Turning Inward: Black Organizations Regain Importance

Black America finds itself looking down a cold and poorly lit road toward an uncertain political and economic future as the early months of 1996 focus attention on this fall’s presidential and congressional elections. Black America is now in the midst of at least four major transformations, two of which are widely acknowledged and two that are appreciated only dimly.

First, and most starkly, the mainstream white political support for affirmative action and minority business enterprise programs that have played a central role in the growth of both the black middle class and an upper-class professional elite over the last generation has shrunk noticeably. Second, the ongoing legal and political battles over minority-sensitive ...