After 1968, the year that many scholars assign as the end of the Civil Rights movement, African Americans made significant strides toward parity and integration with white Americans. Yet the importance of race in U. S. society and culture qualified and, in some ways, limited the degree of success experienced by African Americans. More militant attitudes among blacks, the reemergence of black separatism in the 1990s, ambiguous racial attitudes on the part of whites, a sporadic economy, and the passage of civil rights laws contributed to the shape of the African-American community in the late 20th century.
As of 2007 there were approximately 36.6 million African Americans, comprising about 12.3 percent of the U. S. population. Eighty-five percent live in urban metropolitan areas and 45 percent reside in the North and Midwest. The urbanization of African Americans resulted from migration to northern, midwestern, and western cities that began during the first two decades of the 20th century. Since the late 1970s the migratory trend has shifted toward the South and Southwest, a result of deteriorating economic opportunity in northern cities and of decreased discrimination and increased economic growth in the South and Southwest. Those moving, however, are those with the resources to do so. Those experiencing economic difficulty lacked the resources to move and the skills demanded by the growing economies in the South and Southwest.
One unfortunate characteristic of the African-American community is its disproportionate susceptibility to poor health, a situation that social science has shown is in large part a result of a group’s relative wealth or poverty. African Americans, whose median incomes lag behind those of whites, experience higher mortality and higher rates of disease than do whites even though such statistics show marked improvement since the middle of the 20th century. Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Medicare and Medicaid legislation in 1965 had a major impact on African-American health care. The targeting of maternal and child health care under Title V of the Social Security Act, the development of community health centers, and Head Start also had a positive impact on the health of African-American mothers and children. Such funding and policy initiatives helped reduce the racial gap for mortality and infant mortality, although the black infant mortality rate is more than twice the white rate.
Despite these improvements, African Americans face other health risks because of their relative poverty. The rising proportion of uninsured Americans has driven up Medicaid costs, a development that has led to a constriction of health services for the poor. For young urban African Americans, substance abuse, AIDS, and homicide are very serious risks. Homicide and AIDS are the first and second leading causes of death among young black males. Between 1960 and 1990 the proportion of deaths from homicide among white men ages 15 to 24 rose from 3 percent to 12 percent, while for African Americans the figure jumped from 20 percent to 55 percent. High rates of teen pregnancy and childbirth persist among African Americans and represent a host of potential health risks ranging from the mother contracting AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases to low-birth-weight babies. Cases of hypertension and tuberculosis also remain persistently high among African Americans.
African Americans also have made clear though incomplete gains in education. By 1990 there was only a two-year gap between black and white Americans in the average number of years of schooling. The racial gap in standardized test scores also narrowed appreciably. Between 1971 and 1990, test scores for African Americans showed significant improvement absolutely and in comparison with white students. Regardless of these significant improvements, black high school dropout rates, while overall at parity with whites, demonstrate a disturbing increase in inner-city schools, with some districts reporting dropout rates as high as 50 percent. However, there have been recent increases in college entry among African Americans. In 1993, 24 percent of blacks entered college; by 2003, 30 percent of black high school graduates enrolled in college, compared with 41.4 percent of whites. Also, more black students receive degrees from “white” universities and colleges than from historically black colleges and universities, like Howard University in Washington, D. C.
Occupational status is another category in which African Americans have experienced unquestionable improvement since the middle of the 20th century. Measured by socioeconomic index scores that range from seven for domestic and day laborers to 74 for professionals, African Americans improved from an average of 15 in 1940 to 33 in 1990. Much of this improvement was the result of AFFIRMATIVE action policies designed to increase both educational and employment opportunities for minorities. African Americans’ improved occupational status is reflected in the continued growth of a class structure among them. While an African-American class structure has existed since the late 19th century, the latter half of the 20th century has witnessed a much sharper definition of that structure, based on occupational status and income. The median black household income has risen from $22,300 (adjusted for inflation) in 1967 to $32,100 in 2006. However, there is a significant gap between the median income for whites and blacks. In 2006 whites earned 22 percent more on average than their black counterparts.
One impact of the black migration to northern and western industrial centers that began near the end of the 19th century was to place African Americans in proximity to better-paying jobs. Urbanized blacks had more access, though not unlimited access, to union jobs, low-level white-collar and civil service jobs. This greater access to better wages created a base of support for various black-owned businesses to emerge. By 1972 there were 187,600 black-owned businesses in the United States. By 1987 that figure more than doubled to 424,165, and by 2001 that number grew to 800,000. According to Black Enterprise, the top 100 black-owned firms had total sales of $11.7 billion in 1995, a figure that represented only 1 percent of total U. S. receipts. Such a small proportion of the overall U. S. economy is a consequence of the relatively small size of black-owned businesses. In 1969, 94 percent were sole proprietorships, and 84 percent had no paid employees. By 1977, although the number of black-owned firms had grown by 41 percent, 70 percent of them were still in personal services and retail. Even as late as 1987 the majority of these businesses were still concentrated in the food and service industries. Auto dealerships comprised the majority of the top 100 firms and produced more than 40 percent of the list’s total sales in 1993 and 1994.
