Good morning again. Good morning again. Were going to continue with our program. Our panel is called culture and family, but i think we could use that as a point of did he part ture. I think culture and family could be considered one answer to the problem of African American poverty and its persistent. And im going to ask our panel to reflect broadly on that with some focus on cultural and family but not exclusively on that. We have a very distinguished panel, on my far left on my mar left is gene dattel who is the author of a powerful new book called reckoning with race, americas failure. He grew up with the mississippi delta and has been surrounded by africanamerican poverty his whole life and is perplexed by it. Anthony bradley from Kings College say distinguished faculty member there and the author of the director of the center for human flower risching, chair of the religious and Theological Studies Program and the author of the book blook and tired liber brating black theology. And susan good den is from virginia Common Wealth university. Shes also the president of the America Society for public administration. And susan has completed a fascinating new study which shell be reporting about and falls directly into the context of what were discussion here this morning. I want to begin with gene. And i didnt bring up your book to disrespect the authors the other authors books but rather to quote from it, if i might. And we were talking at the end of the Previous Panel about programs and efforts concentrated governmentdirect prod gra programs and whether they helped or behindders. Theres a lot of skepticism on your book. Trillions of dollars were spent on the programs and were eloussive at best and did not end poverty. And then you quote an official of the office of Economic Opportunity who wrote i cant think of a single idea or policy recommendation that emanate from the group that was of any lasting consequence. Well thats thats very dispirited. What do you take away from that experience in we still hear calls for a marshal plan, for a major Government Intervention to uplift the black poor. What do you take away from the experience that began in the 60s and persists to this day . What lessons should we learn . Well, first of all, the marshal plan is the favorite metaphor in terms of black leadership now, its also the favorite metaphor for a lot of other things. But one of the things that i take away from it is the large programs, once you deal with a federal government, it has to go down to the local community. The local Community Admin straits it. So up end up with the same problems which are the bureaucracy, the inefficiency, and the lack of accountability in terms of these programs. They all fit the same model. There are a lot of small programs that work, everyone has a favorite one. I think that the 60s in terms of the hope that occurred once over legal segregation was removed, i think was a bit of an illusion. Remember in 1964 a few days after civil rights 64 passed which was public accommodation, you had race riots in major cities, new york, philadelphia, rochester and also towns in new jersey. After civil rights 65 had you watts occur. So there were a lot more issues and complexities. The framework for dealing with over illegal segregation would become very, very different than what we have today and the problems surfaced immediately in the 1960s. Thats a start of that. I also think that give us give us some specific is the lack of accountability in the bureaucracy . Could something work if it were structured in a different way . Is there anything that you look back on and say, yeah, that helped and we should learn from that . Certainly some people were helped, as the Previous Panel indicated, whether it was pittsburgh or any other place, that there were some people who trick eled throu trickled through this. But i think were always going to come back to the Building Blocks of society, and this predates education which are the family, community, and the religious organization. And theyre seriously frayed within the black community. What i concentrate on in the book, and i think everybody in here would agree with me, is how to move a mass of black america into the economic mainstream. You know, we have several categories of black, this is not just black america one monolith. Theres black elite that success compelled in every aspect of life. And White America from even the early 19th century white psyche had room for a black elite. Then have a middle class. One of the problems with the middle class is that it has a very fragile asset base. And id like to talk a lot later about the private sector because there needs to be a movement, Major Movement in terms of the private sector before the poverty, the underclass that we know, as well as the income and asset gap of the middle class. Okay. So those are some things we want to leave on the table, especially the private sector which i think understands itself to have been under tremendous pressure all those years so ill be interested on how you want to expand on that. Let me turn to dr. Gooden, and this will be, i think, a little bit of a breath of fresh air considering the context that weve been involved insofar this morning. Susan as been looking at three admittedly small programs that harken back to some of the values that jason riley was talking about earlier in the early 20th century and i would love for you, susan, to tell us about those programs. Fug disclosure one of them is represented here and is going to be on display at the end of this program this morning. Tell us about those programs, what you found they were accomplishing, and how you see their effectiveness. What do you trace it to . Well, thank you howard. First id like to thank the Manhattan Institute and it is a privilege to be part of this panel this morning, i just want to make one slight correction. In your introduction howard mentioned im the