African American Single Parents in the Inner City: Good and Bad News - Essay Example

?594820 Single Parents in the African American/ Inner Community African American Single Parents in the Inner Good and Bad News Larry Reddick Jr.  English 1 Final Paper  Instructor: C. Hoffman  Fall 2011 Outline Title: African American Single Parents in the Inner City: Good and Bad News Intro/Thesis: The reports from those who are still concerned with the issue of single parents in inner city, while apparently not newsworthy, are a mixed bag, some good news, some not so good. In fact, it is better news than the country has heard in a long time when it comes to inner city communities and the specific problems associated with them. I. One of the most troublesome problems of the inner city is the prevalence of single parent homes. A. Welfare rolls add to national debt. 1. Kay S. Hymowitz claims it is a uniquely African American issue. 2. Hymowitz claims single parenthood cyclical. a. Trait passed on from mother to daughter. b. Prevalent in black households. B. Since unwed parenthood does not have genetic origin, it is safe to assume that it results from socio-economic conditions and not from factors due to race or ethnicity. II. Statistics point out small overall decline in U.S. single parent households. A. Some urban areas showed decline. B. Most stayed the same or increased. III. The concern is not any moral issue about single motherhood but the ramifications of a one parent family A. Single mothers, especially those in inner city communities and especially African Americans, face other issues that contribute to their poverty but are not automatically associated with single parenthood. B. Single parents rarely participate in the politics of the neighborhood or the country. 1. Their voices are not heard on Election Day. 2. That may be the single greatest factor in the dramatic increase in poverty and the corresponding decline in the middle class in the past decade. IV. One of the biggest complaints African Americans have is that their voice is not heard in national politics A. People like Hymowitz can cite Daniel Moynihan, who first put the blame for the poverty of African Americans in the inner city on the matriarchal structure of the black family. B. With the increase in poverty in all sectors of society, perhaps Hymowitz and Moynihan had it wrong. C. However, the specifically African American issues still linger in several areas including education, drugs, unemployment, poverty, and single parent families V. Some attribute the issue of single parent African American families to several factors; two them are black pride and feminism A. Criticism of either was seen as both sexist and racist. 1. Most black families were headed by single women. 2. These matriarchal structured families are blamed for many issues. a. The tendency of black men to abandon their children both physically and financially. b. Increased drug use c. The tendency of young black teenage women to give birth out of wedlock. VI. Others would dispute that it is the matriarchal structure that leads to the specific issue of African American absentee fathers, drug use, and the tendency of young African American women to have children while in their teens and unmarried. A. While there is no denying that single women do head many African-American families, but middle class African-American families do exist where both mother and father are present in the same numbers as this is true for white middle class families too. B. Many single parent families headed by white and Hispanic mothers too. C. Rochelle Spooner disputes Hymowitz’s claims D. Great efforts were made in the 1990s to stop what many white politicians saw as the abuse of the system by black single mothers. VII. 1996 The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) became law. A. PRWORA was considered a major shift in the way welfare money and other forms of assistance were doled out. 1. The overriding assumption was that poor people, black women specifically, would continuously produce children just so they could get a little bump in their monthly welfare stipend. 2. Reformers wanted this “free ride” to end and for those drawing welfare and aid to dependent children to work for the money they were getting. B. These reforms were touted as compassionate because the lawmakers who created them said they would break the cycle of dependency on welfare by poor single parents. VIII. What happened to the increased independence and lower welfare roles for black Americans that PRWORA promised to bring? A. Some claim that the reform backfired and did the opposite of what it was intended to do. B. This occurred because although millions of welfare moms found work, it was in the minimum wage category C. Even though, these women were entering the job market at a prosperous time, most stayed poor. IX. But, PRWORA also had another element to it besides the welfare-to-work aspect. It also aimed at curtailing large numbers of single parent households. A. The notion apparently was that these (lazy) welfare mothers who just spit out another baby every year or so all in an attempt to get more free money from the welfare system would realize how difficult it was to support a family and stop having children. B. That failed pretty miserably too. C. Katha Pollitt places the policy squarely in a sexist realm. D. Single motherhood continued to rise, accounting for 41 percent of all births in 2008, a historic high. E. Imagine how these women are fairing now in the current economic climate where many adults are unemployed or under employed and unemployment benefits have run out. X. The largest unemployment numbers are for African Americans. A. Some or perhaps many of these “welfare moms” are unemployed; B. Some may have exhausted their unemployment insurance. C. Many of these mothers and their families are the manifestation of PRWORA’s legacy. 