The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Memorial Day, President Bush renewed his call to extend most favored nation trade status to China, a cease-fire was announced in the Ethiopian civil war, investigators looked at the possibility of a bomb in yesterday's crash of an Austrian airliner in Thailand. Tonight on the NewsHour our primary focus will be young black men. We'll look at why they're in trouble and what can be done to help. Then Roger Rosenblatt has some thoughts about the timing of Memorial Day. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: President Bush today renewed his call to extend sweeping trade privileges to China for another year. Mr. Bush said continuing most favored nation status or MFN would help reform China. Many Democrats have argued China should not be given such a reward until it improves its human rights record. The President spoke at his alma mater, Yale University.

PRES. BUSH: Some argue that a nation as moral and just as ours should not taint itself by dealing with nations less moral, less just, but this counsel offers up self-righteousness draped in a false morality. You do not reform a world by ignoring it. It is right to export the ideals of freedom and democracy to China. It is right to encourage Chinese students to come to the United States and for talented American students to go to China. It is wrong to isolate China if we hope to influence China.

MR. MacNeil: White House officials also announced new trade sanctions against China today. They said the U.S. would take steps to cut off the exported technology used by China to develop missiles which it exports to third world nations like Pakistan. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell today called these new sanctions a joke. He said they were a fig leaf attempting to cover what is the wrong nature of the policy. He said Congress would try to reverse the China trade plan. A cease-fire agreement was announced today in Ethiopia's long civil war. It allows for control of the capital city by a rebel group known as the EPRDF. The announcement came as U.S. sponsored peace talks between the government and several rebel groups began in London. We have a report by Simon Cole of Worldwide Television News.

MR. COLE: Ethiopian Prime Minister Tinka with his capital surrounded by rebels knew his government would have to step down. All morning rebel delegations came and went before the American brokers announced the breakthrough.

HERMAN COHEN, Assistant Secretary of State: A cease-fire is being announced in Addis Ababa by the interim government. In order to reduce uncertainties and eliminate tensions in the city and after consulting with all the parties, the United States government is recommending that the forces of the EPRDF enter the city as soon as possible to help stabilize the situation.

MR. COLE: But the deal didn't please exiles who shouted for unity. Ethiopians Against War simply don't trust the EPRDF.

MULUGETA ASSERATE, Ethiopians Against War: In the short-term we feel that this proposal will only secure a bogus and short lived peace. In the long run, we feel it is like asking Ethiopia to sign her own death warrant.

MR. COLE: After telephone negotiations, the EPRDF arrived personally to reassure the Americans that theycan control events in Ethiopia. Now they have to convince a people tired of war.

MR. MacNeil: Late today there were conflicting reports about whether the rebel troops had, in fact, taken control in the Ethiopian capital. At first, Rebel Radio said they had entered Addis Ababa, but later reports said they were prepared to do so. Investigators in Thailand today continued to search for clues as to the cause of yesterday's explosion aboard an Austrian airliner. All 223 people aboard the Lauda Airline plane were killed. One airline official said it appeared to have been blown up by a bomb. The plane exploded in a fireball and crashed into a hilltop jungle. It had taken off minutes earlier from Bangkok Airport en route to Vienna, Austria. Police in India have taken a Sri Lanken Tamil woman into custody in connection with the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. She's believed to be an accomplice of the suicide bomber who blew up Gandhi at an election rally last Tuesday. Investigators said a militant Tamil group seeking independence for Sri Lanka is suspected of ordering the assassination. Meanwhile, Gandhi's family boarded a train in New Delhi with his ashes today. Mark Austin of Worldwide Television News has this report.

MR. AUSTIN: Congress Party supporters packed the platform to see the ashes of their revered former leader depart for the final destination, the sacred waters of the Ganges. Security around the family is now overwhelming. In the ceremonial carriage, Sonia Gandhi had a moment alone. 19 year old daughter Prianka tried to organize but the strains of a somber day are evident all around, riding in the train scores of India's elite Black Cap Commandos, a journey that will end where the Gangese meets two other holy rivers, the place where tomorrow Rajiv Gandhi's ashes will finally be immersed.

MR. MacNeil: A Nationalist leader won the election for President in the Soviet Republic of Georgia. It was the first direct Presidential election in any region of the Soviet Union. Svia Gamascordia is a former political prisoner. He's also a leader of Georgia's secessionist movement. He said he plans to meet shortly with Soviet President Gorbachev to discuss the future with his republics. America's war dead were honored in ceremonies around the country this Memorial Day. Vice President Dan Quayle laid a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. He paid special tribute to veterans of the Gulf War, calling Operation Desert Storm a victory of tyranny -- of freedom over tyranny. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin Powell, laid a wreath at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. He told hundreds of people gathered there this summer's welcome home parades for Gulf War veterans should also honor veterans of the Vietnam War.

