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With local variations, the same sorry pattern exists in most of America's larger cities. While Atlanta still boasts that it is "a city too busy to hate" and racial friction seems mild, there is tinder in the deterioration of its public housing. About 50,000 blacks occupy such buildings, which are heavily rat infested. City officials have detected some 10,000 housing code violations in just one project.
In Birmingham, Ala., blacks have elected a black mayor and wield much more power than in the days of the celebrated civil rights crusades. Yet black anger at the white-dominated police force is almost as intense as it was when Police Commissioner Bull Connor and his snarling dogs gained national notoriety.
Racial hostility is so high in Boston that blacks fear to walk into South Boston, citadel of the city's Irish, as much as whites fear going into black Roxbury. Even in boomtown Houston the frame shacks of the city's blacks still stretch for blocks almost within the shadows of the tall new office buildings.
All this is bad enough, but America's racial inequalities and tensions could get worse. During the reforming '60s there was a commitment by many white politicians and officials, indeed by whites in general, to the principles of civil rights. This gave blacks good reason to believe that their lives would improve, slowly but steadily. In terms of personal freedoms—access to the ballot, public accommodations and transportation—there was great improvement. But these gains did not bring with them economic success—or a fair share of the American dream.
Today the optimism of the '60s has disappeared, and there is little hope that the problems of the ghettos are about to be tackled anew, let alone solved. The problem is not a resurgence of white racism in America. Instead broad impersonal trends have converged to shift the attention of America away from its ghettos. The energy crisis, the threat of growing Soviet military power and Soviet adventurism abroad, the decline of the U.S. dollar, the fall of U.S. productivity, the nation's vulnerability in a more complex world, as evidenced by events in Iran, the rise in inflation and the onset of recession—all have prompted a reordering of national priorities. The country has become more conservative, and not just because of lingering doubts, stemming from the experience of the '70s, that expensive social programs can solve the obdurate problems of the ghettos. There is no likelihood that extensive Federal funds will be pumped into the cities when the drive for a balanced budget and a strengthened U.S. military remain so strong. The poor of any color will suffer.
Understandably, many black leaders deeply resent these political shifts. M. Carl Holman, president of the National Urban Coalition, expresses that sentiment in excessive terms. Says he of the nation's black communities: "There are raw wounds out there and a blind officialdom keeps flicking those wounds with a whip as if to see what will happen."
What could happen if most blacks perceived white officials as acting so callously is a frightening prospect, for blacks and whites alike. Even some of black America's most fiery leaders warn strongly against any resort to violence.