president of the American Society of public administration, im actually the immediate past president so in case i get run out on a rail, i want to make sure the current president doesnt get the hate mail. I want to make sure it comes directly to me. Just a little bit about the programs and as howard mentioned these were three very fascinate prague grams. There were two parts to the study. So we looked at three nonprofit organizations that are led by after fan americans. One is the Mama Foundation for the arts which is in harlem. The other is a new jersey orators in ellow wus, the expectative director is here now. And the third is the youth, which is outside of chicago, illinois, in glenwood. Each of these programs had three areas of focus. So for the Mama Foundation was on the preservation of gospel music and vocal talent. For the new jersey or rattors it was on speaking skills and performance. And for reclaim of youth it was more on general College Preparation and life skills. And so we did, in year one, which was summer of 2015, we went out to all the all the high schools, the Senior High Schools in that area and we surveyed three groups of students. We surveyed those that had participated in one of the africanamerican led programs. We surveyed students that had not been in any of those programs. And then we surveyed students that he had been in some sort of Afterschool Program but not one of the three. And we looked at four dimensions. We looked at academic performance, deefient behavior, family and social support, and selfesteem and resiliency. And when we looked at these and compared it over the four groups, there was 700 students included in total, we found that the first takeaway was being involved with something after school was certainly better than nothing at all. So we think there are two things going on there. One is the positive impact of doing the Afterschool Program, whether its basketball or one of the africanamerican led programs, and also the protection against perhaps doing more negative things during that time. But we also found was that the africanamerican led programs outperformed the other programs. And these were a wide array of programs on a number of issues as well. Particularly in terms of Overall Academic performance, and that was grades. And also in terms of just selfesteem and resiliency. So selfconfidence, confidence in their ability, resiliency and ability to navigate conflict, they outperformed the other two groups. So then fast forward. This past spring the summer of 2017, so the students that grad waited, a graduated. And really the kwe was where are they now. Lets see where they are now. So we did followup phone interviews with all of the students had participated in the africanamerican led programs as many as we could get and we got about 79 of them altogether. And we found that close to 88 of them are attending college or have attended college in the past year. Many of them are doing it in combination with work gnat compares with an attendance rate of about 40 overall, 35 to 40 overall. We also found that about threequarters of them, or 72 rate thard experience with africanamerican Led Organization as very eekt fivtive and they cite the that as being effective in being able to navigate life. Two things that we think associate with that. One is i think the promotion of oldschool values. Think weve had some discussion of that as well. I got slow you down. You cant just drop that phrase and not explain it. Yes. Old school values. Weve got a panel here called culture and family. What the heck is old school values . Old school values say term that really references respect for others, respect for elders in the community, respect for self. It also represents being able to pull out the best in someone, that the best in someone is not predetermined by an s. A. T. Score or their grade point average to date. But the idea that as long as theres a desire to learn and a desire do well, that with the appropriate amount of support, this student can excel. And so i think the closest term but its not exactly that term is tough love, but i dont think that still doesnt quite capture it. Because theres a sense of compassion but theres also a sense of expectations and responsibility that go along with that. It sounds like what youre saying is that despite the hand ringing or notwithstanding the hand ringing about culture and family, that there is some residue of this upward mobility culture that we were hearing about as having been vanquished somehow by government. Absolutely. I would say its larger than residue. I think you will find this. I think this is one of the things. First of all, i think we saw throughout the programs that mentors in the program and leaders in the program are able to impart to you an ability to excel while being black from someone who has had that experience first hand. I think thats a very powerful thing that these programs are able to do. I think the students that are receiving of this information are getting it from very trusted sources. And i think that that is also one of the features or one of the factors that makes it successful. Excel while being black, thats a very powerful phrase. Yes. So, you know, essentially, and i think this gets back to some of the points in the earlier panel, there have been successful African Americans and remain successful African Americans. I think what happens suspect that the narrative is dominated by those who are not as successful, by those who are struggling, and i think part of it is that success in the African American community largely becomes invisible. And i think one of the things that each these three programs does is it increases the visibility of African American success and theyre able to convey that to the youth that are being served. Visible for the students themselves . Yes. And i should mention that the students the students served by the programs are not all African