The Audacity of Hope (32 page)

Strategies like an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit that help all low-wage workers can make an enormous difference in the lives of these women and their children. But if we’re serious about breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty, then many of these women will need some extra help with the basics that those living outside the inner city often take for granted. They need more police and more effective policing in their neighborhoods, to provide them and their children some semblance of personal security. They need access to community-based health centers that emphasize prevention— including reproductive health care, nutritional counseling, and in some cases treatment for substance abuse. They need a radical transformation of the schools their children attend, and access to affordable child care that will allow them to hold a full-time job or pursue their education.

And in many cases they need help learning to be effective parents. By the time many inner-city children reach the school system, they’re already behind—unable to identify basic numbers, colors, or the letters in the alphabet, unaccustomed to sitting still or participating in a structured environment, and often burdened by undiagnosed health problems. They’re unprepared not because they’re unloved but because their mothers don’t know how to provide what they need. Well-structured government programs— prenatal counseling, access to regular pediatric care, parenting programs, and quality early-childhood-education programs—have a proven ability to help fill the void.

Finally, we need to tackle the nexus of unemployment and crime in the inner city so that the men who live there can begin fulfilling their responsibilities. The conventional wisdom is that most unemployed inner-city men could find jobs if they really wanted to work; that they inevitably prefer drug dealing, with its attendant risks but potential profits, to the low-paying jobs that their lack of skills warrants. In fact, economists who’ve studied the issue—and the young men whose fates are at stake—will tell you that the costs and benefits of the street life don’t match the popular mythology: At the bottom or even the middle ranks of the industry, drug dealing is a minimum-wage affair. For many inner-city men, what prevents gainful employment is not simply the absence of motivation to get off the streets but the absence of a job history or any marketable skills—and, increasingly, the stigma of a prison record.

Ask Mac, who has made it part of his mission to provide young men in his neighborhood a second chance. Ninety-five percent of his male employees are ex- felons, including one of his best cooks, who has been in and out of prison for the past twenty years for various drug offenses and one count of armed robbery. Mac starts them out at eight dollars an hour and tops them out at fifteen dollars an hour. He has no shortage of applicants. Mac’s the first one to admit that some of the guys come in with issues—they aren’t used to getting to work on time, and a lot of them aren’t used to taking orders from a supervisor—and his turnover can be high. But by not accepting excuses from the young men he employs (“I tell them I got a business to run, and if they don’t want the job I got other folks who do”), he finds that most are quick to adapt. Over time they become accustomed to the rhythms of ordinary life: sticking to schedules, working as part of a team, carrying their weight. They start talking about getting their GEDs, maybe enrolling in the local community college.

They begin to aspire to something better.

It would be nice if there were thousands of Macs out there, and if the market alone could generate opportunities for all the inner-city men who need them. But most employers aren’t willing to take a chance on ex-felons, and those who are willing are often prevented from doing so. In Illinois, for example, ex-felons are prohibited from working not only in schools, nursing homes, and hospitals—restrictions that sensibly reflect our unwillingness to compromise the safety of our children or aging parents— but some are also prohibited from working as barbers and nail technicians.

Government could kick-start a transformation of circumstances for these men by working with private-sector contractors to hire and train ex-felons on projects that can benefit the community as a whole: insulating homes and offices to make them energy- efficient, perhaps, or laying the broadband lines needed to thrust entire communities into the Internet age. Such programs would cost money, of course—although, given the annual cost of incarcerating an inmate, any drop in recidivism would help the program pay for itself. Not all of the hard-core unemployed would prefer entry-level jobs to life on the streets, and no program to help ex-felons will eliminate the need to lock up hardened criminals, those whose habits of violence are too deeply entrenched.

Still, we can assume that with lawful work available for young men now in the drug trade, crime in many communities would drop; that as a consequence more employers would locate businesses in these neighborhoods and a self-sustaining economy would begin to take root; and that over the course of ten or fifteen years norms would begin to change, young men and women would begin to imagine a future for themselves, marriage rates would rise, and children would have a more stable world in which to grow up.

What would that be worth to all of us—an America in which crime has fallen, more children are cared for, cities are reborn, and the biases, fear, and discord that black poverty feeds are slowly drained away? Would it be worth what we’ve spent in the past year in Iraq? Would it be worth relinquishing demands for estate tax repeal? It’s hard to quantify the benefits of such changes—precisely because the benefits would be immeasurable.

IF THE PROBLEMS of inner-city poverty arise from our failure to face up to an often tragic past, the challenges of immigration spark fears of an uncertain future. The demographics of America are changing inexorably and at lightning speed, and the claims of new immigrants won’t fit neatly into the black-and-white paradigm of discrimination and resistance and guilt and recrimination. Indeed, even black and white newcomers—from Ghana and Ukraine, Somalia and Romania—arrive on these shores unburdened by the racial dynamics of an earlier era.

During the campaign, I would see firsthand the faces of this new America—in the Indian markets along Devon Avenue, in the sparkling new mosque in the southwest suburbs, in an Armenian wedding and a Filipino ball, in the meetings of the Korean American Leadership Council and the Nigerian Engineers Association. Everywhere I went, I found immigrants anchoring themselves to whatever housing and work they could find, washing dishes or driving cabs or toiling in their cousin’s dry cleaners, saving money and building businesses and revitalizing dying neighborhoods, until they

moved to the suburbs and raised children with accents that betrayed not the land of their parents but their Chicago birth certificates, teenagers who listened to rap and shopped at the mall and planned for futures as doctors and lawyers and engineers and even politicians.

