Challenge 69: The urban crisis; #5 (Reel 1)

Challenge 69 the urban crisis. The students response. I observe that there are two problems that seem to be emerging. One is a generation gap. That is quite this horrible between the speakers and the young men and women who have come here to hear them. And also something of a communications gap. Comments were made by the men and women. Who came to hear a number of the speakers that we live in a competitive society which is all very true but they fail to understand that one must compete on something close to equal competitive grounds. It isn't fair for a 6 foot 200 pounder to take my young 10 year old son into a ring and propose to box or to wrestle with him. And I submit to you that the one fifth of all Americans who have to compete with the 80 percent of us that seem to have the full measure of the blessings of this society

are competing not on a very very fair basis at all and I think that that's what challenge 69 is all about. The Wake Forest University a symposium on contemporary American affairs presents challenge 69 the urban crisis. The student's response. This is the fifth in a series of nine programs that seek to focus attention on the problems of American cities. The topic of this program is the crisis of underemployment. The speaker on today's program Dr. Herbert Kramer is senior consultant to the Office of Economic Opportunity the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation and other organizations concerned with Urban Affairs. Speaking on the crisis of underemployment. Here now is Dr. Herbert Kramer. When I looked at the official program for the first time last night

I was somewhat appalled to find that in the first place I was the only unknown name a tiny burned out asteroid in the glittering constellation of stars that you had assembled for this session. Really I was here as a substitute for a substitute for a substitute. Which is I think my fate in life. I'm sure you started out with Mr Schreiber when he left the poverty program you went to Mr. Harding. Currently the acting director of the program and Mr. Harding unfortunately because of his schedule passed the ball to me. I hope we will all come out the winners and that. Bit of byplay. I also noted that I was scheduled to speak at 9 o'clock the ungodly witching hour of all conferences especially on the second morning. And that my topic under employment was probably the dullest of

any listed on the roster. And then I turned and I noted that my caricature or our portrait in the brochure made me look as surly as gangers Khan must have looked at nine o'clock in the morning. And then I heard. From all sides that in any case Michael Harrington had already carved up my subject and everyone else's I guess. So here we are we happy few. And we will try to improve each shining hour and say some things which may be interesting which may provoke you to discussion and which may at tangential points in the next half hour or so even touch on the assigned topic of under-employment. It may just have been the hour or the fact that yesterday

simply wasn't my day at all. But then again when you are in your mid forties no day can be expected to be your day. Piedmont Airlines yon. I didn't know I was. Giving forth with a local joke here. Piedmont Airlines if you'll excuse the expression after much confusion. And plane changing and red lights on the dashboard saying that things were out of order. Set me down in Winston-Salem five hours late last night from New York. The evening had been spent in such. Cultural away cities as the airports of Charlottesville in Lynchburg Virginia. Lynchburg has a very nice soft drink machine.

And that's all. And that afternoon while eating a very ordinary piece of Italian bread I had lost a rather extensive section of my bridgework. Reminding me abruptly of the perils of advancing age. So if there are several month sounds in this microphone. During the course of my address please excuse and I'm missing about 18 teeth on the right. Left side of my face. I'm trying to avoid all sibilants are smiling broadly so if I seem as surly as my picture you will know that that's the reason. Sheer vanity. But here we are and it is indeed 9 am and you are gracious and courageous to have assembled to hear me and I will try to make it at least semi worthwhile

under-employment. So every once in a while will come back to that word. So I have it in mind. It's really very simple under-employment means that you are employed but you are employed under either your capacity to do a job your aspirations and expectations or. Somehow you are being underpaid under challenge and overexploited. Under-employment I think in many ways is worse than unemployment because at least when you're unemployed you're doing nothing. You can sit around and. Watch the television and you can even do your own thing whatever your own thing happens to be. But when you're underemployed you're doing someone else's thing. You're doing the systems thing and you're generally being exploited in doing it. But under-employed in one sense of the word is something we