GEN. COLIN POWELL, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff: If you're a veteran of Vietnam, you will be at every parade and at every celebration, you will be there in person or in the hearts and minds of all Americans. The parades will be for you too. But you won't be there to redeem yourself. You need no redemption. You'll be there to share in the adulation, to accept some of the applause you were denied and to be recognized for the true and brave patriots that you are. The parades and celebrations are not needed to restore our honor as Vietnam veterans because we never lost our honor. They're not to clear up the matter of our valor, because our valor was never in question.

MR. MacNeil: That's it for the News Summary. Now it's on to how to help young black men beat the odds against them and a Memorial Day essay. FOCUS - LOST GENERATION?

MR. MacNeil: We devote the bulk of tonight's program to the problems confronting America's young black men. Just before the holiday, Roger Mudd asked several experts to discuss why some people consider them a lost generation and what can be done to help.

MR. MUDD: An increasing number of black American men is living in the margins of society, so claim a growing number of concerned community leaders and educators. Last week the state of black men in America was the focus of a three day conference here in Washington.

LOUIS SULLIVAN, Secretary, Health & Human Services: We come together at a crucial moment. African-American men are being referred to as an endangered species. While life expectancy for every other segment in our society is improving or at least is holding steady, in contrast, life expectancy for black males is actually declining. But I'm not here today to bring a message of despair, but rather a message of hope and a message of empowerment. I firmly believe that enduring solutions to the problems of the black community will be found within the black community. The time has come for independent thinking, for bold leadership, from African-American men and women. We must transform a culture of violence which defeats and destroys into a culture of character which uplifts and empowers.

MR. MUDD: Statistics presented at the conference seemed to indicate a crisis of growing proportions among young black men. Twenty-five percent of black males between 20 and 29 are in prison, on parole, or on probation. Homicide is the leading cause of death for black males aged 15 to 24. Life expectancy for black males is 65 years, for white males 72 years. 40 percent of all black adult males are functionally illiterate. The high school drop-out rate is 12.4 percent compared to a white male drop-out rate of 10.8. Black men with college degrees are three times more likely to be unemployed than their white counterparts. The unemployment rate for black males is 12.2 percent. It is 5.5 percent for white males. In major urban areas, the unemployment rate can run as high as 64 percent. With these statistics as basis for discussion, we begin tonight by talking to two young black males. James Staten is a senior at the University of California Santa Barbara. He is one of one hundred thirty-two black men enrolled at the university. He is the director of a campus organization known as 100 Black Men. And Matty Rich of New York City is 19 and he has just written and produced his first film "Straight Out of Brooklyn," which is set in the same Red Hook Public Housing Project where he grew up. [FILM SEGMENT]

MR. MUDD: Matty Rich in New York, why did you make that movie?

MR. RICH: Well, I made the movie because I saw a lot of pain in the housing projects that I grew up in Red Hook Housing Projects in Brooklyn. I saw a lot of oppression, the same thing, the oppression that my father faced coming back from the Vietnam War when he couldn't find a job. When I look outside my window, I don't see people singing, I don't see people dancing, I see people who are out of work, I see people who are uneducated, and I see people who want to make a change to get their family out of that situation. Just like the father in my movie rants and raves, talks about his father told him that he can have the whole American dream, how he can be a doctor and he can be a lawyer, and his son over here is saying to himself if my grandfather told my father that he can be all those things and he amounted to be gas station attendant, what am I going to, what am I going to be, how am I going to get myself or my family out of this situation? Me growing up in Red Hook seeing so much anger and seeing all my friends die one by one, it built a lot of anger up inside of me, seeing my brother beaten up by 10 guys on the 4th of July, seeing my aunt and my uncle die on my birthday, seeing a lot of destructive forces in the black community, sparked me to do this movie called "Straight Out of Brooklyn."

MR. MUDD: And how have you been able yourself to escape the statistic that I read just a moment ago? How did you do it?

MR. RICH: Well, after my mother and father split up, I looked at that Brady Bunch family and I saw Peter drop a ice cream on the floor and Mr. Brady said no problem, but when I did it, there was a problem. So I told my mother, that's what I want to do with my life, I want to take all of that negative energy that I had and use it for something positive by reading books, by not going through the whole system where people say, well, maybe, Matty, if you want to make a film, you got to go to college for four years and you got to do another four years. I didn't do it that way. The difference between me and another black young teen is I use my brain. How all my friends died was by emotion. You talk about my mother, bang, you talk about my sister, bang. So what I did was even though I hung out with the boys during the day, I read during the night. I read about films. I read about how, what different parts of the camera was and that sort of stuff, so I used my positive, I used some positive energy towards that way so that's how I did it.

MR. MUDD: So it was all you and not government. Do you believe the government has a role in easing the pressure of these statistics?

