By Henry Louis Gates

Cambridge, Mass.

LAST week, the Pew Research Center published the astonishing finding that 37 percent of African-Americans polled felt that “blacks today can no longer be thought of as a single race” because of a widening class divide. From Frederick Douglass to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., perhaps the most fundamental assumption in the history of the black community has been that Americans of African descent, the descendants of the slaves, either because of shared culture or shared oppression, constitute “a mighty race,” as Marcus Garvey often put it.

“By a ratio of 2 to 1,” the report says, “blacks say that the values of poor and middle-class blacks have grown more dissimilar over the past decade. In contrast, most blacks say that the values of blacks and whites have grown more alike.”

The message here is that it is time to examine the differences between black families on either side of the divide for clues about how to address an increasingly entrenched inequality. We can’t afford to wait any longer to address the causes of persistent poverty among most black families.

This class divide was predicted long ago, and nobody wanted to listen. At a conference marking the 40th anniversary of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s infamous report on the problems of the black family, I asked the conservative scholar James Q. Wilson and the liberal scholar William Julius Wilson if ours was the generation presiding over an irreversible, self-perpetuating class divide within the African-American community.

“I have to believe that this is not the case,” the liberal Wilson responded with willed optimism. “Why go on with this work otherwise?” The conservative Wilson nodded. Yet, no one could imagine how to close the gap.

In 1965, when Moynihan published his report, suggesting that the out-of-wedlock birthrate and the number of families headed by single mothers, both about 24 percent, pointed to dissolution of the social fabric of the black community, black scholars and liberals dismissed it. They attacked its author as a right-wing bigot. Now we’d give just about anything to have those statistics back. Today, 69 percent of black babies are born out of wedlock, while 45 percent of black households with children are headed by women.

How did this happen? As many theories flourish as pundits — from slavery and segregation to the decline of factory jobs, crack cocaine, draconian drug laws and outsourcing. But nobody knows for sure.

I have been studying the family trees of 20 successful African-Americans, people in fields ranging from entertainment and sports (Oprah Winfrey, the track star Jackie Joyner-Kersee) to space travel and medicine (the astronaut Mae Jemison and Ben Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon). And I’ve seen an astonishing pattern: 15 of the 20 descend from at least one line of former slaves who managed to obtain property by 1920 — a time when only 25 percent of all African-American families owned property.

Ten years after slavery ended, Constantine Winfrey, Oprah’s great-grandfather, bartered eight bales of cleaned cotton (4,000 pounds) that he picked on his own time for 80 acres of prime bottomland in Mississippi. (He also learned to read and write while picking all that cotton.)

Sometimes the government helped: Whoopi Goldberg’s great-great-grandparents received their land through the Southern Homestead Act. “So my family got its 40 acres and a mule,” she exclaimed when I showed her the deed, referring to the rumor that freed slaves would receive land that had been owned by their masters.

Well, perhaps not the mule, but 104 acres in Florida. If there is a meaningful correlation between the success of accomplished African-Americans today and their ancestors’ property ownership, we can only imagine how different black-white relations would be had “40 acres and a mule” really been official government policy in the Reconstruction South.

The historical basis for the gap between the black middle class and underclass shows that ending discrimination, by itself, would not eradicate black poverty and dysfunction. We also need intervention to promulgate a middle-class ethic of success among the poor, while expanding opportunities for economic betterment.

Perhaps Margaret Thatcher, of all people, suggested a program that might help. In the 1980s, she turned 1.5 million residents of public housing projects in Britain into homeowners. It was certainly the most liberal thing Mrs. Thatcher did, and perhaps progressives should borrow a leaf from her playbook.

The telltale fact is that the biggest gap in black prosperity isn’t in income, but in wealth. According to a study by the economist Edward N. Wolff, the median net worth of non-Hispanic black households in 2004 was only $11,800 — less than 10 percent that of non-Hispanic white households, $118,300. Perhaps a bold and innovative approach to the problem of black poverty — one floated during the Civil War but never fully put into practice — would be to look at ways to turn tenants into homeowners. Sadly, in the wake of the subprime mortgage debacle, an enormous number of houses are being repossessed. But for the black poor, real progress may come only once they have an ownership stake in American society.

People who own property feel a sense of ownership in their future and their society. They study, save, work, strive and vote. And people trapped in a culture of tenancy do not.

The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of them self-inflicted. Why can’t black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality, birth within marriage, parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework? Imagine Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson distributing free copies of Virginia Hamilton’s collection of folktales “The People Could Fly” or Dr. Seuss, and demanding that black parents sign pledges to read to their children. What would it take to make inner-city schools havens of learning?

John Kenneth Galbraith once told me that the first step in reversing the economic inequalities that blacks face is greater voter participation, and I think he was right. Politicians will not put forth programs aimed at the problems of poor blacks while their turnout remains so low.