1. It did not help poor African American single mothers out of welfare and into self-reliance. It did not become part of a rising tide lifting all boats. 2. All it did was lower the tax burden for wealthy people. It probably also lowered the burden of guilt for them too XI. The “inner city” is a euphemism for the poverty stricken areas of large metropolises, and it is here where many poor people reside. A. Sherri Turner and Julia Ziebel discuss educational opportunities for inner city youth. 1. Young people in the inner city have fewer career opportunities because they are only exposed to the few businesses within their exposure mostly representing lower wage jobs. 2. They also see their parents following the same path as their grandparents and feel that they will do the same thing. B. Turner and Ziebell believe these sorts of attitudes account for the lower academic achievement of African American inner city youth. XII. Added to the problems of single parenthood and poverty are the other issues that plague inner city youth. A. Lydia O’Donnell, Ann Stueve, and Anthi Myint-U write about violence and drug use. B. This vulnerable group experiences several types of violence. 1. Violence to self in the form of suicide attempts. 2. Violence done to them by someone else. 3. Violence they commit themselves. C. Usually women are at the receiving end of the violence, although males can be too. D. Anybody growing up in an environment such as the inner city where violence is common can depend on it to settle issues XIII. Because of the numerous studies done on violence in the inner city communities, some good programs that seem to be working, have been developed. A. One program that came out of studying inner city problems was EKG in Indianapolis, IN. 1. EKG is a cooperative multidiscipline program. 2. Treating violence as if it were a medical problem like alcoholism or drug abuse works very well because it has a similar progression from minor issues to criminal behavior. B. Another neighborhood cooperative came out of “informant” studies that spanned several decades. 1. It focused on alcohol and drug usage. 2. Some studies examined how alcohol and alcoholism is socially constructed. 3. Much of the impetus of the movements came from people who not only lived in the inner cities, but from professionals who had to deal with the fallout from the violence that occurred there. C. In the 1980s crack cocaine was an issue. 1. Crack epidemic increased the prevalence of substance abuse problems. 2. It also increased drug dealing, crime, and urban blight in inner city neighborhoods. XIV. People living in the inner city, both young and old, see the secondary problems that drug use and abuse create especially among the already vulnerable poverty stricken African Americans and single mothers of the inner city. A. Andrew Golub, Eloise Dunlap, and Ellen Benoit discuss stages of drug use in inner city. B. The current drug of choice is marijuana. 1. Marijuana is a safer option. 2. Marijuana may actually be beneficial to the personal relationships of inner city dwellers. Conclusion: We can only hope that the lessons learned from the decades of oppression inner city African American single parents suffered are not lost to the capitalist machine. African American Single Parents in the Inner City: Good and Bad News With the nation’s current focus is on jobs or the economy, the problems that were once the concern of lawmakers and pundits have slipped to the wayside. They are no longer sexy or even newsworthy when 9% of the population is on unemployment compensation, not to mention those people who have used up their unemployment insurance and are no longer counted in the ranks of the unemployed. More troubling to some people is how to lower the long term debt that the government has amassed and will amass for future generations to deal with. These problems seem more pressing at the current moment than the problems of the inner city. The economic situation and its overwhelming problems have been the nation’s focus for so long that what used to trouble Americans has gone virtually unnoticed and uncritiqued for at least the past three or four years. Luckily though, some people are still focused on the long term problems of single parents and the problems of inner city communities as well as the specific problems of African-American youth who are most affected by the other two issues. The reports from those who are still concerned with these issues, while apparently not newsworthy, are a mixed bag, some good news, some not so good. In fact, it is better news than the country has heard in a long time when it comes to inner city communities and the specific problems associated with them. One of the most troublesome problems of the inner city is the prevalence of single parent homes. This is an especially troubling issue because of the drain this type of problem causes to the national tax supported coffers. Children born out of wedlock to single women who then draw welfare to support themselves and their children is one of the biggest expenses the federal budget has. If these single mothers do not draw welfare per se, they often get