black Americans encourage inner-city youths.

He knows whereof he speaks. He and a group of 24 black men put up $17,000 to finance an after-school program that helps poor black boys “circumnavigate the potholes in their lives.” The men also mentor the boys, who typically end up as honor students. Price wants Urban League affiliates to fund similar programs that help disadvantaged black youngsters, particularly adolescents, perform better, behave better and excel.

Unlike many traditional civil-rights leaders, Price, 52, does not come from the pulpit or the trenches. He is an outsider at the 84-year-old organization. A lawyer by training, he has also been a member of the New York Times editorial board and an executive at PBS. Until Friday, he managed the Rockefeller Foundation’s domestic initiatives.

Many can afford to give in the Westchester County community where Price lives with his wife, Marilyn, who works for the Manpower Development Research Corp. They have three adult daughters. A son of the black middle class, Price is polished and accomplished. He will need these talents--and all the help he can get--to tackle the litany of ills in the inner city.

Question: Is race still a barrier in 1994?

Answer: Absolutely. Race is very much a factor in American life . . . . The pattern of discrimination against African American (job) applicants persists to this day. It’s true in lending practices. It’s true in housing. So, yes, racism is still abroad in the land. It is subtler and less pervasive than before, but it is still a factor in American life.

There are other factors adversely effecting African Americans . . . . If you lived in the inner city 40 years ago, there was a rather thriving economy waiting for African Americans--if we could break open the barriers of discrimination. The assumption when the Brown vs. Board of Education decision was handed down (in 1954) was that (the decision) would blast open the barriers to the opportunities that existed in the cities. What no one quite anticipated was that those opportunities would dry up . . . . Manufacturing work and other work . . . would steadily evaporate from the inner city . . . . We’ve had an out-migration of good-paying blue-collar jobs, which has taken with it purchasing power, work as a way of life in families, and hope.

Q: Against those odds, how have African Americans prospered?

A: Many black Americans are as talented as everybody else. Many black Americans grew up in families that provide support. Many black Americans live in communities where school systems are quite sound. We have flooded into great universities all over the country. We have flooded into, and helped to build, the standing of many historically black colleges. Schools like Spelman and Morehouse rank with the best colleges in the country because the talent coming into those schools is stronger than ever.

We have flooded into previously all-white campuses. When I went to Amherst College, in 1959, I was one among five (black) students in my freshmen class. Only three of us finished. I don’t know how many African Americans are in the freshmen class this year, but it’s probably 10 times that number. When I was at Yale Law School, I was one of seven (African-Americans) in my class. There are probably three or four times that now . . . .

We need to realize the civil-rights movement was hugely successful for a significant segment of our population. However, the opening up of access and the breaking down of barriers has not worked for people whose skill levels are less, or who are living in communities where the schools do not serve them well or in areas where the jobs have simply disappeared.

Q: How concrete are class divisions among African Americans?

A: There’s a real problem. We need to try to reconnect the many segments of our community . . . . Because of the out-migration of middle-class families from the inner city, because of the growing economic divisions . . . there’s been a separation . . . .

We have got to connect. The more you try to distance yourselves from the concerns of those for whom this economy does not work, the more we are learning you have to look over your shoulders in apprehension and fear. You can’t separate yourself from the circumstances of those who are in pain economically, because the alienation of those who are in pain are trailing us wherever we go . . . . Carjackings . . . . crime . . . . We can’t escape it. We all have to try to re-engage on these issues.

African Americans have got to re-engage on these issues. All other Americans have to re-engage on these issues because, if we don’t, the social fabric is coming unglued. The quality of life in cities is deteriorating. People are apprehensive about walking around the streets of many American cities. Even those who are affluent and white are finding they cannot escape the alienation of folks who are living in the inner cities. I hope the Urban League will drive the agenda.

Q: What are your priorities?

A: The African American community has to take the responsibility for nurturing and developing our children. In the first instance, it is the responsibility of parents. To the extent that parents can’t do that either because they are out working several low-wage jobs to try to get by financially or because they are not functioning properly, I think it is incumbent on the broader African American community to assume responsibility.

I hope that, at the Urban League, we are going to press our community to take that responsibility not just by paying lip service but by digging into our pockets and putting serious money on the table to support the programs that our young people need . . . .

