The Other 97%

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has made significant civil rights gains—and gone on a senseless rampage in well over a hundred cities. Why? For one thing, says San Francisco State College Psychology Professor Louis S. Levine, "there is far less exultation among Negroes over their improved status than the white assumes." For another, their advances have placed them in the position of those prisoners who, as they near the end of their terms, in Levine's words, "are more likely to attempt an escape than during the early phases of their confinement." More to the point, the Negroes' social and economic gains have not matched their expectations.

In the biggest cities, Negro unemployment runs from two to four times higher than white joblessness. The overall rate is 3.5% for Cleveland, but it is 15.6% for the black slum of Hough. Life expectancy for the Negro male has risen to 61.5 years, a level reached in 1931 by whites, who now have an expectancy of 67.7 years. Despite all the publicity designed to discourage Negro youngsters from quitting school, unemployment among Negro high school graduates is 16.1%, while the rate for Negro dropouts is only 16.3%.

The big-city slums—where three-fourths of U.S. Negroes now live—are a daily test of endurance. Robert Waite, a Sierra Leone native who heads Mayor John Lindsay's Harlem task force, likens the Manhattan ghetto to "an underdeveloped country." It lacks indigenously owned business, gets little risk capital, and keeps losing its talent to bigger industries elsewhere—just as in underdeveloped countries. "In underdeveloped areas," he adds, "colonial banks were the only source of credit, and rarely did an indigenous businessman receive a loan until independence permitted the establishment of local banks."

Until two Negro-run banks opened in Harlem, "the same situation existed," with the big outside banks uninterested in promoting new business in the area. Gross sales of Negro-owned stores in Harlem account for only 8% of the total: most of the profits flow out of the community.

In every slum, the chronically hard up residents actually pay more for most goods than do wealthier whites in better neighborhoods. During a brief outburst of rioting in Watts last year, the arsonists' first target was a supermarket chain that habitually stocked the shelves of its slum stores with scraggly meat and wilted vegetables that white customers had rejected in other outlets. In Detroit's slums, a 5-lb. bag of flour costs 14¢ more than in fashionable Grosse Pointe, Mich., peas 12¢ more per can, eggs up to 250 more per dozen. A television set selling for $124.95 in downtown Detroit costs $189 in a ghetto shop. In many slums, door-todoor salesmen saddle unsophisticated buyers with shoddy furniture and clothing that is overpriced to begin with and sometimes costs twice as much as the original price when exorbitant time-payment rates are added. To avoid gouging, slum dwellers in Harlem and other areas have begun forming co-ops aimed at keeping prices down.

Copulative Approach. "In the kind of jungle in which these people live," says Young, "it takes great strength to survive. If only we could build on this strength." A number of schemes have been put forward. They range from Black Nationalist demands for complete separation of the Negroes in