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After 25 Years Of Strides, Blacks Fear A Setback

July 02, 1989|By George E. Curry.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 sought nothing less than to end a pattern of deep-seated discrimination that had relegated millions of American citizens to second-class status or worse solely because of their skin color. The bill`s chief provisions:

- Prohibited discrimination in public accommodations based on a person`s race, color, religion or national origin.

- Provided for withholding all federal funds to any entity that discriminated.

- Empowered the U.S. attorney general to bring school desegregation suits in the federal courts and to file suits against discriminatory patterns or practices observed by government lawyers.

- Established the Equal Employment Opportunity Agency.

- Limited certain types of literacy tests in federal elections.

- Gave additional resources, such as witness fees and expenses, to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

- Created the Justice Department`s Community Relations Service in an attempt to ease racial tensions across the nation.

It was a historic undertaking. Yet after a quarter century, the record remains mixed.

``In the economic sphere, several indicators demonstrate that blacks as a whole have experienced stagnation at best,`` says Linda Faye Williams, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political Studies, a Washington think tank.

Her analysis, based on U.S. Census Bureau figures, indicates no change in the relative income of black and white families between 1964 and 1987. Twenty- five years ago, the median black income was 56 percent of the median white income. In 1987, it was 56.1 percent, $18,098, compared with $32,274 for whites.

In 1966, the black family poverty rate was 41.8 percent; in 1987, that had slipped to 33.1 percent, with most of the drop occuring in the 1960s and 1970s. Over the same period, the white family poverty rate fell from 11.3 percent to 10.5 percent.

Williams notes another insidious pattern: The gap between affluent and impoverished blacks has grown.

``Some of the overall statistics really disguise the fact that there is a sector of the black middle class that was already better off and had better skills than other members of their race,`` she says. ``The reason it looks like little has changed is because there are people at the bottom who have really gotten worse off than the small sector of the black middle class that got significantly better off.``

The nation`s 30 million African-Americans have fared much better in closing the education gap.

According to Census Bureau statistics, in 1960 the median school years completed by whites was 10.9, compared with 8 years for blacks. By 1986, whites had completed 12.7 years of school while blacks had completed 12.3 years.

Perhaps the most visible changes, probably more a credit to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 than the Civil Rights Act, were in the political sector. From 1964 to 1988, the number of blacks in Congress increased from 5 to 24. There have been no black U.S. senators since Edward Brooke of Massachusetts left office in 1978. No black has ever been elected governor of a state, though Douglas Wilder, Virginia`s lieutenant governor, has been given a good chance to become the first one this fall.

The chairman of a major party and its congressional whip, Democrats Ron Brown and Rep. William Gray of Pennsylvania, are black. In 1964, there were fewer than 500 black elected officials in the nation. That number has increased to 6,829. Still, though blacks make up 11 percent of the voting-age population, they represent only 1.4 percent of the total number of elected officials.