If the correlation between land ownership and success of African-Americans argues that the chasm between classes in the black community is partly the result of social forces set in motion by the dismal failure of 40 acres and a mule, then we must act decisively. If we do not, ours will be remembered as the generation that presided over a permanent class divide, a slow but inevitable process that began with the failure to give property to the people who had once been defined as property.

Henry Louis Gates Jr., a professor at Harvard, is the author of the forthcoming “In Search of Our Roots.” Read more!

We here at Op-Ed Central have been calling for a pro team in Harlem for the longest time. Not on this blog of course but elsewhere. I have always felt that Rucker Basketball should have been the catalyst for a NBA team in Harlem, a long time ago. As a Harlemite, or rather a brother from Uptown, I lived for summer Basketball in Bradhurst park, Rucker, 145th, etc. Suffice to say I was shocked when I perused the New York Times this morning and found this....

courtesy of the New York Times by William C. Rhoden

Commissioner David Stern wants to put an N.B.A. Development League team in Harlem, U.S.A. The idea was jolting at first. Now it’s intriguing.

Harlem, Stern said Saturday, represents a caldron of basketball tradition that would give much-needed weight to the N.B.A.’s seven-year-old D-League, a place teams can send young talent to mature. “Harlem represents a basketball tradition that for decades and decades and decades has given the N.B.A. so many players,” Stern said in a telephone interview.

The most intriguing aspect of a team in Harlem is finding a place to play. Some have said the armory at 142nd Street and Fifth Avenue. But the only place to play is in the old Renaissance Casino and Ballroom on 138th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. Some see the building as an eyesore. I see it as a bridge between Harlem’s past and future.

Every day, often twice a day, I pass the old Renaissance. The building, boarded up and worn down, gives no hint of its glorious past. I always stare. I can practically hear happy voices, bands blaring. I can see Pop Gates and John Isaacs playing on a slippery hardwood court with the Rens, and winning. Again.

Today I can see a new Renaissance team playing in Harlem.

Harlem is changing before our eyes: babies pushed by their nannies; swank health clubs; high rises blotting out the sun; Starbucks.

There would be many, many layers of red tape as well as community resistance to overcome. The Renaissance has been boarded up for nearly 30 years. The place needs work, lots of work. Seating capacity might be an issue, although the old Rens accommodated crowds of 3,000 in the halcyon days of the 1920s and 1930s, when they were the physical face of Harlem. Dan Reed, president of the D-League, said there were some franchises with 3,000-seat arenas.

The development league badly needs a presence in the Northeast. New York would be the hub. Harlem would become the D-League capital.

In fact, the Knicks have expressed an interest. “The Knicks are all over the idea,” Stern said. “It’s a great cultural tie-in.”

A renaissance is taking place in Harlem (that’s a generous description; accelerated gentrification is more to the point). Some shattered dreams are being forced out, new dreamers are moving in. The renovated ballroom and a developmental basketball team could be bridges between Harlem’s present and future.

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Harlem is home to the Rucker League and the Entertainers League, although the leagues are just that — entertainment. From what I gather from Stern and Reed, the league’s teams — and the team that would eventually come to Harlem — will not simply develop players but train a workforce for placement in the N.B.A. or a franchise in another sport.

“I don’t want this to just be about basketball,” Stern said.

This month marks the 84th anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance Big Five playing its first game inside the Renaissance.

The game was played Nov. 3, 1923. For the next 16 years, the Rens were one of the best basketball teams in the country. They won the first world professional championship in 1939.

Dr. Calvin O. Butts III is the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and president of SUNY College at Old Westbury. He is one of the founders of the Abyssinian Development Corporation, which owns the Renaissance, among other properties. During an interview Saturday, Butts outlined his vision for a renovated Renaissance Casino and Ballroom, saying it would be a cultural space, a repository for the arts, music, the spoken word, dance.

But home to an N.B.A. minor league team?

“It’s an interesting thought,” he said. “This is something I can consider. We haven’t really thought about this at all.”

A few years ago, Butts created a wide-ranging sports program at Abyssinian. He acknowledged that including a basketball component in the Renaissance renovation — in this case an N.B.A. Development League team — was “in keeping with what the space was originally used for.”

The Renaissance Casino and Ballroom was a hub of black culture in Harlem.

The Renaissance opened in 1923. The casino was built by the black-owned Sarco Realty Company. Bob Douglas, who founded the Rens basketball team and is known as the father of black basketball, made a deal with Sarco to play games and practice in the ballroom. In return, Douglas agreed to pay a percentage of the gate receipts. He also agreed to call the team the Renaissance Big Five. The team became famous as the Rens, and between 1924 and 1940, they were among the best teams — black or white — in the United States.

Once the N.B.A. hurdles the substantial bureaucratic and community barriers, the final challenge will be naming the D-League franchise.

On second thought, that’s easy. They’ll be the New Harlem Rens.

THANK YOU MR. RHODEN! Read more!