all are. Throughout a lifetime. Only some more critically than others. If we are not under employed in our jobs. Then we are generally underemployed in terms of responsibility to the community or to our fellow man or to ourselves or to the institutions of which we are a part. Whether they are a church or a marriage. Or a family. Or a city. We are underemployed and empathy. We are underemployed in service. We are underemployed in giving not and giving up. We're generally pretty good at that. Especially when it's tax deductible. But we're unemployed underemployed in giving of ourselves. Despite all the loud and angry noises emanating from the campus. At times from the streets I believe that as a nation

we are even under-employed in protest. There was a great deal more for us to protest about than we are at any given moment in time of any day of the week. Far more reasons to be angry than our protests even today would suggest. I need not recount to you all of the horrors of life around us which we take for granted and casually accept. But I will just name a few and perhaps they don't exist here in this. Lovely garden spot of Winston-Salem but maybe a few of them do. The air of most of our cities has become a pestilential smog. Our water from the tap. Foams with detergent wastes our cities rot outward from the car. Our suburbs are unlovely. Our schools are largely irrelevant.

Minorities are mutinous and rightfully so. Our little war our lovely little Our grinds of seemingly on. Our craftsmanship is shoddy. Our supermarkets wallow in the lot while children starve and mountain hollows. Yet most of us are so anesthetized. That we can sleepwalk through the rot of our lives our jobs our schools never waking to the nightmare that surrounds so many of us. And when a single Jeremiah like. All Ralph Nader Alexei or Michael Harrington or Harvey Cox or a Saul Alinsky raises loud outcries. About such thing as. Automobiles we rouse ourselves to a mild fury for a moment. And then slump back into our customary top bar. So I would say

that we as a nation are underemployed even in protest. I propose that if we would repeal those television induced scales from our eyeballs we would individually and collectively find enough. To kindle our continuous anger. And enough to keep us over employed for a life. Because God knows there are problems enough. In our city in our society and in the world to go around twice and still have some left over for the next generation. For the past four years I have been involved in what Mr Lensky has politely called political pornography the war on poverty. But Mr. Harrington calls a governmental skirmish. And what Lyndon Baines Johnson. You remember him I trust. In an expansive and exuberant moment in 1064 are

called an unconditional war against the paradox of poverty amidst plenty in the United States. It may have been a skirmish. It certainly has not been a full fledged war in which all the resources of the country have been employed. There has indeed been underemployment in our approach to when our massing of resources in the war on poverty. I would argue with Mr Lensky that it is political pornography or pornography of any kind as I define pornography it is arousal for arousals sake. I think the war on poverty has aroused people. It has aroused their expectations. It has not fulfilled them all but it has not been simply arousal for arousal sake but arousal for the sake of the changing of our society. And despite what any of the critics of the War on Poverty may say it has called forth in this

country the greatest volunteer effort the greatest and most sincere outpouring of employment. Of total commitment and total resources. Of any program in our peacetime history. More than a million Americans of all ages from the very young to the very old have Barwin teared freely given their time given their energies. Americans of every race of every political and economic coloration have volunteered and pitched in to do something to help. Mr. Muskie I think summed up some of the ways yesterday in which young people and old people can help from serving on Community Action boards to tutoring high school dropouts. To helping older people find meaning in their lives. What is serving is Vista volunteers in urban slums or on remote Indian reservations or in migrant camps. The War Against Poverty

skirmisher are not. Funded. Sufficiently are not. Has been the most effective antidote to social under-employment. That our country has known. And these volunteers have come into the war on poverty not because it was popular not because it was the thing to do but they have come out of conscience. And not really either because either they understood perfectly the nature of poverty in America or because they have agreed with every program. That the government put together to combat poverty amidst plenty. As a matter of fact most of us have taken the war on poverty on faith. We don't really understand the psychology or the pathology or the economics of the sociology of the poor but we take it on faith as Americans have since there was an America and as de Tocqueville discovered and wrote to his amazement when he visited this country that Americans do volunteer that when there