MR. RICH: Yes, but I'm more of the community first. I'm more of setting an example for young black men like myself in the community. What do you think I would be doing if I never got into the film industry? What do you think I would be doing if my mother didn't show me the guidance of how to be a strong man, not to be oppressed, to take some of that anger and put it to something positive? I would be dead just like the rest of my friends. I would be unemployed, sitting on a street corner, looking hopeless, or looking at my friend's father and my father on a street corner because, not because they're not thinking men, because they've been stripped down not once, not five times, but their whole entire life.

MR. MUDD: Let me ask James Staten, you watched that clip with us. Is that something out of your life that you're familiar with?

MR. STATEN: Directly, no. Indirectly or outside forces, I've had other family members who have been in similar situations. I'm from Los Angeles, California, not South Central LA, but a suburb thereof, Englewood, and not far from my house is the same sort of project situation. They called it Englewood Bottoms. It's Woodworth I believe is the name of the actual section 8 housing that we live near and these are things that we see on a daily basis. I'm a graduate of George Washington Preparatory High School in Los Angeles. Our principal, past principal was a man by the name of George McKenna, who apparently lectures now and is in the process of writing a book, but a lot of things that we saw at the high school level and at the actual high school in our neighborhood are like those things that we see in Matty's film. We don't see the Brady Bunch. That's not our experience, and I think that he captured or has captured in that clip definitely a lot of the frustration and the acting on that frustration.

MR. MUDD: At the conference last week, you said that young black males have to provide their own role models, and there was a great cheer when you said that. Describe for me a young black male role model.

MR. STATEN: Matty Rich is a role model. I'm a role model. I think that anyone who is an example of positivity, an example of someone trying to escape the expectations and goals that the dominant culture has for black men. These are role models. As I said at the conference, we at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the black men on our campus, those who are involved with the 100 Black Men's Group, we have realized that we have to be our own role models. There are 67 black faculty at our university and the majority of them are teaching in the black studies department. There is one who has been the department head of the political science department. We don't have that many role models as far as faculty is concerned at the University of California at Santa Barbara, therefore, we look to ourselves, support ourselves, study groups, in classes, if there are two or three of us in the same class, we try to study together, we try to help each other write papers, we support each other socially. It's important for us to be our own role models. We're role models for young black men in the community.

MR. MUDD: Let's open up the discussion now. Joining us is Douglas Glasgow, who's a resident scholar of the 21st Century Commission on African-American Males, whose commission is funded by private contributions and by foundations and that's sponsored a three day conference in Washington last week on the problems of black men. Dr. Glasgow is the former dean of Howard University's School of Social Work, and Paul Peterson is a professor of government at Harvard University and he's the co-author of "The Urban Underclass" and he joins us from Washington. Dr. Glasgow, do the statistics that we saw at the beginning distort the picture?

DR. GLASGOW: The statistics, far from distortion, paint only one side of the picture. Those statistics are real statistics. If you adjust those for sometimes some populations which are not counted, the gap between employment of blacks and whites will grow, the drop-out rates will grow. It depends what you do with the statistics. But it's not the statistics that are primarily the important thing. The fact is hidden behind those statistics are real people and particularly what we're dealing with in our conference are real black men. While we had a statistic which was put up which spoke of black men between the ages of 20 and 29, one out of four will be found in the criminal justice system, that is a very powerful and staggering statistic, but it really doesn't say to us who these black men are. We don't know if they were from families, if they're the other side of our single-parented families, were they unemployed, or whether they were employed. We don't really know who they are and hence, it makes us very difficult for us sometime to develop the types of program responses and the policy responses for this population.

MR. MUDD: Prof. Peterson in Boston, what do you make of the statistics? Professor.

PROF. PETERSON: Well, I think one of the things we need to be concerned about is that we don't simplify things too much. Racial prejudice comes from racial stereotyping and there are certainly big differences in the opportunities that black men and white men have in our society. But things are not necessarily getting worse for black men in all respects. You're absolutely correct when you talk about the increasing joblessness among young black men. That is a serious problem, and it's growing. But, on the other hand, more black people and young black men are staying in school than ever before and the gap between blacks and whites in terms of educational achievement has been steadily closing. It's also the case that crime rates dropped quite dramatically in the early 1980s, especially among black men and things have gotten somewhat worse in the last couple of years, but we're still not back up to the very bad numbers that we had back in the '70s. So there's a number of ways in which we can see progress being made as well as areas such as unemployment, which are really serious, and we see retrogression.

MR. MUDD: Is there a connection, Prof. Peterson, between the unemployment rate among black males and the high rate of prisoners, of black males in the prison system?

PROF. PETERSON: I doubt that there is. Nobody has really established that there is. I have a feeling that we become much more ready to incarcerate people today than we once were and the increasing numbers of people in prison is due to changing policies of our criminal justice system, rather than something that's happening in the labor market. It is the case that you've got increasing joblessness, but you've had that going on for about fifteen, twenty years, and during that period of time there was a very substantial drop-off in the murder rate and in assault and battery and other serious crimes.

MR. MUDD: Dr. Glasgow, when we talk about 40 percent of that 9 out of 10 this, how many people are we talking about? Is it a great chunk of America's black population?