other federal assistance such as WIC, food stamps, Section 8 housing, and federally funded medical insurance all of which tax dollars provide. Some, like Kay Hymowitz, say that this problem is largely a problem of the African American community. Hymowitz also sees the problem as a cyclic issue passed on from one generation to the next. Almost 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers. Those mothers are far more likely than married mothers to be poor, even after a post-welfare-reform decline in child poverty. They are also more likely to pass that poverty on to their children. Sophisticates often try to dodge the implications of this bleak reality by shrugging that single motherhood is an inescapable fact of modern life. . . .Not so; it is a largely low-income—and disproportionately black—phenomenon. (Hymowitz) Hymowitz has a point, but statistics also show that single parenthood among African Americans has declined in recent years overall and that by far the greatest increase in single parenthood occurred among white unmarried women. According to a website called Family.Jrank.org, “Since 1990, births have declined among African-American teens and risen among white teens, who comprise two-thirds of teen mothers” (Net Industries). Since unwed parenthood does not have genetic origin, it is safe to assume that it results from socio-economic conditions and not from factors due to race or ethnicity. Yet, single parenting is still one of the most serious issues facing the nation and African-American youth especially. According to another website, Kidscount.org the problem has not changed too dramatically in many areas in the five years between 2005 and 2009. Overall, the percent of African American single parent households increased in the five years between 2005 to 2009 from 65% to 67%. In some states with large inner-city urban areas the number of African-American single parent households has declined since 2005 including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. In Virginia, Louisiana and Florida the percentage of single parent households among African Americans has remained steady at 58%, 69%, and 63% respectively. In other largely urban states the number of African American single-parent households has increased: California went from 62% in 2005 to 65% in 2009, Illinois from 70% to 76%, Indiana from 67% to 72%, New Jersey from 63% to 64%, and New York from 63% to 66%. One of the most stunning pieces of information listed at the website is that the rate of African American single parent households in the nation’s capital, Washington D.C., was 84%, by far the highest of all the urban areas. The percentage of single parent households in Washington D.C. for 2005 was not reported, so a comparison could not be made (Annie E. Casey Foundation). However, these numbers show some good news and some not so good news. The concern is not any moral issue about single motherhood but the ramifications of a one parent family. According to Hymowitz, “Single mothers in the ghetto . . . tended to drift into pregnancy, often more than once and by more than one man, and to float through the chaos around them. Such mothers are unlikely to ‘shape their children’s character and ability’ in ways that lead to upward mobility” (Hymowitz). Others agree that single mothers, especially those in inner city communities and especially African Americans, face other issues that contribute to their poverty but are not automatically associated with single parenthood. Eric Plutzer and Nancy Wiefek point out that “Single mothers have lower rates of [community and civic] participation and, given the high rates of single parenthood in segregated inner-city neighborhoods, this substantially diminishes the political voice of the nation’s poor, contributing to class bias in the electorate” (Plutzer and Wiefek 659). In other words, single parents rarely participate in the politics of the neighborhood or the country. Their voices are not heard on Election Day. That may be the single greatest factor in the dramatic increase in poverty and the corresponding decline in the middle class in the past decade. The lack of voice in national affairs has always been an issue for African Americans. From the time of Emancipation through the Jim Crow and Civil Rights era, one of the biggest complaints African Americans have is that their voice is not heard in national politics. Perhaps that has changed now that Barrack Obama is president. Perhaps the voice of Black America is getting a fairer hearing. People like Hymowitz can cite Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who first put the blame for the poverty of African Americans in the inner city on the matriarchal structure of the black family. With the increase in poverty in all sectors of society, perhaps Hymowitz and Moynihan had it wrong. However, the specifically African American issues still linger in several areas including education, drugs, unemployment, poverty, and single parent families. Some attribute the issue of single parent African American families to several factors; two of them are black pride and feminism. “If black pride made it hard to grapple with the increasingly separate and unequal family, feminism made it impossible. Fretting about single-parent families was now not only racist but also sexist, an effort to deny women their independence, their sexuality, or both. As for the poverty of single mothers, that was simply more proof of patriarchal oppression” (Hymowitz). If someone, such as Moynihan spoke out