If we can generate serious money from our community, we would then challenge others to match our efforts . . . . It’s one thing to go hat in hand and say, “Please help us with our problem.” It’s entirely another to say we are assuming responsibility for this problem and not just rhetorical but financial responsibility; to say to local philanthropies and business we’d like you to be our partner. We challenge you to match us. It’s a different dynamic . . . . It means you are proceeding whether you get help or not.

Q: Your focus is children?

A: . . . There’s nobody home. Parents are working or dysfunctional. Schools are not open. The park department has shut down its program because cities are financially strapped. School systems no longer have the money to operate the rich array of extracurricular programs in the school buildings after school that I certainly knew as a child. The Boys Clubs and Girls Clubs and teams are not there.

But I’ll tell you who is home. The gangs are home. The gangs and television have become the baby-sitters and peer groups of these young people, because adults who are responsible for their development have allowed a void to be created in their lives at the end of the school day, and that void is being filled by gangs.

. . . If we don’t create an alternative for them, we are going to continue to lose our kids to the streets. The African American community has got to step up to the plate and assume responsibility for providing that option.

Q: Historically, the focus of the Urban League has been employment and jobs. Are you deviating from that?

A: No. Millions of us have progressed since the Brown vs. Board of Ed decision--but millions of us have been on the down escalator. We want to focus the work of the league on trying to reverse the downward spiral of folks living in the inner city. Within that general focus, we want to speak powerfully and authoritatively to a broader array of issues that affect our community.

Q: Your priorities are?

A: The education and social development of our children to try to ensure that our kids have the competencies and the social graces and social skills to be successful in the 21st Century, and to participate in that part of the economy that is rising rather than declining . . . .

Economic sufficiency for families in the inner city. The League has been deeply involved over the years in job placement and job training. We need to continue that work. We also need to devote more attention to the related, and the larger question of whether our economy is creating enough jobs and whether those jobs pay enough to allow people to live in dignity with a decent standard of living.

This country is in deep denial about whether or not we create enough jobs. The labor market in the inner city is broken. The market economy works marvelously for the vast majority of Americans, but it is breaking down at the margins. It’s not creating enough jobs, and those jobs that are being created have little future and pay such lousy wages that people, even if they work, live in poverty . . . . The evaporation of decent-paying jobs has fueled the decay in the physical conditions of the inner city. It’s undercut the family, because the male providers feel inadequate and they aren’t able to work. They don’t bond with those with whom they have relationships, and they don’t stay in the household. And it has undercut the young people’s abilities to dream and see over the horizon of their immediate environment. We have got to focus on reconnecting folks who live in the inner city to the world of work.

Q: How?

A: We may need to do that through using need-based job set-a-sides, not race-based job set-a-sides.

Q: Affirmative action for poor people?

A: Yes . . . if we expect cities to prosper, folks who live in the inner city have to participate in the mainstream economy . . . . If the market economy doesn’t create enough jobs for everyone who is expected to work, what is society going to do about this? We don’t want them languishing on welfare. That’s the whole point of the welfare-reform legislation that’s been proposed . . . . Are we going to create jobs that the public values that poor people can perform?

Q: And race?

A: I have an uncompromising commitment to racial inclusion. We live in a robustly multicultural world, and society and cities. That’s not going to change, so all people who inhabit that space have got to be prepared to work together, function together and coexist. I don’t know if you have seen the play that Anna Deavere Smith did (on the Los Angeles riots) called “Twilight.” The stunning thing was the absence of a common language, common dreams, common tongues across the various people and ethnic groups that were portrayed there. There is no common experience, no shared aspirations, no language, even, to converse together.

If we don’t watch it, Bosnia awaits us--to put the worst-case spin on it. If we don’t watch it, then South-Central awaits more cities.

Q: What does the Fourth of July symbolize to you?

A: If there is anything July 4th ought to symbolize to me it is a rededication to the proposition that we are all in this society together, and we have got to make it work as a common American people even as we respect our heritage and respect our differences. We have got to learn to work together, coexist together, dream together and prosper together, because if we don’t, the alienation of those of us who are outside will undercut everything that others dream of achieving. If there is one story of what is happening to American cities, it is the fact that the isolation of the inner city and folks who live in poverty is undercutting the quality of life for everybody. We’ve got to include everybody, regardless of race or poverty, in the broader society.