DR. GLASGOW: It's a very great chunk. It's 33 percent of, easily 1/3 of the black population, the working age population are poor. And that doesn't mean necessarily that that portion is part of an underclass necessarily. That is a population which -- and that's part of the complication -- part of the problem you have is there are larger numbers of black families are working and work 52 weeks a year and will work 40 hours a week -- I mean, they believe in the work ethic -- and at the end of the year have an annual income of eight thousand, nine thousand dollars. So what we have is an increasing number of families who continue to support the work ethic, participate fully in the labor market, but come out at the end poor.

PROF. PETERSON: I agree with that. There's been a very substantial decrease in the earnings that young men are receiving and mainly because of the shift in our labor market from manufacturing to the service economy. And this has had a really big effect in our central cities. Plus you've had the formation of more female-headed households than ever before, and with women receiving lower wages than men, this creates a lot of female-headed households where you have working women who are living in poverty.

DR. GLASGOW: Yes. But one of the reasons why you have working women who are living in poverty is because you don't have working men. Our society has somehow or the other fragmented and segmenting the question for the last two decades or public policy as spoken about at single female-headed households. We've almost legitimized the motion that these families can be legitimate and they're a standard type of family, but we haven't spoken of the absence of males. There are males who should be with these families I mean traditionally. Now while we want to sometimes pass these off as an extended family or a different format of family, that is a Herculean task which has been imposed upon black women because of the disproportionate dislocation of black males from the labor force.

MR. MUDD: Let's, if we can, try some solutions, or at least talk about some solutions, and I want to bring in several other guests, Dr. Glasgow. Elsie Scott is deputy police commissioner for training. She's a former director of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives. Robert Woodson is the president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, which is the Washington-based research organization, and he's in Chicago tonight, and in Atlanta is the Rev. Joseph Lowery, the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Dr. Scott, what do you do about getting the black male back under the roof?

DR. SCOTT: It depends on what roof you're talking about.

MR. MUDD: The roof under which he produced a family.

DR. SCOTT: Well, my area of concern is primarily criminal justice, so I've been looking through my research at reducing the involvement of African-American males in the criminal justice system. And two factors stick out in my research. It's education and employment that we have to get black males educated, we have to open programs for them, and then we have to get them trained for jobs and into productive employment. Those are two primary factors that we've identified.

MR. MUDD: Do statistics that we talked about at the beginning, the 25 percent of black males are involved in the criminal -- some stage of the criminal justice system -- does that surprise you?

DR. SCOTT: It doesn't surprise me as a researcher. But it concerns me as a person who's working in the criminal justice system because I think we have to do much more in order to try to prevent the involvement of them. And I would try to identify some of the causes. I think that's one thing in the criminal justice system we haven't done enough of. We have looked at locking them and warehousing them but we haven't gone back to look at the root causes of why there are so many involved with the criminal justice system.

MR. MUDD: So is your solution then to break the cycle by going into the schools? Is that where you would start?

DR. SCOTT: I'd start right from Head Start.

MR. MUDD: From Head Start.

DR. SCOTT: Yeah. I think we --

MR. MUDD: Preschool?

DR. SCOTT: Yeah, preschool. There's been some research that's showed that African-American males are behind, yet behind right from elementary school and some of the research has shown that, one, they have teachers who don't have expectations of them, that a lot of African-American males are just identified as failures right from the first grade and this continues and so they are identified as failures, eventually drop out, they go into the streets, they don't have jobs. They get involved with the criminal justice system.

MR. MUDD: Do you think -- is it fair to put that burden on the schools? Are the schools up to that sort of challenge?

DR. SCOTT: I think that's one of the areas that we have to put it on. But, you know, parents have a role, the government has a role, but, you know, I think schools become primary, a primary factor in this.

PROF. PETERSON: Roger, if I may --

MR. MUDD: Who's talking?

PROF. PETERSON: This is Paul Peterson.

MR. MUDD: All right.

PROF. PETERSON: I would add this additional point. If we don't have a growing economy, an increasingly productive economy, we're just not going to provide people with jobs. One of the things that research has shown is that in those cities where you have had very rapid economic growth uneducated or less than high school education people can find jobs, they can be incorporated in the labor market and the poverty rate will fall. And unless you've got that growing economy, the jobs just aren't going to be there.

DR. SCOTT: But there's still the factor of racism. There's a recent study just published by the Urban Institute that sent people out dressed the same way with the same credentials in Chicago and Washington, D.C., and they found that blacks were discriminated against in 20 percent of the cases.

MR. MUDD: Let me ask Robert Woodson in Chicago, do you agree with Prof. Peterson that the economy is the key?

