The American Dilemma Revisited

More than a century after the Civil War amendments and despite decades of legislation, Supreme Court decisions and affirmative action programs, racial equality remains unfinished business. The violence attendant on school busing for integration, the burning of suburban homes occupied by blacks who have liberated themselves from inner-city slums, the shocking rate of black unemployment, and the huge differential that persists between the income of black and white families should remind us that the solution of the problem is still elusive.

Significant progress has of course been made. The more overt forms of social discrimination have been visibly modified if not eliminated; but if blacks today are better off than they were 30 years ago, there is little evidence that they are narrowing the distance separating them from their white counterparts. The gap between black male earnings and white male earnings grew from approximately $1,000 in 1947 to $3,000 in 1975. On the average, b...