13 BLACK POWER
T
he civil rights movement cleansed the country of a great moral evil.
But major problems in the ghettoes remained because racism was often
more intractable in the North than the South. Unlike white immi-
grants who clawed their way to the suburbs, native-born blacks remained
stuck in the ghetto. A combination of interests kept northern neighborhoods
segregated. Realtors steered most black homebuyers to black neighborhoods.
On occasion, realtors moved a black family into a white neighborhood and
then profited by spreading rumors that more blacks were coming. Panicked
whites sold their homes at fire sale prices to brokers, who then sold them to
middle-class blacks at higher prices. As the cities became blacker, whites fled
the centre on new federal highways, leaving urban areas destitute. Low-
income people could not help themselves because banks and insurers
refused them assistance, a practice called redlining. The result was that more
blacks sank into poverty. Politicians responded to the urban crisis by erect-
ing public housing projects to warehouse blacks. Blacks understandably con-
cluded that ‘urban renewal equals Negro removal.’
Blacks in the seething ghetto had almost no chance of success. In these
hellholes, blacks battled rat-infested apartments, an unemployment rate twice
that of whites, prying welfare officials, soaring drug use, rampant gang violence,
police harassment, inadequate mass transit, and condescending teachers in
second-rate schools. Economic opportunity was an illusion, as manufactur-
ing firms relocated to the suburbs and craft unions excluded blacks from
apprenticeships in good-paying positions. Many unemployed black men
abandoned their families. Blacks with jobs worked in dead-end positions that
were hidden from the eyes of the white public, such as dishwasher and jan-
itor. Television advertisements of consumer goods heightened the frustra-
tions of impoverished young blacks. Merchandise in the ghetto was often
inferior but expensive. Short of cash, blacks bought goods on credit for
which they paid exorbitant rates. Estranged from their surroundings, many
northern blacks struggled without strong family, church, or community ties.