Assessment 137companies have abandoned the inner city. Schemes to bus children across
racial lines backfired as white enrollment plummeted. Schools are largely
resegregated, including the one attended by Ruby Bridges. Even in integrated
schools, blacks are often put in remedial coursework. Without jobs, resources,
or adequate social services, inner cities have degenerated into urban cesspools
with endemic violence, casual sex, drug addiction, and spiraling AIDS rates.
Black men are six times more likely than white men to be murdered and one
in three black men will end up in jail, on parole, or on probation. A sense of
hopelessness has led too many young black men to fantasize about becoming
one of the few millionaire athletes. Middle-class blacks are only too glad to
run from failing cities to the suburbs. As they do so, black-owned businesses
collapse. While Martin Luther King’s dream for a just America seems far less
remote than when he died, president Kennedy’s words echo through the
decades: America ‘can do better.’