American, theyre open to students of all races, but they are africanamerican led and freeh predominantly they serve africanamerican youth. Are these government supported in someway . They are not governmentsupported programs directly. Some of them may vin formal ties to School Systems and that sort of thing, but these are grassroots organizations. Theyre nonprofit organizations largely often times theyre being supported by volunteers in the community. People who know the individuals and very much respect the individuals who are leading the programs and leading the training. And so just to sort of finish and answer the where are they now, in addition to them evaluating their programs as being effective, were seeing that large numbers, again, close to 88 are enrolled in college. Now, the not so great news is the amount of student debt that these students are reporting. And of course we know that this is an issue thats a national issue. Over 52 had already taken out Student Loans exceeding 5,000 and 17. 4 had taken out loans just in the first year between 20 and 29,000. That leads back to what gene was saying about the fragile nature of the africanamerican middle class and limited asset base one could say. But let me turn to dr. Bradley and susan gooden talked about free programs, gospel for teens, reclaim a youth and at least two of those have links to the africanamerican church. I know new jersey started in a church basement, the Mama Foundation newspaper harlem they put on great shows, i recommend that you go hear them. Gospel for teens is clearly putting forward a religious tradition explicitly and i suspect that the members of reclaim youth may know each other from church that wouldnt surprise me. Dr. Bradley, we have always heard about the black church as the van guard of selfimprovement, upward mobility, community cohesion. Is it still that today . Absolutely. And, again, thank you for having me. Im delight and honored to be on the panel. The black church historically has provided people with two things mainly. One is hope, that in the midst of lives that are challenging and seemingly insurmountable, you can do it, right. So theres a lot of hope, a lot of encouragement. And secondly is a community where there is accountability and expectation. And whether you have hope and accountability, you often have success. The other the other contribution of the black church historically is the cultivation of the soft skills that make people successful in the marketplace. Soft skills in church . You got help me here. Absolutely. Issues like respect, respecting your elders, respect your employers, saying please, saying thank you. Dressing well. I was born and raised in the black church and so when you are a child you see older men and you see well i need to be like them. Theyre successful, i need to do what they do, i need to dress like they do, i need to talk like they do, i need to model myself after them. So you have those sort of soft skills that are the, you know, real engine prov gress within the marketplace. You have a challenge, though, is there has to be some market opportunity, right. And so when you look at the reason there were riots in watts, the reason there were riots in detroit, is the Economic Opportunities had started to decline by the time weapon got to mid to late 1960. Had you this great migration up to the north and the jobs have started to already disappear, right. And so with the great soft sales, with thats great programs, the family, the church, you also have to have real Economic Opportunity where people can begin to see that they can make a difference in their community in terms of employment, that they can make things that the market needs. We also i think sometimes forget that the basis of family is employment and jobs. Ill give you a great example. The church im currently serving in harlem right now we have a lot of exoffenders. This is what happened. When they come out, had they get a job, then they get married. Then they want to take care of their children, then they actually want to plug in to the community because now they have employment. Theyre a part of the marketplace, they are a part of the community. So we have to have both of these things or you have to have the soft skills development, but you also have to have an economic and real Market Opportunities that often are undermined by all sorts of good, wellintended programs that remove the lowskill labor market from the proximity where people need the jobs the most. Tell me a little bit more about that. Theres this term called spacial mismatch. I first learned about this from William Wilson in the book but they live very far from the places that have those lowskilled job opportunities, right. So theres a mismatch socially. And i see this on the subway. If you take the subway in the morning here, theres a big difference between whos on at 5 00 a. M. And 9 00 a. M. 5 00 a. M. Its mostly black and hispanic men. At 9 00 a. M. Its middle class, people like me. And whats happening, you have you have these black men from the bronx and queens coming way out into the city for lowskill labor sorts of jobs. The professionals come in later. So theres this theres this mismatch where the people that nee need the opportunities dont live near where the entry points are. If you look at philadelphia, detroit, d. C. , where you have lowskill labor, economic depression, there arent a lot of job opportunities. I thought maybe we were going to talk about minimum wage too . Well, yeah, we could. But theres not even jobs that allow them to have a minimum wage job. I mean, if you go i was going to play it the other way. Has the minimum wage removed the jobs from their immediate neighborhood . Well, i mean, you have the minimum wage, you have osha regulations, you have all sorts of various entry in terms of small businesses. A few years ago i wrote this piece called let the husband letters hustle. And if you go into any b