about African-American poverty and single parenthood, they were seen as both sexist and racist since most black families were headed by single women. These matriarchal structured families are blamed for the tendency of black men to abandon their children both physically and financially, for increased drug use, and for the tendency of young black teenage women to give birth out of wedlock. Others would dispute that it is the matriarchal structure that leads to the specific issue of African American absentee fathers, drug use, and the tendency of young African American women to have children while in their teens and unmarried. While there is no denying that single women do head many African-American families, but middle class African-American families do exist where both mother and father are present in the same numbers as this is true for white middle class families too. Rochelle Spooner, writing for a Tulane University web journal page, says, “A major deception that has been transferred to modern society is that black single motherhood has become a satisfactory and valued way of living to African-American young women. Accordingly, it projects the image of the black single mother as the malefactor in the deconstruction of the ‘Black family’" (Spooner). Spooner cites the same report done by Moynihan in the 1960s that Hymowitz also refers to. Spooner interprets it quite a bit differently though. “Throughout the 60's advent of the Moynihan report, leading into the Reagan era, and throughout the nineties into the twenty-first century, American society has utilized such influential methods of representation as politics, media, and popular culture, to unjustly reflect this false belief [that black matriarchy was destroying black families]. These false notions, that objectify and stigmatize black women, are manifesting themselves into the minds of white and black Americans alike” (Spooner). Great efforts were made in the 1990s to stop what many white politicians saw as the abuse of the system by black single mothers. In 1996 The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) became law with President Bill Clinton’s signing of the bill in August of that year. PRWORA was considered a major shift in the way welfare money and other forms of assistance were doled out. The overriding assumption was that poor people, black women specifically, would continuously produce children just so they could get a little bump in their monthly welfare stipend. Reformers wanted this “free ride” to end and for those drawing welfare and aid to dependent children to work for the money they were getting. Writing the year that the drastic changes legislated in PRWORA went into effect, 1997, Eugene Lewit, Donna Tumane, and Richard Behrman said, As a result of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), commonly called ‘welfare,’ is being replaced by Temporary Assistance for Needy (TANF), a new cash assistance program. . . . AFDC targeted children who lacked financial support because one parent was absent from home, incapacitated, dead, or unemployed. AFDC was an entitlement: all families who met eligibility rules received benefits. PRWORA ended entitlement to welfare and gave each state more flexibility in designing eligibility rules and benefit packages. TANF/benefits are time-limited (five years is the lifetime maximum time for which an adult may receive federally financed benefits). . . and require recipients to work after two years. . . . . Benefits to unmarried parents under age 18 are restricted. (Lewit, Terman and Behrman 9-10) These reforms were touted as compassionate because the lawmakers who created them said they would break the cycle of dependency on welfare by poor single parents (read that: poor black single parents) and would increase independence and self-reliance. Shortly after these welfare reforms took place the statistics showed that they number of poor children decreased. Yet, here we are more than a decade later and the number of poor children is higher than ever and black unemployment is nearly double that of white unemployment, 15.1% for blacks versus 8% for white in October 2011 (U.S. Census Bureau). What happened to the increased independence and lower welfare roles for black Americans that PRWORA promised to bring? Some claim that the reform backfired and did the opposite of what it was intended to do. This occurred because although millions of welfare moms found work, it was in the minimum wage category. One person working 40 hours per week at $6 per hour does not gross even $1000 a month. Out of that, former welfare moms had to pay rent, daycare, travel expenses, food. Sure, some of it was subsidized, but these women were not better off and did not see how their new-found independence and self-reliance helped them in any way. Even though, these women were entering the job market at a prosperous time, most stayed poor. But, PRWORA also had another element to it besides the welfare-to-work aspect. It also aimed at curtailing large numbers of single parent households. The notion apparently was that these (lazy) welfare mothers who just spit out another baby every year or so all in an attempt to get more free money from the welfare system would realize how difficult it was to support a family and stop having children. Well, that failed pretty miserably too. Katha Pollitt places the policy squarely in a sexist realm. She says, “As for the effects PRWORA was supposed to have on sexual mores, teen pregnancy did go down—but that happened for many