The Inner City: Urban Poverty and Economic Development in the Next Century

National Review, Dec 22, 1997 by John J. DiIulio

The U.S. Constitution is not color-blind, but the Holy Bible is. The Promise Keepers must strive to be a racially integrated movement because they are an openly Christian movement. The Christian Coalition is reaching out, however unartfully, to the black urban poor because its leaders know that white evangelical Christians were on the wrong side of the civil-rights revolution. The black inner-city clergy who fight for the future of drug addicts, misfit mothers, and teenaged troublemakers do so not only as an expression of racial solidarity but because their faith compels them to follow the prophet Jeremiah: "Promote the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you; pray for it to the Lord, for upon its welfare depends your own" (29:7).

America in Black and White makes nary a mention of the religious life of black Americans, rich or poor. But the evidence is growing that the only people who are now doing something to make inner-city blacks part of "one nation, indivisible," are those who seek "one nation, under God, indivisible." Although I doubt that any other card-carrying social scientist would even think to fault the authors for such a sin of omission, the most important missing endnote to America in Black and White is a reference to the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

That sin would be easier to forgive and forget if, after seven hundred pages, the Thernstroms had at least followed professional secular convention and sought socio-economic salvation for inner-city blacks via a list of specific changes in social policy that went beyond the usual conservative or center-right litany on abolishing affirmative action and the like.

For what it is worth, therefore, I conclude with such a list of proposals, each of which has other empirical and moral points in its favor, only some of which are politically feasible, but all of which, taken together, might help to fold the American Dilemma into the American Dream. Fearing no confusion with the Ten Commandments, I offer my for-future-discussion social-policy decalogue on race:

1. Abolish the death penalty.

2. Decarcerate non-violent low-level drug offenders of whatever race.

3. Abolish affirmative action based solely on race.

4. Prohibit all public funding of abortions.

5. Amend the 1996 federal welfare bill to exempt the bottom two-fifths of the welfare population (most of whom are dependent children) from cutoffs.

6. Amend state welfare-reform laws to provide for publicly subsidized, last-resort community-service employment.

7. Implement the faith-friendly charitable-choice provision of the 1996 welfare bill with all deliberate speed.

8. Pass federal living-wage legislation.

9. Amend the U.S. Constitution to readmit prayer into public schools.

10. Amend federal, state, and local tax laws to permit individuals, charities, and corporations to earn dollar-for-dollar deductions on contributions to small, community-based youth- and community-serving organizations.