Read Online This Noble Land by James A. Michener - Free Book Online
Authors: James A. Michener
Ads: Link
them.’
As mentioned before, sedate Norma’s husband, too, had vanished, leaving her with three children to care for and with only the most meager income from a part-time janitorial job at the local carpet factory, a job Norma inherited from her mother, who had inherited it from
her
mother. Since it was likely that Norma’s daughter would inherit the job, four generations had lived in the same house. Norma’s minimal salary could not have paid the rent on the old house the family had always occupied, but the safety net provided by our government for just such a family unit as Norma’s swung into action to provide assistance with food stamps and money from the local housing authority and from Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
First, Norma received $160 per month from AFDC and a housing allowance from the local housing authority of about $775 a month, of which about $125 would go toward her utility bills. Like Salome, she received food stamps from the local Department of Human Services, about $320 per month for four persons. With them, she taught her three children how to purchase with extreme care. A local charity provided the respectable family with a constant flow of clothes that had been discarded by other families, and the pastor of her African Baptist Church, awed by Norma’s resolute courage, saw to it that from time to time she received small gifts from church funds. Adequately nourished and housed by the welfare assistance augmenting their mother’s meager income, Norma’s oldest child wanted to be a policeman when he grew up, while the two girls wanted to be nurses.
Norma’s was a devout Christian family, the precise kind that the safety net had been established to salvage. But when white folks saw flaming Salome and heard her challenge to society, ‘Iproduce children, you take care of them,’ they lumped the two families together and condemned them both as black women endlessly producing babies that we have to support with our tax dollars.
Our welfare system does require an overhaul—there is too much waste and too much incentive for women like Salome to remain indefinitely on the welfare rolls—but we cannot allow welfare benefits to be reduced so severely that it fails to alleviate legitimate need like Norma’s. To do so will lead to even more frustration and despair in our ghettos.
Government intervention such as affirmative action or welfare assistance is not enough, however. Leaders in the black communities must also step in against destructive influences. For, although I became and remain a champion of African American rights, my enthusiasm is sorely tested when some group of black rap artists comes to town and preaches race hatred, the denigration of women and the general disruption of society. I listen in horror and I’m terrified by the nihilism espoused by such groups. Fortunately there have been outcries from both whites and blacks against such messages of hate being fed to our youth.
I was myself a partner in an interracial marriage, and it was always understood that if my wife and I had had children, we would certainly not have objected if they expressed an interest in girls or boys of another race, including blacks. But I would have been terrified by a daughter’s associating seriously with a black man who subscribed to those teachings of violence or the denigration of women. I would have urged her to study the relationship carefully or perhaps find some young man, whether black or white, with more stable attitudes.
Just how serious the race problem has become in America is evident in some of the extraordinary events of 1994–95, a pivotal year in race relations: heated controversy over a scholarly treatiseon race and intelligence; the O. J. Simpson murder trial; and Colin Powell’s leap to fame and national acceptance as a political aspirant.
The issue of racial superiority or inferiority based on intelligence has long been with us. In 1917, during World War I, the
As mentioned before, sedate Norma’s husband, too, had vanished, leaving her with three children to care for and with only the most meager income from a part-time janitorial job at the local carpet factory, a job Norma inherited from her mother, who had inherited it from
her
mother. Since it was likely that Norma’s daughter would inherit the job, four generations had lived in the same house. Norma’s minimal salary could not have paid the rent on the old house the family had always occupied, but the safety net provided by our government for just such a family unit as Norma’s swung into action to provide assistance with food stamps and money from the local housing authority and from Aid to Families with Dependent Children.
First, Norma received $160 per month from AFDC and a housing allowance from the local housing authority of about $775 a month, of which about $125 would go toward her utility bills. Like Salome, she received food stamps from the local Department of Human Services, about $320 per month for four persons. With them, she taught her three children how to purchase with extreme care. A local charity provided the respectable family with a constant flow of clothes that had been discarded by other families, and the pastor of her African Baptist Church, awed by Norma’s resolute courage, saw to it that from time to time she received small gifts from church funds. Adequately nourished and housed by the welfare assistance augmenting their mother’s meager income, Norma’s oldest child wanted to be a policeman when he grew up, while the two girls wanted to be nurses.
Norma’s was a devout Christian family, the precise kind that the safety net had been established to salvage. But when white folks saw flaming Salome and heard her challenge to society, ‘Iproduce children, you take care of them,’ they lumped the two families together and condemned them both as black women endlessly producing babies that we have to support with our tax dollars.
Our welfare system does require an overhaul—there is too much waste and too much incentive for women like Salome to remain indefinitely on the welfare rolls—but we cannot allow welfare benefits to be reduced so severely that it fails to alleviate legitimate need like Norma’s. To do so will lead to even more frustration and despair in our ghettos.
Government intervention such as affirmative action or welfare assistance is not enough, however. Leaders in the black communities must also step in against destructive influences. For, although I became and remain a champion of African American rights, my enthusiasm is sorely tested when some group of black rap artists comes to town and preaches race hatred, the denigration of women and the general disruption of society. I listen in horror and I’m terrified by the nihilism espoused by such groups. Fortunately there have been outcries from both whites and blacks against such messages of hate being fed to our youth.
I was myself a partner in an interracial marriage, and it was always understood that if my wife and I had had children, we would certainly not have objected if they expressed an interest in girls or boys of another race, including blacks. But I would have been terrified by a daughter’s associating seriously with a black man who subscribed to those teachings of violence or the denigration of women. I would have urged her to study the relationship carefully or perhaps find some young man, whether black or white, with more stable attitudes.
Just how serious the race problem has become in America is evident in some of the extraordinary events of 1994–95, a pivotal year in race relations: heated controversy over a scholarly treatiseon race and intelligence; the O. J. Simpson murder trial; and Colin Powell’s leap to fame and national acceptance as a political aspirant.
The issue of racial superiority or inferiority based on intelligence has long been with us. In 1917, during World War I, the
Similar Books
The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe
William I. Hitchcock