reasons, and the United States is still way out in front of the other industrialized nations, including those with generous supports for young mothers and their children. Single motherhood continued to rise, accounting for 41 percent of all births in 2008, a historic high. Since single motherhood is rising all over the world, in countries from Ireland to Japan, it is not surprising that it has proved resistant to PRWORA’s supposed miracle cure” (Pollit). Imagine how these women are fairing now in the current economic climate where many adults are unemployed or under employed and unemployment benefits have run out. Since we know that the largest unemployment numbers are for African Americans, it would follow that some or perhaps many of these “welfare moms” are unemployed; some may have exhausted their unemployment insurance. Without the support of a spouse or co-parent, many of these mothers and their families are the manifestation of PRWORA’s legacy. It did not help poor African American single mothers out of welfare and into self-reliance. It did not become part of a rising tide lifting all boats. All it did was lower the tax burden for wealthy people. It probably also lowered the burden of guilt for them too when they could point at what the political pundits said were feckless welfare moms forced to go back to work to earn their and their children’s keep. The “inner city” is a euphemism for the poverty stricken areas of large metropolises, and it is here where many poor people reside. Sherri Turner and Julia Ziebell say that the inner city is "characterized by minimal educational opportunities, high unemployment and crime rates, broken families, and inadequate housing" (Turner and Ziebell). Both educators, Turner and Ziebel write about breaking the cycle of poverty for young inner city, largely African American, youth. They say that young people in the inner city have fewer career opportunities because they are only exposed to the few businesses within their exposure mostly representing lower wage jobs. They also see their parents following the same path as their grandparents and feel that they will do the same thing. Turner and Ziebell believe these sorts of attitudes account for the lower academic achievement of African American inner city youth. Added to the problems of single parenthood and poverty are the other issues that plague inner city youth including violence and alcohol or drug use. According to Lydia O’Donnell, Ann Stueve, and Anthi Myint-U, “Young adults in economically disadvantaged communities are more likely to be parents than age peers in middle- and high-income communities. Reflecting broader patterns of poverty, the youngest parents in the United States are disproportionately African American and Hispanic. These parents face challenges related to living in highly stressful environments, including involvement in and exposure to multiple forms of violence (O'Donnell, Stueve and Myint-U). The violence this particularly vulnerable group experiences may be violence to self in the form of suicide attempts, violence done to them by someone else or the violence they commit themselves. Usually women are at the receiving end of the violence, although males can be too. Anybody growing up in an environment such as the inner city where violence is common can depend on it to settle issues. “Residents of communities with poor economic opportunities and outlooks continue to bear the burden of high rates of predatory violence and relationship violence” (O'Donnell, Stueve and Myint-U). Young parents who live in the inner cities have not only the responsibility for themselves but for their child(ren), and they have the added stress of raising their children in a violent environment. “Mothers and fathers in high-poverty, high-violence communities must not only adjust to parenthood; they must also cope with environmental hurdles and their own patterns of violence. Our findings indicate that being a parent does not reduce perpetration of violence for young men or women. Indeed, child rearing may be a risk for violence toward oneself among fathers” (O'Donnell, Stueve and Myint-U). However, because of the numerous studies done on violence in the inner city communities, some good programs that seem to be working, have been developed. One such program in Indianapolis, IN called “The Educating Kids against Gun Violence” (EKG) program came about as a response to the prevalence of gun violence in urban inner city communities. EKG started from a partnership between the county prosecutor's office. Treating violence as if it were a medical problem like alcoholism or drug abuse works very well because it has a similar progression from minor issues to criminal behavior. Statistics say that a victim of violence is much more likely to be a repeat victim and/or a perpetrator of violence. “Specifically, exposure to firearm local law enforcement, and a hospital trauma center. violence increases the risk that a youth will commit a crime two-fold within two years and that serious assault injury risk is 40 times greater than in youths never exposed to assault injury" (Hayward, Simmons and St. John 454-455). Since both medical professionals and law enforcement professionals must deal with violence and would presumably rather not, it makes sense that they would combine forces to combat the problem. EKG is a community based multidisciplinary program that helps to increase youth awareness about the consequences of perpetrating violence and the risks of becoming a victim of violence. “There