THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 19, 1997 TAG: 9702190386
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 64 lines
While reciting the names of famous African Americans for inspiration, a nationally known educator and writer said blacks must also remember those who have not yet met success in America, those whose names may never be as ingrained in America's fabric as that of Martin Luther King Jr. or Harriet Tubman.
Douglas Glasgow, author of ``The Black Underclass,'' came to Norfolk State University Tuesday to speak about welfare reform and the likely impact on the African-American community.
``Just as each individual success is a success for all African Americans, each failure is also recorded as an African-American failure,'' he told students, teachers and community members.
Glasgow is the president of Early Action Response to Urban Needs, a private, nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., that provides advocacy and research services for people in need.
He also is a former vice president of the National Urban League and former dean of Howard University's School of Social Work.
Glasgow said the transfer of welfare dollars from the federal government's control to the states' control will mean that assistance given to the poor will vary from one state to the next.
``The poor will be on the move again,'' he said. ``They will become migratory.''
He also said federal welfare-reform policies have been written in such a way as to guide behaviors that much of society believes are unacceptable. Policies have been written in a way that could influence the number of children women have, for instance, or sway a teen-ager's decision to marry or move away from home.
``It follows the assumption that the reason people are poor is because they are unethical and immoral, that the way out of poverty is to change one's ethics.''
But Glasgow said poverty is instead linked to the lack of access to training and opportunity.
In the past, poor people moved up in the world by working in agricultural jobs, and later, in industrial fields. But when jobs moved from industrial to technological fields, many people did not make the transition.
``If you don't have the skills to participate, then you are in trouble,'' he said.
Welfare-reform policies, he said, fail to adequately address training and employment opportunities for the poor. He also pointed out that welfare-reform policies tend to focus on the young, unwed mother.
``We have become silent to the other half of the equation: young black men. It's almost like they don't exist in social policy,'' he said.
Welfare policies need to go further in getting young men back into families, Glasgow said.
But an emerging black middle class of policy analysts, scientists, technicians and investors should give new hope to those who are still struggling, he said.
``We have the strengths, the question is, do we have the commitment? We have the capacity, the question is, do we have within it a good vision, an ethical vision, a moral vision that allows us to take the high road?'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot
Educator and author Douglas Glasgow tells an audience at Norfolk
State University Tuesday that successes and failures by individual
African Americans reflect on all African American people.