The splintering and the abandoned

I just finished reading Disintegration: The Splingtering of Black America, a wonderful book by Eugene Robinson. Eugene Robinson is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist with the Washington Post and I read his columns regularly, and I often watch him on MSNBC as well.  But being a talking head and writing a good book require somewhat different skills so I approached his book without any preconceived notions (I hope).

Without going into too much detail, Mr Robinson basically explores the history of American American economic progress, with a focus on the period that mattered a lot--the 1960s forward.  Remember, the laws that codified the second-class status of black people in the United States were dismantled in the 1960s, and before this it was exceptionally difficult to work around Jim Crow and its spawn around the country.  Any and all progress after Reconstruction was halted and rescinded by Jim Crow in the early part of the 20th century.  Anyway, the splintering of Black America into four groups namely, the transcendent, the emerging group [split into multiracial and immigrant], the mainstream, and the abandoned is insightful in an of itself.  Black people, for better or for worse are often considered a monolithic group, and there are differences which are highlighted to some degree in this book.

I would say Eugene Robinson is a member of the transcendent group, the group that has achieved great success in their work and economically despite great odds.  In this group, think Oprah, Barack, Vernon Jordan, Michael Jordan, Clarence Page. The list is long. He did a good job explaining what this group represents, and what their resources *both human and otherwise* truly represents in the broader society.  He's well connected and is part of this group.  But the description of the emerging group is a bit less compelling. It is possible that Eugene has less access and fewer personal connections to draw from. So, this story both from the immigrant and from the multiracial perspective needs to be told more fully by the people who can speak from this perspective.

The description of the abandoned, the poorest, least resourced, and in some areas the least visible haunted me.  Again, Eugene Robinson does not come from this world, and after Katrina anyone who bothered to look saw that the poorest black people in this country lived in some ways that were indistinguishable from the poorest of Lagos or Nairobi. What do we do about the increasingly desperate situation of the abandoned? What do we do about the poor high school graduation rates and illiteracy? The single parenthood at very young ages?  The increasingly desperate attempts to reach kids who seem unreachable?

I read this blog entry in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Three babies and no high school diploma, and realized again how very difficult the task ahead is. As Eugene Robinson describes, young people having children is a decision that makes complete sense in the world of the abandoned, but in the larger world beyond the confines of their neighborhood, it is an albatross that limits one's progress.