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That disaffection is doubly distressing because the nation is in its third year of a strong economic recovery, an advance that has created 6 million new jobs since the end of the 1973-75 recession. No fewer than 90.5 million Americans are now at work. The underclass remains a nucleus of psychological and material destitution despite 20 years of civil rights gains and 13 years of antipoverty programs that were only temporarily slowed, but never really hobbled, during the Nixon era. Tens of billions of dollars are spent every year by the Federal Government, states and cities to eliminate drastic poverty. In addition, special hiring drives, private job-training programs, university scholarships and affirmative-action programs are aimed at aiding the motivated poor. Yet by most of society's measures—job prospects, housing, education, physical security—the underclass is hardly better off, and in some cases worse off, than before the War on Poverty.
The war, of course, has not been lost. The proportion of the nation officially listed as living in poverty has dropped since 1959 from 22% to 12%. One of America's great success sagas has been the rise of many blacks to the secure middle class. Today 44% of black families earn $10,000 or more a year. More than 45% of black high school graduates now go on to college. Though some discrimination persists, more and more nonwhites are seen in at least the junior management ranks of banks and corporations and government, where they are moving up.
But the new opportunities have splintered the nonwhite population. The brightest and most ambitious have rapidly risen, leaving the underclass farther and farther behind—and more and more angry. While the number of blacks earning more than $10,000 is expanding and the number earning $5,500 to $10,000 is shrinking, almost a third of all black families are still below the poverty line, defined as $5,500 for an urban family of four (only 8.9% of white families are below the line). Says Harvard Sociologist David Riesman: "The awareness that many blacks have been successful means that the underclass is more resentful and more defiant because its alibi isn't there."
Others echo those sentiments in gutsier language. Says Naomi Chambers, a Detroit social worker, who is black: "Now that some black people have cars, dresses and shoes, there is jealousy. Jealousy can make me hate you and take what you have." Indeed, the blacks who looted during the New York blackout were totally nondiscriminatory, emptying out stores owned by blacks and whites alike. There is a strong feeling among social experts and politicians, both black and white, that much the same rampage could have struck any U.S. city in similar circumstances—and that next time it will be worse.
Concerned officials from the White House to the humblest city hall are grappling with questions about the underclass. How big is it? Who is in it? What motivates its members? Most important, how can this minority within a minority be reduced?
For many of the deprived, poverty is a transitory condition that can—and will—be overcome by education, ambition or the sheer refusal to stay down. Similarly, most of the unemployed are only temporarily out of jobs; more than 86% have been