MR. WOODSON: No, I don't. I'm sort of troubled by this whole discussion, and even the commission because I think first of all they, they aggregate all black males. The sons and daughters of middle income blacks who are with college degrees are not in crisis and I think we do a disservice to poor blacks when we aggregate and give these kind of aggregate statistics. What we are doing I think by having a conference where you're charging $650 registration fee, meeting at the Shorum, where the principal presenters are civil rights leaders, academics, and the Matty's of this world and the others who really are in those communities, who have designed their own solutions to their own unique problems are carefully neglected, when we're seeking solutions, and I think this is a kind of cruel bait and switch game where we use the conditions of poor blacks to offer remedies that help the sons and daughters of the Joe Lowery's and the Bob Woodsons. What we need to be doing is going into those neighborhoods, instead, having, doing inventories of why 50 percent of families living in those neighborhoods are raising children who are drug free, who are not mugging and robbing people, to find out, as Matty said, the real role models and experts, how they were able to achieve against the odds, and bring them together, because, after all, many of the blacks who assembled in Washington came from school districts and cities that had been run by blacks for 20 years like Newark, New Jersey, where 80 percent of the kids taking a simple math exam failed and yet, these are the people we're bringing together as experts on the black problem. We really need to embrace innovation. We need to embrace the problems within the black community have nothing to do with racism, but instead we should be looking at what is the crisis within ourselves. Why is it that prior to 1959, 78 percent of all black families had a man and a woman raising them, when we were facing racism at its most intense form? Why now do we have the decline?

MR. RICH: Can I comment on that?

MR. MUDD: Yes. Who's talking?

MR. RICH: Matty Rich.

MR. MUDD: Matty, go ahead, Matty Rich.

MR. RICH: I think that's right on. My whole thing is to build up the community first. First, you have to show the young people in the community examples, show them several different ways that they can go out of the community, just not negatively, and show them that you can be a thinking man, not an emotional man, and it all starts from the community at first. I think that we should start not leaving Brooklyn, not leaving Watts, not leaving Chicago, or Watts, but staying within the community and showing and making our grass green and not leave for Park Avenue, not leave for Malibu, because when you leave, that makes people in a neighborhood feel lower. So it's --

MR. WOODSON: We're sending a very dangerous message to our young people. Now I heard at the conference the recurring themes from Doug Wilder or Joe Lowery and the rest, well, racism is the big problem and that we need a more sensitive government. The destiny of black America has never been determined by what white people would allow us to do. Our forbearers took their destinies into their own hands, regardless of what white people decided they would let us do. And I think Joe and others do the community a tremendous disservice by saying somehow that even though we are running these cities, we are responsible for our own children's mis-education, and that somehow that white people are responsible for what we do I think does a disservice to solutions, and I think that what you experienced the last three days with this conference of academics whose children are not at risk is that it prevents us from bringing together the Mattys of this world, the people in those neighborhoods who have demonstrated that they are real experts because they have achieved against the odds.

MR. MUDD: Let me ask --

MR. WOODSON: And yet, they are ignored as a source of information.

MR. MUDD: Let me ask Dr. Joseph Lowery in Atlanta for a comment. Mr. Woodson says you're doing a disservice. You have the floor, Dr. Lowery.

REV. LOWERY: I've heard Bob Woodson before and when you have nothing positive to offer, what you do is jump on somebody who does. I think the greatest disservice I ever heard in the past generation comes from people like Bob Woodson who claim there's no racism. First of all --

MR. WOODSON: I did not say that. I said racism is a problem, not the problem.

REV. LOWERY: You said racism was not a factor.

MR. WOODSON: It's "a" problem, not "the" problem.

REV. LOWERY: You said racism was not a factor. Now Bob, sit and listen for a moment. I know it's difficult. But what we've got to do is develop the will to achieve, and I admire this young man who reached down in his bosom, in his belly, and found the will to achieve. We've got to try to spread that will around first among black people themselves, and I think they're capable -- it's interesting to note statistic-wise that when you talk about female- headed families and teen-age pregnancy, that young black men who have jobs tend to marry the girls they make pregnant and stay home. It's when they cannot find jobs that they're either driven away by a corrupt welfare system who won't support a woman when there's a man in the house or they, they lose their self-esteem and go away because they can't find work. But we've got to develop a will first in the hearts and minds and determination of black people, black young people, themselves, then we've got to develop a national will so that we provide opportunities for employment, so we provide job training that people can learn how to match with skills the jobs that are available today. We have not developed that national will. We are more concerned about the well being of the rich in Kuwait than we are about the well being of the poor in the United States of America.

MR. MUDD: Dr. Lowery, you used the phrase what's needed is a marshall plan. Tell me about what you meant by that.

REV. LOWERY: Well, I'm not going to let government off the hook. It certainly has to begin in the community, but don't let anybody tell you that public policy, which is -- which is so much responsible for the plight and dilemma of black males -- has always been a systemic assault on black males that the government doesn't have a responsibility. We've never depended totally on government, but we do need government to give leadership, to provide incentives for the private sector where most jobs are, to cooperate with the private sector in providing apprentices and job training experiences for young black people who want to work. I've seen black people young and old line up all night, 2000 of them for 200 jobs, because they want to work. We have embraced the work ethic and I'm not asking for a hand-out, I'm asking for a hand-up.

