The Ghetto as a Resource for Black America

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
None of the four major proposals for improving conditions in black America—suburbanization, augmented employment, ghetto capitalism, or separatism—resolves the real issue, which is the creation of cohesive black political and economic power. Suburbanization tends directly to reduce the potential for concentrated black power. Neither national employment programs nor local control over particular trades or businesses will be implemented except in response to concentrated power. New investments in ghetto private enterprise are not viable without strong grass-roots political participation. And, though separatist proposals recognize the need to gather power, their faulty analogies to international colonial situations ignore the enormous existing power and proximity of white America. Although it is hard to be optimistic under any conceivable condition, if we change the perspective and see ghetto “problems” as potential solutions, focus on the community, and examine how the ghetto can stimulate social solidarity and local organization, then we can begin to come to grips with problems of power and control.

This publication has 8 references indexed in Scilit: