The Economic Demise of Blacks in America

Abstract

During last full week of September 1985, NBC Nightly News (New York Times, 1985: A20) presented a daily account exploring the growing debate over whether programs designed to help Blacks have done as much harm as good. While giving coverage to latest effort for placing responsibility upon very Blacks enduring a life of poverty selfhelp proclamation its last presentation of series posed most significant point in form of a question when NBC's newsperson Garritt Utley poignantly, yet casually, asked, Is there a solution? Even though this was remarkable statement of weekly Special Segment devoted to what is happening to Blacks-rather than examining Black/ White relations-no one has recognized its extreme importance simply because few of us are prepared to perceive actual fate for a Black people suffering what is now considered a calamity. An NBC reporter responded to grim life conditions among Blacks by raising a question he could not answer, while Report's own grim statistics elicit only slight responses from thousands of people, including hundreds of social science scholars, who write and comment upon Black/ White relations.