MR. WOODSON: Roger.

REV. LOWERY: It must come from the private sector and it certainly must come from us.

MR. MUDD: Robert.

MR. WOODSON: I can't understand, I can't understand why in the last 20 years we blacks have been in control of our school systems in our major cities where these children are failing, we have been in control of the housing policies in these cities where in my city of Washington, D.C., a city that's 70 percent black, in the last 15 years we have 10 major urban development projects all downtown, not in the neighborhoods experiencing the problem, the same in Atlanta, the same in Newark and other places, and yet, Joe, you and others seem to ignore this reality and somehow point the finger to blacks. The National Center --

REV. LOWERY: Point the finger where?

MR. WOODSON: -- has been --

REV. LOWERY: Point the fingers where, Bob?

MR. WOODSON: Point the fingers to white people as being somehow responsible for those policies and --

REV. LOWERY: I'm pointing the finger at all of us.

MR. WOODSON: Well, I listened to you. Listen to me.

REV. LOWERY: No, not very long and not very well.

MR. WOODSON: Anyway --

MR. MUDD: Give him a chance, Dr. Lowery.

MR. WOODSON: But we at the National Center have precisely been spending all of our time going around the country finding out the Mattys of this world, helping people take over public housing, driving the drug dealers out, identifying a school like the Chad School in Newark, New Jersey, that's teaching young children, black children, 450 of them, where their cost is less than $3,000, yet the kids are performing two years above grade level, a zero drop- out rate, when in the same city in the public school system, the cost of educating a child is $10,000 per child and so we look for strengths and there are thousands of people out here where they are not the ones who are receiving the attention, these are not the people receiving the resources. Instead, we keep directing resources to people who have never demonstrated an effective approach to addressing problems of the kids in these inner-cities.

MR. MUDD: Let me -- excuse me, gentlemen -- let me ask Dr. Glasgow a question. A minute ago Mr. Woodson said that you were running what amounted to a switch and bait conference, and I gather he thinks perhaps the conference should be about the black success story. Would you respond to his criticism of your conference.

DR. GLASGOW: Well, I think that the conference clearly is one of the most formidable conferences that's been held on black men in the United States for quite some time. First, it represents a special distinct type of conference in that the Senate of the United States has reached out and asked black scholars in the United States to provide research and data and information, analysis, and then recommendations to Congress as to what is the condition of black males and what can be done. And that's unprecedented. Congress has always asked other scholars, the white scholars in the Brooklyn Institute and the Heritage, et cetera, to reach for black scholars as an extremely important step. To denigrate black scholars is almost madness --

MR. WOODSON: It does not denigrate scholars. What do they know about the problem?

DR. GLASGOW: -- and so it doesn't really require the kind of response on that. The question is not a very simple question and I think that's the other problem here. If you are really trying to break it down to it has to be this or that, it is not this or that, true, we must begin to find -- and I am a believer -- that the source of the redevelopment, of the strength of black families and black people is going to lie in the capacity of black people. But I would like to also suggest to you that the imbalance that has been created for over two decades of unemployment for large portions of our society of black people, that unemployment, the lack of economic income and security, the programs that helped people humanely out of poverty, that did not forge them into the working place, so by 1980 when you changed over to a supply side economy and you cut back on the social programs, those people who were held there in the '70s were dumped and hence in the first quarter of the 1980s we saw the fastest increase, the swiftest increase in poverty in the United States. Now I'm suggesting that what we have today is a convergence of many phenomena in the past. We do need the local type of activities. For example, we need to develop a kind of "intrafied" system within the community itself. We need to begin to take and develop schools that are more in the control of black people in the educational system.

MR. MUDD: Let me ask Dr. Scott if I may -- do you agree that the ultimate solution is with the blacks, themselves?

DR. SCOTT: I think that's a starting point.

MR. MUDD: A starting point.

DR. SCOTT: I think that we have to be responsible for our community, but the government owes us -- we pay taxes which makes our system just like everybody else, so there is a responsibility from the government to put money into programs and develop policies that do not discriminate and that give blacks an equal chance. And even I'm supportive of affirmative action program.

MR. MUDD: Prof. Peterson, go ahead.

PROF. PETERSON: Roger, if I may add this, it seems to me one half of the problem is the decline in employment opportunities and earnings of young black men, and that's going on for about 15 years now, and I don't see how we're going to solve that problem without a national approach, because it's due to international trends and the overall state of the productivity of the American economy. The other half of the problem is the increasing number of female-headed households and that's a factor that's affecting white people and black people alike. In all parts of our population, we're finding mothers with young children and they have the responsibility to both earn the income for these children and to raise them. And so part of it is our family life and part of it is in the economy. And to say it's one or the other I think is just to miss half of the problem.