is increasing evidence that the public health approach to youth violence is successful and cost effective” (Hayward, Simmons and St. John 454-455). The EKG program had at least good short term outcomes in regards to inner city youth knowledge about the medical consequences and attitudes that lead to gun violence. Another problem afflicting inner city youth is that of alcoholism. Denise Herd writes about a study done in which “informants,” or people who live in the inner city, were surveyed about the problems they saw in their neighborhoods. One of the major concerns many of these “informants” had was with overt drunkenness and the disregard for its affects on the communities. All of them linked the use of alcohol and drugs to the problem of violence and expressed their intention, as well as the intentions of others they knew in the neighborhood, to get involved in the anti-alcohol policies. They could see that by getting control of the alcohol issue, violence would also lessen. For example, one respondent from Raleigh said, “The key issue in the minds of a lotta people in South East Raleigh is not alcohol, it’s shootings. It’s crime.” Although a few informants viewed crime as a standalone issue, most linked crime with alcohol and drug use or drug dealing, or with the presence of alcohol outlets. In Milwaukee, one informant said that community-based organizations got together and began to work on drug and alcohol issues because “gang members had this whole Wells Street just infested with gangs and drug activity.” This respondent stated that gang members were standing on top of buildings “just literally shooting down at one another” . . . . Respondents also discussed the relationship between alcohol outlets and crime. A woman from Los Angeles described instances of shootings and deaths that occurred at a liquor store. (Herd 19) The best part of these stories is that the “informants” and the people they know want the alcohol abuse to stop. They mobilize against it rather than ignoring it or, worse, joining it. These sorts of stories about community organization are not what one normally hears coming out of the inner city. The change in inner cities from places where public drunkenness was a norm and the violence that accompanied it occurred every day began in the 1980s and 1990s. Studies were done examining how alcohol and alcoholism is socially constructed. Much of the impetus of the movements came from people who not only lived in the inner cities, but from professionals who had to deal with the fallout from the violence that occurred there. Like the EKG program in Indianapolis, these anti-alcohol and drug campaigns of the past 30 years were partnerships between medical and law enforcement professionals as well as inner city residents. Their main goals were to change the laws about alcohol sales in certain neighborhoods and the marketing of alcohol to minors in cities all over the United States. “These activists voiced open opposition to alcohol outlets, billboards, and alcohol advertising practices in their/ communities. They developed local ordinances to limit and regulate alcohol outlets, mobilized networks to eliminate alcohol billboard advertising, and launched campaigns to protest efforts by alcohol and tobacco companies to market products targeted at African Americans in the inner city, especially youth” (Herd 8-9). However, alcohol is not the drug most people think of when they consider the drug of choice in the poor inner city neighborhoods. The 1980s crack epidemic increased the prevalence of substance abuse problems as well drug dealing, crime, and urban blight in inner city neighborhoods. Many buildings in the inner city were abandoned due to the drug wars raging around them in the streets. These empty buildings became havens for drug dealers and users. In some cases, the same type of complaints about drugs as the ones made about alcohol inspired community action. So, the stereotype of the drug infested inner city “project” is not the entire actuality. True there were some tough neighborhoods as a result of the drug and increasing gang activities. Yet, most of the people living in these areas want a better life, but can only afford to live where alcohol and drug use is epidemic. These people see the problems that substance abuse cause and want to change it. In an interesting circularity, Andrew Golub, Eloise Dunlap, and Ellen Benoit point out how people living in the inner city, both young and old, see the secondary problems that drug use and abuse create especially among the already vulnerable poverty stricken African Americans and single mothers of the inner city. “The quality and durability of marriages and cohabitation partnerships between poor African-American females and males have been heavily challenged by the interrelated problems of economic marginality, incarceration, and illegal drug use. African-American females have been facing lower prospects for marriage due to an ever-declining ratio of eligible African-American males to females, especially due to death and imprisonment” (Golub, Dunlap and Benoit). Add to that the fact that African American males also have low income potential which renders them even more undesirable. Then there are the drug users. When a person over 20 years old hears “inner city,” they may, not surprisingly, think of crack cocaine because the inner city became a place synonymous with crack use. Even though the crack epidemic peaked in the 1980s other drugs were around to take up the slack once crack users