Posted by Tanvir Ahmad Khan


Every war is shrouded in fog. Since the regime is fighting several battles, the fog of war is commensurately thicker but not thick enough to persuade the people that holding the Constitution in abeyance would in any way help retrieve the lost ground

“There is no atonement. Every action in life is final and produces its inevitable consequences despite all the tears and gnashing of teeth.” — Joseph Conrad, in a letter dated September, 1891

While justifying the proclamation of emergency, President Musharraf portrayed Pakistan as a state collapsing under the weight of Islamist insurgencies and a Supreme Court wantonly unaware of the dangerous consequences of its decisions. Since the Baloch struggle for an honourable place in the federation would not have preyed on the already fraught nerves of Western governments grappling with Afghanistan, he did not dwell on it. But precisely with that objective in mind, he risked self-indictment when it came to the tribal badlands and Swat. Pakistan’s chief of army staff suddenly conceded that ungoverned spaces in a highly sensitive region of the country were proliferating. The people knew it to be true and waited patiently for their president to explain why the regime was losing even territory after losing the battle for hearts and minds, and what it proposed to do to turn the tide. What they got was a fuzzy view of the putative complicity of the higher judiciary and the media in preventing a winning deployment of our legions against the terrorists stalking the land.

Every war is shrouded in fog. Since the regime is fighting several battles, the fog of war is commensurately thicker but not thick enough to persuade the people that holding the Constitution in abeyance would in any way help retrieve the lost ground. On the face of it, the barbarians at the gate stand to gain as the project for national reconciliation crumbles. The implicit message that this project would be advanced by sending tens of highly respected judges home and by pulling out the plug of every independent news channel has been interpreted across the globe to mean that the army chief was not thinking of the barbarians at all but of an impending threat to his own absolute power. From the Roman generals packing off Senates to present day military rulers dissolving parliaments and abrogating constitutions, the ploy has acquired a pathetic banality.

Perhaps there wasn’t much of a fog hanging over the real battle. For weeks, rumours of a stern response to a negative verdict by the Supreme Court had swirled around with as much abundance as the leaves shed by trees in the deepening Islamabad winter. But that was the kind of intimidation that Pakistan’s judiciary has always faced; intimidation that sent an elected prime minister to the gallows and inscribed the Doctrine of Necessity as the dominant principle in the legal repertoire of the ruling elite. But there were reasons to hope that this time around, it would not be allowed to become an existential threat to the country. The threats came mostly from inconsequential agents of the regime — shrimps pretending to be whales — retained almost exclusively for unsavoury tasks. The expectation was that at the apex of the political, judicial and legislative systems, there were men who would not strain the body politic to a breaking point.

Even the international context of the unfolding political drama pointed to restraint. Global powers embroiled in the Afghan conflict had worked tirelessly to convince Pakistan’s political class that President Musharraf would not countenance giving up power, while persuading Musharraf that he would be better off with a civilian make-over. He had not been able to construct a polity where he could rule with popular assent. All through the summer of 2007, the powers — often in the person of Condoleezza Rice — had promoted a coalition with Benazir Bhutto that would obviate Musharraf’s dependence on the office of the army chief. This factor alone militated against turning the world upside down.

Musharraf had all the time in which he could remove the constitutional anomaly of combining the august office of the president of the republic with that of the army chief. All that he needed was to overcome a fear of some loss of power as a necessary condition for the restoration of democracy. But he has ended up casting aside all constitutional restraint and virtually re-imposing Martial Law on the country. It has created legal and political complications that by definition are far graver than those arising from the Supreme Court declaring him ineligible for the presidential election already held.

The armed forces do not have a single factor left from the cluster that facilitated the coup d’état of October 12, 1999. Any attempt to re-impose direct military rule will almost certainly lead to fragmentation of the national polity and possibly the state. Musharraf may find it extremely difficult to sustain the present version of emergency. Bhutto returned from exile in the midst of misgivings about her secret understanding with him and was then confronted with the death of nearly 140 of her ardent supporters. She still made only modest demands. The present assault on fundamental rights and civil liberties almost entitles her to demand better terms of engagement for her party.

She is still in the twilight zone so far as resistance to the regime’s latest lurch towards authoritarianism is concerned, but very soon there would be a new demand that Musharraf must step down to enable the people to have a fair and free election. If circumstances push Bhutto into the role of a determined opposition leader, the situation would change radically. A few more weeks of turbulence in the Pakistani street would further reduce the already waning international backing that Musharraf has enjoyed in the past. Governments in the West have to contend with a sense of outrage that grows with every passing day. The Provisional Constitutional Order is a formidable obstacle but Pakistan needs the ingenuity of its legal wizards to enable him to revoke the proclamation of emergency, restore fundamental rights and hold a fair and free election this winter. Pakistan’s survival depends on this ingenuity. It is time to live up to the slogan of Pakistan First.

Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former foreign secretary Read more!