is a problem they get together and they do something about it. Whether it's clearing out a forest or whether it is helping out a neighbor in raising the beams of his home or of his barn. We don't insist in America that we agree with everything. But when as I say we see a problem. We plunge in to do something about it. Sometimes not well sometimes running madly in all directions but generally our energies and our hearts and our minds are stirred. Well. I don't think in this country today any of us can afford to luxury aid and plenty. While we know that twenty two million of our brothers and sisters are languishing in want. Our attitudes towards poverty in America are very ambivalent. They are shaped and molded by our own cultural heritage and by our individual backgrounds. So there is little agreement either among the professionals all the

volunteers as to precisely what the enemy in this war is where the battlefield is or how indeed the battle should be waged. The Office of Economic Opportunity in its legislation and in its guiding philosophy sees poverty as a complex set of interlocking disabilities. Each of which reinforces the other. And others to keep individuals and groups from entering the social and economic mainstream of American life. The junior league are from New England who is helping out in a head start classroom once a week sees poverty in terms of innocent little children. Innocent little black children innocent little white children who will be a raft of the happy experiences of her own childhood. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Now President Nixon's resident urban ologist sees poverty as a condition resulting primarily

from a family breakdown and a matriarchal society among our black communities. And has primarily caused by joblessness. And Saul Alinsky whom you will see and hear later today. Legend in his own time. Has with his usual directness and bluntness said poverty means not having any money. In his book entitled A irrelevant war against poverty the eminent. Negro sociologist Kenneth Clarke describes three basic attitudes which Americans have towards the poor. The first of these he calls the Puritan Horatio Alger tradition. And we are all guilty of feeling somewhat this way even though we snicker at it and recognize that it is completely out of style. In this tradition. Poverty is related to a lack of personal fiber.

The undeserving poor are undeserving of our help. Therefore public assistance should be withheld lest indulgence reinforce weakness. And limit the motivation of others who might see the poor getting ahead without working without striving without having courage and backbone. And therefore they themselves might decide to quit work and sit on the front porch and rock and indulge in all kinds of those delightful vices that only the poor as we all know ever indulge in. Like having too many children other things like that. The second. Well let me say that those who regard the poor in this light are in fact today as every day totally unemployed much less underemployed in the nation's fight against poverty. Instead they rail at the welfare mother with her pathetic little

illegitimate children. They seize gleefully on every incident of graft. Fraud or corruption in either the local or national poverty programs. And they say and you've heard them say and your parents have said. And my parents have said and maybe even we've said at times. My father came here with nothing. And he worked hard and he got out of poverty. So why can't. They. And we all know who they are because they are generally black or Puerto Rican or Mexican American with no place to go but the ghetto even if they do work themselves in the best Puritan Horatio Alger tradition out of poverty. The second attitude may be characterized as the Good Samaritan Lady Bountiful tradition.

And again we're all guilty of it. We all practice it. It's all part of our upbringing our heritage and our moral being as Americans. It goes this way. Poverty is the consequence of human weakness and lamentable circumstance. Very possibly almost possibly no fault of the victim. Therefore compassion is the order of the day. In order that the misery of the poor may be made more bearable. And in order that our own riches be made more bearable. Very many of the volunteers in the war on poverty have this attitude. It is sometimes called the Thanksgiving turkey syndrome. It's what happened to screwed when the ghost of Christmas to come finally made a Christian out of him. Now there's nothing wrong with this attitude. There really isn't. It doesn't generate much effort and it also provides a

great many Christmas turkeys which is not all bad if you happen to like Turkey. From a turkey's point of view I suppose it's appalling. And I think probably the turkeys would much rather have the Horatio Alger syndrome. But then we're talking about human beings and not turkeys I'm sorry to say we just can't include everyone in this talk on under-employment. However likely congressional wives who roll bandages every week for the war of their husbands help to perpetuate. The Christmas turkey syndrome. May stanch the blood temporarily. Without cauterizing the wound. The third attitude that I think is deeply ingrained in our national ethos and our national psyche is what may be called the prophet Amos tradition. It's much more Old Testament and this says that unjust conditions of society have victimized the poor. And not the