MR. WOODSON: I just have a question. I just have a question for the researchers. Explain why during the depression, in the '30s, did we not have this disintegration of the family when blacks were thrown out of work. Why up until 1959 did less than 2 percent of black children were raised in homes where the mother never married, and yet we've gone through recessions and depressions, why didn't we have the social disorganization then?

PROF. PETERSON: I absolutely agree with you.

MR. WOODSON: Why?

MR. MUDD: Dr. Peterson, let Dr. Glasgow answer the Woodson question. Then I'll come to you.

PROF. PETERSON: Fair enough.

DR. GLASGOW: There are basically two different reasons. The depression of the '30s the whole nation, the whole labor force fell apart, the whole economy fell apart, and there were social programs of a magnitude which both blacks and whites used. It's really the model that was established and really innovated in the 1970s. The 1950s is a total different period again. Even though there was the disproportionality of blacks out of the labor force, what you had was the absorption of hundreds of thousands of young black men, my brothers and sisters, who did not go to college like I did, but who were absorbed in the myriad of industries that existed. They could go into a small city and get a job. And they got a job in the base of the steel mills, they got a job in Ford, they got a job in the assembly plants and the packing houses, et cetera. That was the base and the stability of black families in the 1940s and the 1950s. It was not welfare. It was not social programs. It was essentially employment. Now when the marketplace structurally has changed, we do have a phenomena in the '90s which says that it is a national policy to adopt the kind of fiscal policies -- and these are public policies -- you have to develop the kind of fiscal policies that called for an economic growth. You cannot have slow growth and large forces of your population without access to employment, and that you need. That does not belie what needs to be done within the community, itself.

MR. MUDD: Let me go to Prof. Peterson. Go ahead.

PROF. PETERSON: I just wanted to make this additional point, that recent data shows that the increasing black unemployment is only a very small factor in affecting the increase in number of female- headed households. It's a factor, but it accounts for about 20 percent of what's going on. The other 80 percent is due to other trends in our society that have nothing to do with the economy. So we are not going to solve that problem just by having an economic solution.

REV. LOWERY: I would take issue with Dr. Peterson on that. I don't think the facts affirm that but I do agree that we must not let people think we are saying that disintegration of a family is solely a black problem. It's an entirely different age today from the '30s and the '40s, and even the '50s, for both black and white families, and we need a restoration and revival of values that center around the family. And finally let me say that it's an elitist and insensitive posture that says that everybody in the black community suffering from years of neglect can be a self- starter like this fine young man. Others have to be motivated. They have to be challenged and there have to be opportunities there for them to progress and grab hold of once they're motivated. It's elitist and insensitive to say they don't need help. They do need help, as all of us had help who made it.

MR. MUDD: Let me ask -- Mr. Staten has been sitting here following the discussion enthusiastically. Go ahead, sir.

MR. STATEN: I agree with what Mr. Lowery has to say about we need opportunities. You can attempt to make your own opportunities in this society but I think that as a young black student at a white institution in the UC system we're facing now currently a 40 percent fee increase. The majority of students who go to public institutions go there because they can't afford private ones. If we don't have that opportunity to fully develop those things that we are trying to develop on our own, those dreams die. I've seen numerous people that I entered the University of California Santa Barbara with who have fallen by the wayside because of economics. Theyhad to work and that takes away from your schooling, and everything is interconnected. Everything these gentlemen has said, everything is interconnected is what I've gotten from it, and what I think I'd like to bring out or bring up is that, yes, we need to look to the community to help maintain and create those opportunities, but we cannot let this internal colonialist of a government that we have off the hook. They have coopted the black communities to such a degree that it seems as if we can't get ourselves together to help each other attain those goals. Without that, we can't -- we need that help and we can't let the government off the hook. They have created this underclass, this poverty line. They've created that.

MR. MUDD: The government has?

MR. STATEN: The government has. They shouldn't be let off the hook for that. They need to be held responsible. I do believe though again that the black community has to take responsibility for its own self and to develop itself.

MR. RICH: I agree that we do need help from the government but like the late Robin Harris said, no one is going to knock on your door and say it's jobs. You have to make your opportunity and that's what I did. I didn't want to just sit around the community and just waste away and say, well, there's no jobs in the paper so I'm going to sit on the street corner and sell some crack. You have to make it and you have to stay persistent and keep that same determination that I had and you can do it too.

MR. STATEN: I agree. I agree.

DR. GLASGOW: That's why I said I applaud these comments, because there's a new spirit among a certain section of our youth, a growing spirit, and I would hope they take over the leadership.

MR. RICH: We will.

MR. MUDD: That just categorized you as has beens.

