Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 7, 1994 TAG: 9401110252
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELIJAH ANDERSON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
As an ethnographer and sociologist who has worked in poor, inner-city neighborhoods, I welcome the debate and the search for solutions to these problems. But the proposals to abolish welfare outright espoused by such people as syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer and Charles Murray are dangerously shortsighted.
Krauthammer, in fact, cites my research in one inner-city neighborhood in support of his thinking. Since welfare provides economic support to illegitimate babies and their mothers - a fact of inner-city life my research has indeed shown to be one consideration in the sexual game that leads to illegitimate births - he argues that eliminating welfare will eliminate the interest in having babies. This reasoning is seriously flawed precisely because it ignores all the other considerations bearing down on inner-city adolescents, thereby exaggerating the role played by welfare.
In ``Sex Codes and Family Life Among Poor Inner-City Youths,'' a chapter in my book ``Streetwise,'' I describe ethnographically the perspectives and experiences of young black men and women in one community.
I found that the lack of family-sustaining jobs denies many young men the possibility of forming an economically self-reliant family, the traditional American mark of manhood. Partially in response, the young men's peer groups emphasize sexual prowess as a sign of manhood, with babies as evidence.
A sexual game emerges as girls are lured by the (usually older) boys' vague but convincing promises of love and marriage. When the girls submit, they often end up pregnant and abandoned. I also noted that these new mothers become eligible for a limited but steady welfare income that may allow them to establish their own households and at times attract other men who need money.
But it is simplistic and wrongheaded to suggest that if you stop welfare, you will stop this behavior. A fundamental question is: Why do people behave in the ways I have described?
A significant part of the answer is: because of the unraveling of the economy in their communities, which results in hopelessness. The lack of responsibility shown by the men, the ``wantonness,'' is exacerbated by the very bad economic conditions - the exodus of jobs and the inability of people to get the jobs still available because of a lack of education, skills and training.
Illegitimacy is not caused by welfare, but it is, in part, an outgrowth of the failure of the welfare system to achieve its purpose - to alleviate the human problems inherent in the vicissitudes of capitalism, enabling people temporarily (according to theory) displaced by changes in the economic marketplace to survive. Yet I see that what so many people in the inner city are up against are, in fact, the vicissitudes of the economy and an economy now global in scope that has left them behind.
The situation I describe in the ``Sex Codes'' chapter springs from alienation and despair - which then creates nihilism. This is born of a lack of hope and the inability to form a positive view of the future. So many of the young men I got to know don't get married because they don't feel they can ``play house.'' What they mean is they can't play the roles of men in families in the way they would like.
Their assumption is that men in middle- and upper-class families that they see as models control their households. To be that upstanding husband and father, you need resources, you need money. Facing persistent discrimination, a lot of the men I interviewed believe they can't get the money, can't get the family-sustaining jobs. This has a profound impact on how they see their future.
As we move from a manufacturing to a service and high-tech economy, great numbers of inner-city poor people are not making an effective adjustment to the change. The service jobs they are able to obtain often don't pay them enough money to live, and so some of the most enterprising young people have opted for the underground economy of drugs and crime.
One of the results is the social disorganization that contributes not only to increasing violence and alienation but also to a syndrome of abuse, in which people are bent on getting what they can out of other people - including sex and money - without any real concern for those they victimize.
Buffeted by the global economy, communities such as this one find themselves with fewer and fewer dependable sources of capital. Welfare is one relatively small but reliable source. To eliminate welfare is to destroy an important source of capital in the community. If welfare suddenly ceased to exist, many people would be forced to look elsewhere for resources.
Some would seek the low-paying jobs available, but the hard reality is that others would be driven to more desperate measures. The nihilism that you now see among inner-city people would only increase and spread further beyond the bounds of ghetto communities. Cities would become almost unlivable. Blacks would continue to be the primary victims, though; illegitimacy rates would rise, not diminish.
The welfare system is in need of an overhaul, but it does not follow that we should throw meager income supports overboard. We need to maintain the support at the same time that we create opportunity for independent income. The way to make real headway is to create jobs and job opportunities, and build hope through education and job training.
When a sense of the future exists, we will see more responsible behavior, sexual and otherwise. To take welfare away without replacing it with such opportunities would effectively remove a lifeline for the very poor but also what has become a safety valve protecting both inner-city communities and the rest of society from the consequences of steadily escalating frustration.
\ Elijah Anderson is the Day professor of social sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.
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