During the Great Depression, African Americans were faced with problems that were not unlike those experienced by the most disadvantaged groups in society. The Great Depression had a leveling effect, and all groups really experienced hard times: poor whites, poor blacks.
But the person who scored well on an SAT will not necessarily be the best doctor or the best lawyer or the best businessman. These tests do not measure character, leadership, creativity, perseverance.
If you're not working, over time you're much more likely to develop attitudes and orientations and behavior patterns that are associated with casual or infrequent work. And then when you open up opportunities for people, you notice that these attitudes, orientations, habits and styles also change.
A lot of joblessness in the black community doesn't seem to be reachable through fiscal and monetary policies. People have not been drawn into the labor market even during periods of economic recovery.
Black employers are just as negative as the white employers concerning inner-city workers.
Black professors make more than white professors. That's because we are in demand. I'll tell you, give me two blacks in institutions of higher learning, one has a Ph.D. from an elite institution and has a certain publication record. You give me a white scholar with the same credentials, and I will take that black scholar.
The worst thing we could do is impose time limits and then expect people to sink or swim once they move off welfare.
Liberals were intimidated by the Reagan administration and did not want to appear naive by talking about programs that called for government support. I just said, 'The hell with that. I'm out there.'
Crime, family dissolution, welfare, and low levels of social organization are fundamentally a consequence of the disappearance of work.
There are many positive things to say about the black community. No question about it.
There is a tendency to want to treat blacks as a monolithic socioeconomic group.
I don't think we should stop emphasizing race because I think, you know, race is still very, very important, and we have to recognize that and continue to introduce programs to address racial inequities. But we have to widen our vision and also address the growing problems of economic class.
The middle class has just fallen further and further behind the rich.
Prior to 1940, the affluent and the middle class began to converge, but after 1979, the economic gap between the middle class and affluent widened significantly.
I maintain that the period during the first half of the 1990s, the period in which rising inequality reached its peak, was a period in which we came very, very close to a demagogic immobilization of racism in this society.
My research clearly reveals that if we want to put inner-city workers to work immediately, we just can't rely on the private sector. They don't want to touch them; they don't want to hire them.
Certain people are just saying, 'Look, I'm a businessperson and I have to run a business effectively and I want people who are going to do the job, who have the training and the education and the personality traits - the soft skills.'