Although black family income is less than two-thirds that of whites, it has been responsible for sustaining a wide range of viable black institutions, including churches and schools, fraternal organizations, insurance firms, and various media enterprises. Along with black-owned businesses, black religious institutions are the most important among African Americans. African Americans are overwhelmingly Protestant Christians and, as black institutional organizations, the Baptist and Methodist churches are the largest and most significant. The National Baptist Convention, U. S.A., National Baptist Convention of America, and the Progressive Baptist Convention combine for a membership of more than 9 million. The largest black Methodist organization is the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which is also the oldest independent black church in the United States. African Americans have demonstrated a significant countertendency to the trend of Americans becoming less “churched,” as participation by whites in mainstream Protestant churches declined significantly in the late 20th century. This countertendency has been most prominently manifested in the recent growth of Evangelicalism. The major exemplar of this intensely religious movement among African Americans is the Church of God in Christ, which finds its roots in Pentecostalism.
Throughout its history, the black church has served as more than merely a religious institution. It is a social institution that is central to the vitality of the African-American community and, as such, serves as social club, center for political activity, and as seedbed for community and political leadership. Black religious institutions have been a critical element in civil rights activism and have produced many of the most prominent leaders of the African-American community, such as jESSE L. jACKSON or the Reverend Al Sharpton, a Brooklyn, New York, activist and cleric who ran for the U. S. Senate in 1994. Reverend William Gray was a Democratic congressman from Philadelphia in 1979, was a vice chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, served as chairman of the House Budget Committee in 1985, and was majority whip in 1989. Andrew Young, also a pastor, had a distinguished political career as a U. S. congressman (1971-77), as U. S. ambassador to the United Nations (1977-79), and as the mayor of Atlanta (1982-90).
Another prominent religious/activist institution is the Nation Of Islam. Under the leadership of Louis Far-RAKHAN, the Nation of Islam has increased its ideological presence among younger, urban African Americans. It emphasizes racial pride, self-help, black business development, and a conservative family-oriented morality, and is the primary proponent of the late-20th-century form of separatist black nationalism. The Nation of Islam has enjoyed increased popularity among young African Americans primarily because of the positive feeling of “blackness” it has engendered, not because of any specific theological tenets. More secular institutions, such as the National Association eor the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League, have been less influential in the 1980s and 1990s than they were in the first two-thirds of the 20th century. Both organizations failed to develop a national political strategy and have increasingly come under attack for their reliance on nonblack sources of financial support.
That African Americans leveled such criticism at their own institutions was indicative of the ideological milieu within the black community. On one hand was a group of conservatives, including U. S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, united by the claims that institutional and personal racism had declined sufficiently. On the other hand was a group of progressives or liberals, whose members included jesse L. jackson and Cornel West. This group insisted that racism was still prevalent in American society. Because of that, African Americans could not compete fairly without further public and private compensation for past discrimination and deprivation.
This neat division became blurred over the issue of integration versus nationalism, an issue that revolved around the ultimate goal for African Americans and the best strategy for attaining that goal. Some black intellectuals argued that racism was so fundamental to American society that integration as full-fledged members was both impossible and undesirable for blacks. Nationalists such as Louis Farrakhan argued that even if integration were preferred, white Americans would always “sell out” black Americans to preserve their own racial interests. Others, like Clarence Thomas and Jesse L. Jackson, insisted that integration into the dominant society was necessary in order to be able to fulfill one’s dreams, or it was a goal in and of itself that would allow people to be judged regardless of skin color. The complexity of the issue allowed one to be a conservative nationalist (Louis Farrakhan), a liberal nationalist (Derrick Bell), a conservative integration-ist (Clarence Thomas), or a liberal integrationist (Jesse L. Jackson).
The shape of African-American society at the end of the 20th century was indeed unique culturally, politically, demographically, and economically. Contending ideologies of separatism and integration among African Americans, coupled with larger economic, cultural, and political forces, created a community partially at peace with its uniqueness and with the larger American community, yet clearly restive about the forces, both external and internal, that continue to inhibit its progress.
At the start of the 21st century, it seemed a corner had been turned when in 2008 Senator Barack Hussein Obama (D-Ill.) became the first African American to win the Democratic presidential nomination and election to the presidency. This was the first time that a major Western democracy had elected a person of African descent to executive office.
See also Aaron, Henry; Bakke (Regents of the University of California v. Allan Bakke); Civil Rights Act oF 1991; evangelical Christians; Farmer, James L.; Griggs et al. v. Duke Power Company; Hill, Anita Faye; Jackson State University; movies; music; popular culture; Powell, Colin L.; race and racial conflict; religion; sports; TELEvIsIoN.
Further reading: Walter Allen and Reynolds Farley, The Color Line and the Quality of Life in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1987); Andrew Hacker, Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal (New York: Scribner, 1991); Robin D. G. Kelley, Into the Fire: African Americans since 1970, The Young Oxford History of African Americans, vol. 10 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Clifton Marsh, From Black Muslims to Muslims: The Transition from Separatism to Islam, 1930-1980 (Metuchen, N. J.: Scarecrow Press, 1984).
—William L. Glankler
World History
