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National Urban League

August 1-4, 1982 - Los Angeles Convention & Exhibit Center
Los Angeles, California

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REMARKS

by

JOHN E. JACOB
President
NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE, INC.

at

STATE OF BLACK AMERICA
PRESS CONFERENCE
Washington, D.C.

January 18, 1982

Today the National Urban League releases its seventh annual State of Black America report.

Never in that time has the State of Black America been more vulnerable. Never in that time have black people so strongly felt themselves under siege. Never in that time have black economic and civil rights gains been under such powerful attack. Never in that time have so many black people been so alienated from their government.

This is an unhealthy and dangerous situation. It is something the government must act to dispel. It is a situation created by this Administration's actions, and only this Administration can reverse it.

In 1981, the black community was hit by economic and political disasters of the first magnitude. For black Americans, 1981 was a year of economic Depression, savage cuts in survival programs for the poor, and the betrayal of basic civil rights protections.

Let me briefly summarize some of those elements. Black unemployment is at record levels - sixteen percent by the understated official statistics that don't include discouraged workers or involuntary part-times. Teenage black unemployment went through the roof in 1981. We are in the seventh post-war national recession, so those numbers will get worse. After each recession, black jobless rates stay higher than they were.

This time around the social safety net is in shreds. Cuts in federal social programs did not just trim the fat, they slashed deep into bone. And those cuts were concentrated in programs in which blacks were a third to a half of all beneficiaries.

We must be very clear about what happened in 1981: the rich got tax cuts, the Pentagon got a blank check; but poor people lost jobs, training opportunities, food assistance, health care, and much else.

We didn't go through some sort of abstract budget adjustment process. We went through a series of earthquakes that left disproportionate numbers of black people with fewer resources and drove them deeper into poverty. Especially in the context of those economic disasters, the attack on civil rights is downright immoral. This nation did not go through a long, painful process of desegregating society only to have it resegregated in the 1980s.

In 1981, an Administration from which blacks and minorities are virtually absent, took a number of negative steps on civil rights. From its backtracking on desegregating schools to its de-emphasis of civil rights enforcement to its attacks on affirmative action, the Administration created a feeling among many blacks that they were forgotten people.

Perhaps the most blatant of those anti-civil rights policies was the unconscionable decision to reward racism by granting tax-exempt status to schools that discriminate. The President's later statement that he would ask Congress to pass a law authorizing the IRS to refuse exempt status to such schools does not change the issue. The IRS had the authority. The courts said it had the authority. The Administration's claim that this is simply a procedural issue about legal authority does not hold water. Its actions provided aid and comfort to the racists in our midst.

Taken together, these and other steps can only be interpreted as attempts to dismantle the process of desegregating America. They raise the grim prospects of a return to a past that denied basic human rights and tolerated racial discrimination. They account for the bitter feelings of alienation and isolation, not only among many black Americans, but among all who don't want the clock turned back to a meaner, nastier period.

What about 1982? Past experience indicates black workers will not recapture their losses in a general economic recovery. The Administration, faced with enormous deficits, will try to cut what remains of important programs that help poor people. Attempts to bury affirmative action and civil rights enforcement are likely to accelerate.

But there is also greater hope in 1982 that these calamities can be prevented. The steamroller of the Administration's radical approach to national problems has stalled. A year's experience has shown that supply side economics is indeed what David Stockman said it was, nothing more than old-fashioned "trickle down." The fight against inflation used the old, discredited tools of the past-tight money and high unemployment. The promised economic growth turned to deep recession. The New Federalism just dumped problems on to the states: problems they know they can't handle.

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