prosperous. Often exploitation even their relationship to the poor. And this is a very very good liberal point of view which is characterized traditional welfare programs and New Deal type efforts on the part of the federal government to redress the inherent equity inequities of our society and to provide compensatory services to those whom society has neglected or even injured. We know that society is wrong. We know that people are being injured by it. But instead of changing society instead up ending or upturning institutions instead of creating noise and violence and confusion which is after all very irritating and unsettling especially to the young and the old and the middle aged. We with our huge resources provide compensatory services on a kind of parallel track so that while we are in

our super jet express are going off into the promised land of three cars. And an eternity of vacations and all the wonderful things that our prosperity brings. Way back on another track totaling out black smoke and kind of wheezing along in the same direction but pretty far behind us and we don't have to be continually aware of it. Come the pool or with a little better schools a little better job opportunity a little better services because we have. Practice this tradition of ours of understanding that society does exploit the poor. Therefore we must make up for it. All of these traditional attitudes characterize our efforts in the war on poverty and all of them coalesce around the vital issue of work. Jobs employment. Manpower. Call it what you will. Work is a central fact of life in American thought and the

American experience. And we cannot talk about the urban crisis. We cannot talk about poverty we cannot talk about approaches to ending poverty unless we really try to think about and talk about work. And so believe it or not we are back temporarily to under-employment. If Saul Alinsky is right that poverty is lack of money and if the Puritan ethic is right that money is the reward and just reward offer work and of effort then. Daniel Patrick Moynihan must be right in saying that massive employment programs are the first answer to poverty in America. And indeed I think the government is certainly acting as if this were the case. And as if this were the answer. In fiscal year 1969 which we are now in and have been since July first. Half at least of the poverty budget and the poverty programs are going into manpower efforts.

With a dozen felicitously named acronymic programs such as jobs j o b s job opportunities in the business sector. And SAP which stands for the concentrated employment program and others too numerous to mention many of them conflicting many of them overlapping many of them confused. But all of them generally a at getting people into jobs so they can earn their bread so they can suddenly shock the stigma of poverty and move into the American promised land. Remember when we're talking about poverty in America since 1964 we have been talking about something very statistically exact. Very measurable. Because in 1964 when we discovered poverty thanks to Michael Harrington and others. And their work in bringing our attention

to the other America of thirty four million citizens just about the size of North and South Vietnam combined who were living by anyone's standards in deprivation and misery and want we said a statistical measuring rod or a line or whatever you want to call it and we said if you are above this line you are rich. But at least you're not poor if you are below this line even below or by a dollar one way or the other you are poor. And we set the line at approximately thirty two hundred dollars a year for a family of four. And we built it up on a building block which said that if you are an American. Not if you are Chinese or Indian or Latin American because they have a entirely different standard of value and different standard of life and different diet different history but if you are an American and you have 23 cents a day per meal.

For three meals a day at a dollar forty cents left over for everything else you're poor. That's $2 a day. If you have two dollars and twenty cents a day as an individual you're rich. Because with that extra 20 cents you can. You can take a bus if you can find a bus part way to work. Probably won't get you all the way to work but in New York City that 20 cents will buy you one way subway token. And then once you've been at your job you can figure out how to get back. Or if you are a child and you I have that 20 cents extra you can buy 20 pieces of bubble gum. And those will make you rich. Because everyone knows that a child deprived of 20 pieces of bubble gum is born. In any case we set that arbitrary standard of where poverty is. Well obviously if there were 34 million Americans about one fifth of our nation who were

poor by that standard there are many many more are probably up around 50 million Americans or so who are poor by a standard only slightly above the US. Therefore what we are saying is that if this is what it means to be poor in America. Obviously you've got to have a job it's going to take you above that poverty line. And obviously what we've got to do is make certain that through a combination of welfare help or public assistance or various other programs plus a job nobody in America will any longer be poor.