DR. GLASGOW: No, I don't even think in terms of leadership. I do what I have to do, but I really applaud these young men, because what they're really talking about is a new spirit of self- determination in that they have to have this, and this is why I say a lot of the destiny of black people's in their own hand. That does not in any way excuse whether the obligations of government and why I'm a policy person and it's why I'm in public policy and an advocate of the policy, but the fact that -- the strength of black people, it is the same strength that during the civil rights movement at a different period and for a different reason, the people, themselves, made a determination that they no longer -- they decided no longer, this is it. I mean, that was a self-determination. Out of that grew the kind of strength and movement until people could walk in all parts, Selma and wherever else, you know. Of course, it was self-determined and to the degree that the black community itself and young blacks in particular decide that they will seize the reins of development and could restore themselves, that's the current that you need and out of it comes some young leadership.

MR. MUDD: Dr. Lowery, you wanted to say something?

REV. LOWERY: Yes. I was going to say I agree with that wholeheartedly. I am very proud of most of our black young people. They're going to make it. I just think we have to provide the environment where their opportunities of making it are maximized, their opportunities are maximized and not minimized, and finally, I think we have to understand the impact of drugs in this equation and the marketplace of drugs has been placed intentionally in the black community, and these black young people have to find the will power to say no, to resist the assault from without by the kind of spiritual strength from within that's represented in both of these young men and we have to provide the environment that maximizes their possibility of success.

MR. MUDD: Placed in the black community intentionally by whom, Dr. Lowery?

REV. LOWERY: By those who control the drugs. Media and law enforcement have combined to paint the drug picture as a black picture. It is not a black picture. Three hundred and fifty or four hundred billion dollars spent on drugs would mean that every black person spends everything they earn on drugs and that's not true. But the marketplace is in the black community because that's where the war zone will be. We have to resist that. We've got to stop cooperating with that. We must not let legitimate need drive us to illegitimate greed. That's what these two young people are saying. I applaud them. We've got to help spread that and government at every level, and the private sector, private corporate community has a responsibility to make profits for black money, have a responsibility to help provide the environment that maximize a possibility for achievement for these young people.

MR. MUDD: Thank you. It's been a lively session. Thank you, Dr. Scott. Thank you, gentlemen. ESSAY - SEASON OF REMEMBRANCE

MR. MacNeil: We close tonight with an essay by Roger Rosenblatt, editor at large for Life Magazine, who thinks Memorial Day and summer go together.

MR. ROSENBLATT: Whoever decided to put Memorial Day at the brink of summer had a good idea. The season and the commemoration go effectively together in the mind. A parade of high school bands and old soldiers strutting through the middle of town, a little out of step, a little out of tune -- the sun bouncing off the tubas and the bayonets -- the mini skirts of cheerleaders and the thick green flannel of the army uniforms or the camouflage gear. On the sidelines, the old folks look somber while kids in shorts sip lemonade and wave little flags. It is all American, this day, maybe even more than the all American day of the 4th of July. War mixes with sunshine. The summer stretches into the distance like a country road as a nation salutes its fallen hordes. You'd think they might have chosen the dead of winter for such a solemn occasion. If one is to isolate a single day for remembering the war dead, why not do it in January when the cold concentrates thoughts inward like a prayer? Wars are a lot like winter, themselves. Even when they have fought in the desert, wars represent the heart's cold purposes, steel, metal and ice. The season of snow storms and dark days would seem perfect for focusing one's attention on history's killing fests. But Memorial Day is not intended to honor war. It is designed instead to make war look bad. The day is a wish that wars not happen. What summer does for Memorial Day is to force a combination of feelings that make the whole idea of war a sadness, an outrage. Compare the summer to the killing, the promise to the dead. All that is peaceful about America is evoked on the holiday as the soldiers march and march. As the soldiers march, we slip into a Winslow Homer painting, stretch out our legs under a tree and dream. The good life is foisted like a flag, a cliche of a life, but a good one -- a country striving for tranquility in a bountiful place. The wars America has fought have disrupted the peaceful seasons. Each Memorial Day brings back the disruptions and shows them for what they are. The war in the Persian Gulf will be touted this year and Vietnam to make amends. A fragment of Korea - - some remains from World War II -- much less from the First World War -- and nothing from the wars before. As summer stretches forward, the wars stretch back into the past, aching like broken bones that never set. They constitute a terrible institution -- the murderers that create other murderers, of kids mostly, kid killers, kids killed, kids buried all over the world -- German, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Iraqi, American -- kids. No one ever wants wars, but they happen. No one in his right mind wants them -- no matter how justified or necessary or apparently good -- no such thing as a good war. Yet, there are good times of peace, good climates, good seasons. Summer is America's season. At least we would like it to be so, an infinite green field, not a potter's field, where the new world comes together and blooms forever. Ah, here comes the band and the kids and the soldiers who survived. Salute, wave and weep. So we honor the dead and remember to dream of the life where everything is summer and no one dies in a war. I'm Roger Rosenblatt. RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Again, the major stories of this Monday, Pres. Bush renewed his call to extend most favored nation trade status to China. The plan drew immediate criticism from Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell who said Congress would try to overturn it. And a cease-fire was announced in the Ethiopian civil war. That's the NewsHour for this Memorial Day. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.