The "Problem Profiteers"

[Reprinted from Issues & Views Fall 1998]

The following excerpts are from Robert Woodson’s new book, The Triumphs of Joseph, in which he details the heroic work of "neighborhood healers"--people he compares to the biblical Joseph. Today’s Josephs are needed due mainly to a fraternity of powerful interest groups and career "experts," who support and are supported by a horde of crafty politicians. This inner circle, which is dominated by well-to-do blacks, creates obstacles for the grassroots mentors who could bring concrete solutions to the problems of the poor. Woodson equates this self-interested clique with the ancient Pharaoh’s court of schemers.

From its inception, the struggle for civil rights was fraught with certain moral inconsistencies that would limit its success. As early as the mid-1960s, the foundation on which the movement was built began to exhibit cracks, and warning lights were flashing regarding the potential for growing bifurcation within the black community. The needs of those who were suffering the most critical problems were overlooked as leaders of the movement continued to pursue remedies that were based on racial preference rather than actual economic or social disadvantage. . . .

The split between the demands of the leaders of the civil rights establishment and the concerns of their purported constituents has widened throughout the last thirty years. On a number of issues that would primarily impact conditions in low-income communities, grassroots blacks have registered opinions that are sharply at odds with the positions taken by the civil rights cadres. In one survey, 83% of black respondents who knew about school vouchers said they were in favor of choice programs "where parents can send their children to any public or private school that will accept them." Yet in a floor vote at the 1993 NAACP convention, delegates passed a resolution opposing voucher programs that would provide low-income children with the means to attend private schools.

When Washington Post pollsters asked whether minorities should receive preferential treatment to make up for past discrimination, 77% of blacks leaders said yes, while 77% of the black public said no. In addition, a majority of the black populace disapproved of forced school busing, while 68% of black leaders supported busing. In another poll, when asked to cite the issue of greatest importance to the black community, 54% of blacks polled said "increased economic opportunity" and 33% said "stronger black-run institutions," while only 8% replied "greater racial integration." Yet the purported spokespersons of the black community, the civil rights leaders, continue to pursue their agenda of the sixties: mandated integration and recompense for past discrimination. . . .

Those whose careers or celebrity status rest on the premise that the greatest single obstacle to black achievement is racism have enforced a gag rule on others who say that self-help and personal responsibility are the keys to progress. This censorship has noteworthy precedents. At the turn of the century, Booker T. Washington warned against the agenda of those "problem profiteers," proclaiming:

There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs--partly because they want sympathy, and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.

Through the years, the bait-and-switch game has continued in which the conditions of poor blacks have been used to justify policies and programs whose main beneficiaries were upper- and middle-income blacks. Consider the demands made by black "spokesmen" in 1990 regarding charges that inner-city youngsters were being exploited by the Nike Corporation. Among the "solutions" to this situation which were posited by Jesse Jackson’s organization PUSH were demands that a greater number of blacks be placed in top management positions at Nike, that more advertising be placed in media outlets owned by blacks, and that blacks be given more seats on the corporation’s board.

Struck by the ironic misfit of problem and solution, [Washington Post columnist] Bill Raspberry wrote, "The inner-city poor furnish the statistical base for the proposals, but the benefits go primarily to the already well-off. Black executives who already hold good jobs get promoted to better ones; blacks who already sit on important corporate boards get another directorship. And the people who provide the statistical base get nothing." . . . .

While conditions of low-income blacks have been used in such bait-and-switch games to further an agenda based on racial grievances, poor blacks have also suffered from outright opportunism on the part of many of their purported spokespersons. In one sense, poor blacks are more victimized today by black-on-black greed, corruption, and incompetence than they are by racists. . . .

In the early 1970s, while I served as a program director for the Urban League, I felt the effects of similar opportunism. I realized that funds for one of my projects were being filtered to other uses when a $300,000 grant for at-risk youths was mysteriously depleted to $180,000. At that time, it was also taken as a given that many of the League’s conferences would be scheduled to coincide with the dates and locations of Superbowl games. It also became the custom among many project directors to award lucrative contracts to "consulting firms" that had been set up by their family and friends, who often lacked the qualifications or expertise necessary to do the job.

During the Nixon administration, $30 million had been awarded to the National Urban League and more than $60 million to its affiliate organizations. An audit of the Urban League during the Ford administration revealed that numerous programs could produce no verifiable deliverables for the funds they had received. . . .

In light of the careers, power, and paychecks that depend on retaining the thirty-year-old civil rights agenda, it is to be expected that the civil rights establishment would vehemently oppose any reform that would entail policies based on economic and social disadvantage rather than race. In fact, many leaders of the civil rights establishment have become players in a collaborative effort to block reform, and have contributed to the conspiracy to silence news of alternative solutions for the problems of blacks who are in poverty. . . .

Ironically, while a disproportionate number of blacks are in poverty, a much greater percentage of blacks than whites are employed by the poverty industry, where they function as the custodians of the poor. While only two out of ten college-educated whites now work for the government, as many as six out of ten blacks with college educations hold government jobs--the majority with the social service industry or with the education system.

Because the careers of these service providers are ensured by a client base of the poor who are dependent on them, the self-sufficiency of low-income blacks poses a threat to their guardians in the poverty industry. A condition now exists where the interests of one group of blacks is in direct conflict with the interests of another. . .

The lifeline has been severed between today’s generation and the rich heritage of self-determination and the will to achieve that once provided a foundation for black progress, even against the greatest odds. A complete black history would reveal that, even in the face of the most bitter oppression and bondage, many courageous blacks persevered and accomplished, undaunted by the obstacles they faced. . . .

Like their biblical counterpart, many modern-day Josephs have emerged from the bondage of oppressive circumstances. One by one, they have been called to lives of responsibility and service--from jails, from drug addictions, from lives of crime, prostitution, and violence. . . . First and foremost, they all refused to let external circumstances control their destinies. Regardless of the odds they faced, they refused to accept the label of victim.

-- Robert Woodson is director of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise. The Triumphs of Joseph is in bookstores and also available from the Center. Contact: NCNE, 1424 16th Street, Washington, DC. Tel: (202) 518-6500.

NOTE: Due to pressure from community groups and other citizens, there is some indication that government bureaucrats may relent and cooperate on some projects with churches and other faith-based organizations. In November 1998, officials of the Housing & Urban Development agency (HUD) announced their intention to "work more closely with national religious groups" to create greater economic opportunity for the poor. However, three major lobby groups have publicly vowed to take the fight to the courts, in order to prevent any faith-based involvement in the reform of welfare. These groups are the American Civil Liberties Union, People For the American Way, and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

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