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Millions of black Americans have in fact clambered up the ladder to create a stable and growing black middle class. But there are two black Americas. The other is an entrenched underclass stuck at the very bottom of society. It is these blacks, an alarming percentage of them from fragmented families and households headed by women, who appear less capable of economic survival than the tenacious new immigrants.
In Harlem, the moms and pops who presided over family stores were once Jewish or Italian. When they departed, local blacks were unable to capitalize on the opportunities, leaving many of the stores abandoned and boarded up. During the past five years, entrepreneurial Koreans have taken over about a third of the stores on 125th Street. Last October a ruckus began after a black man was evicted from Ike's grocery, owned by the Shin brothers. A handful of black activists began a boycott of Korean merchants that went on sporadically for a few months. Says Lloyd Williams, a neighborhood black leader: "The effort became to get all the Koreans out of the neighborhood."
Among many blacks in Miami, there is similar resentment of the way Cuban immigrants have moved into small businesses. In 1960 blacks owned 25% of the gas stations in Dade County. By 1979 they had only 9%, while the percentage of Hispanic-owned stations grew from 12% to 48%. The average income of a Hispanic business in Dade County is now $84,000, almost twice that of a black business.
Standing around Africa Square Park in Miami's shabby, pastel-colored Liberty City, a knot of young blacks laments the Cuban invasion. "They're messing us up," says one. "They're taking bread out of our mouths." Another complains that the Cubans and Haitians are willing, even eager, to work for the legal minimum wage, or less. Many of the young blacks say they would rather not work than hire themselves out for what they consider insultingly low pay. Says Dorothy Fields, founder of Miami's Black Archive, a historical research agency: "It appears that we have a group who feels the world owes them a living because of what their parents and grandparents went through."
In Houston, Indochinese immigrants have become an economic presence, sometimes virtually the only sign of vitality in otherwise depressed areas. Many own or manage 24-hour convenience stores in predominantly black neighborhoods. Says a black Texas Southern University maintenance man who stopped in for a snack at a Vietnamese-run store: "For the first time you can buy fresh meat right in the neighborhood. It's the idea that a foreigner can come in here and move up so quickly that disgusts people." City Councilman Anthony Hall sees the immigrants as models, not enemies. Says he: "They have pooled their resources and created some lucrative opportunities for themselves."