died, were imprisoned, or gave the drug up. One of the saddest consequences of the drug was that the day of a crack user was organized around the drug much like the heroin users day in the 1960s and 1970s. This led to joblessness and further despair. Many young black men from the inner city were incarcerated, became involved with gangs, or both. Many died. Sadly, both heroin and crack devastated many lives and left scars on the inner city, not least of which is the stereotype of being a place where drugs are sold out in the open and police fear to control. Other consequences include the ever increasing violence, the families left without fathers, sons, and husbands, and rampant HIV/AIDs and Hepatitis from using dirty needles and practicing unsafe sex. But even from a crack fueled disease epidemic positive things can come. Crack use diminished greatly when New York City experienced revitalization during the 1990s. The city cleaned up the streets and made the homeless less visible. The economy was good, so unemployment was not an issue as it is now. Along with the prosperity, some of the desperation of the inner cities was relieved, and serious drug use went into decline. Many inner city youth had seen the devastating effects of crack use and purposely avoided it. The drug of choice now for most inner city urbanites of a certain age is marijuana. Even this is good news since marijuana does not have the devastating side effects associated with crack or heroin. “The health effects of marijuana use are less profound than crack and the behaviors surrounding smoking blunts are less violent and antisocial. . . .This subcultural shift has led to improvements in household relationships” (Golub, Dunlap and Benoit 328). Golub, Dunlap and Benoit go so far as to say that marijuana may actually be beneficial to the personal relationships of inner city dwellers. “Marijuana use is generally associated with less conflict and more harmonious opposite-sex intimate relationships than use of crack or heroin. This is good news for the individuals, their partners, and the children growing up in these households. There is even some limited evidence that marijuana was helping some partnerships stay together” (Golub, Dunlap and Benoit 336). Of course, if a person were spending all of their time and money pursuing a marijuana high, it would not be good for a relationship either. Like the progression of drug use in the inner city from horrendous levels to out of control and now back to a more manageable and less dangerous alternative, the lives of inner city people have gone from horrendous to more manageable. Unfortunately, currently it does not seem as if the lives of African American single parents in the inner city is all that great, but such is the case for many people in the country. Inner city African American single parents are one of the poorest segments of the 99%. If the country can see their way through this financial crisis, hopefully there will be lessons learned about what happens to people who struggle against the challenges that life throws up at them to reach an American dream that is just a lie perpetuated by the wealthy 1%, promoted to keep the masses under their control. Inner city African Americans are suffering the same financial hardships and not reverting to old habits that may have added to their troubles. The single parent birth rate for inner city African Americans continues to decline. Drug use continues to decline and with it violence has declined. We can only hope that the lessons learned from the decades of oppression inner city African American single parents suffered are not lost to the capitalist machine. Works Cited Annie E. Casey Foundation. "Data Center." 2009. Kidscount.org. 15 November 2011 . Golub, Andrew, Eloise Dunlap and Ellen Benoit. "Drug Use And Conflict In Inner-City African- American Relationships In The 2000s." Journal Of Psychoactive Drugs 42.3 (2010): 327- 337. Hayward, Thomas Z., et al. "Impacting the Problem of Inner-City Youth Violence: ''Educating Kids about Gun Violence'' Program." American Surgeon 77 (2011): 451-457. Herd, Denise. "Voices from the Field: The social construction of alcohol problems in inner-city communities." Contemporary Drug Problems 38 (2011): 7-39. Hymowitz, Kay S. "The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies." Summer 2005. City-Journal.org. 15 November 2011 . Lewit, Eugene, Donna Terman and Richard Behrman. "Children and Poverty: Analysis and Recommendations." The Future of Children (1997): 4-24. Net Industries. "Single-Parent Families - Demographic Trends." 2011. Family.jrank.org. 15 November 2011 . O'Donnell, Lydia, Ann Stueve and Athi Myint-U. "Parenting and Violence Toward Self, Partners, and Others Among Inner-City Young Adults." American Journal of Public Health 99.12 (2009): 2255-2260. Academic Search Premier. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. Plutzer, Eric and Nancy Wiefek. "Family Transitions, Economic Status, and Voter Turnout Among African-American and Inner City Women." Social Science Quarterly 87.3 (2006): 658-678. Pollit, Katha. "What Ever Happened to Welfare Mothers?" The Nation 31 May 2010: 8. Spooner, Rochelle. "Black Matriarchy: Deconstruction of the Black Family." 2011. Tulane.edu. 15 November 2011 . Turner, Sherri and Julia L. Conkel Ziebell. "The Career Beliefs of Inner-City Adolescents." Professional School Counseling 15.1 (2011): 1-14. Academic Search Premier. Web. 16 Nov. 2011. U.S. Census Bureau. Census.gov. 3 October 2011. 16 November 2011 . Read More