Across the country, this classic immigrant story is playing itself out, the story of ambition and adaptation, hard work and education, assimilation and upward mobility. Today’s immigrants, however, are living out this story in hyperdrive. As beneficiaries of a nation more tolerant and more worldly than the one immigrants faced generations ago, a nation that has come to revere its immigrant myth, they are more confident in their place here, more assertive of their rights. As a senator, I receive countless invitations to address these newest Americans, where I am often quizzed on my foreign policy views—where do I stand on Cyprus, say, or the future of Taiwan? They may have policy concerns specific to fields in which their ethnic groups are heavily represented—Indian American pharmacists might complain about Medicare reimbursements, Korean small-business owners might lobby for changes in the tax code.

But mostly they want affirmation that they, too, are Americans. Whenever I appear before immigrant audiences, I can count on some good-natured ribbing from my staff after my speech; according to them, my remarks always follow a three-part structure: “I am your friend,” “[Fill in the home country] has been a cradle of civilization,” and “You embody the American dream.” They’re right, my message is simple, for what I’ve come to understand is that my mere presence before these newly minted Americans serves notice that they matter, that they are voters critical to my success and full-fledged citizens deserving of respect.

Of course, not all my conversations in immigrant communities follow this easy pattern. In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific assurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.

It’s in my meetings with the Latino community, though, in neighborhoods like Pilsen and Little Village, towns like Cicero and Aurora, that I’m forced to reflect on the meaning of America, the meaning of citizenship, and my sometimes conflicted feelings about all the changes that are taking place.

Of course, the presence of Latinos in Illinois—Puerto Ricans, Colombians, Salvadorans, Cubans, and most of all Mexicans—dates back generations, when agricultural workers began making their way north and joined ethnic groups in factory jobs throughout the region. Like other immigrants, they assimilated into the culture, although like African Americans, their upward mobility was often hampered by racial bias. Perhaps for that reason, black and Latino political and civil rights leaders often made common cause. In 1983, Latino support was critical in the election of Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington. That support was reciprocated, as Washington helped elect a generation of young, progressive Latinos to the Chicago city council and the Illinois state legislature.

Indeed, until their numbers finally justified their own organization, Latino state legislators were official members of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus.

It was against this backdrop, shortly after my arrival in Chicago, that my own ties to the Latino community were formed. As a young organizer, I often worked with Latino leaders on issues that affected both black and brown residents, from failing schools to illegal dumping to unimmunized children. My interest went beyond politics; I would come to love the Mexican and Puerto Rican sections of the city—the sounds of salsa and merengue pulsing out of apartments on hot summer nights, the solemnity of Mass in churches once filled with Poles and Italians and Irish, the frantic, happy chatter of soccer matches in the park, the cool humor of the men behind the counter at the sandwich shop, the elderly women who would grasp my hand and laugh at my pathetic efforts at Spanish. I made lifelong friends and allies in those neighborhoods; in my mind, at least, the fates of black and brown were to be perpetually intertwined, the cornerstone of a coalition that could help America live up to its promise.

By the time I returned from law school, though, tensions between blacks and Latinos in Chicago had started to surface. Between 1990 and 2000, the Spanish-speaking population in Chicago rose by 38 percent, and with this surge in population the Latino community was no longer content to serve as junior partner in any black-brown coalition. After Harold Washington died, a new cohort of Latino elected officials, affiliated with Richard M. Daley and remnants of the old Chicago political machine, came onto the scene, men and women less interested in high-minded principles and rainbow coalitions than in translating growing political power into contracts and jobs. As black businesses and commercial strips struggled, Latino businesses thrived, helped in part by financial ties to home countries and by a customer base held captive by language barriers. Everywhere, it seemed, Mexican and Central American workers came to dominate low-wage work that had once gone to blacks—as waiters and busboys, as hotel maids and as bellmen—and made inroads in the construction trades that had long excluded black labor. Blacks began to grumble and feel threatened; they wondered if once again they were about to be passed over by those who’d just arrived.

I shouldn’t exaggerate the schism. Because both communities share a host of challenges, from soaring high school dropout rates to inadequate health insurance, blacks and Latinos continue to find common cause in their politics. As frustrated as blacks may get whenever they pass a construction site in a black neighborhood and see nothing but Mexican workers, I rarely hear them blame the workers themselves; usually they reserve their wrath for the contractors who hire them. When pressed, many blacks will express a grudging admiration for Latino immigrants—for their strong work ethic and commitment to family, their willingness to start at the bottom and make the most of what little they have.

Still, there’s no denying that many blacks share the same anxieties as many whites about the wave of illegal immigration flooding our Southern border—a sense that what’s happening now is fundamentally different from what has gone on before. Not all these fears are irrational. The number of immigrants added to the labor force every year is of a magnitude not seen in this country for over a century. If this huge influx of mostly low-skill workers provides some benefits to the economy as a whole—especially by keeping our workforce young, in contrast to an increasingly geriatric Europe and Japan—it also threatens to depress further the wages of blue-collar Americans and put

strains on an already overburdened safety net. Other fears of native-born Americans are disturbingly familiar, echoing the xenophobia once directed at Italians, Irish, and Slavs fresh off the boat—fears that Latinos are inherently too different, in culture and in temperament, to assimilate fully into the American way of life; fears that, with the demographic changes now taking place, Latinos will wrest control away from those accustomed to wielding political power.