The Children Are Getting Hurt

The ribbons began appearing months ago. Green, red, and black badges of solidarity are now everywhere in our neighborhood and in all black neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. The reason: Atlanta. The murders of now 23 black children (and two more missing) 600 miles away are being deeply felt here. The kids know what's happening, and they're scared. Both 2-year-olds in my house wear their ribbons all day and never want to take them off. One of them told me, "The children are getting hurt."

Those being killed in Atlanta are the poorest children. They live in the projects, the ghettos, and on the streets. They are young, they are poor, and they are black. That already makes them extremely vulnerable in this society. Now they are being murdered. The nature of life in Atlanta's poorest sections makes these children easy prey to those who would do them harm and makes stopping the killing extremely difficult.

The questions posed by Atlanta are deeper than the immediate ones of who is committing these unspeakable crimes or how city officials and the police are performing. The real issue is the vulnerability of black children and of all black people, not only in one southern city, but in every city throughout this country, where they are forced to live on the margins of a society that still refuses to grant them the most basic requirements of human dignity and justice.

Understanding the vulnerability of poor black children and of the whole black community is the key to understanding Atlanta.

Since the civil rights movement made some gains for black people, the issue of race has been moved to the back burner. The visibility in the media of the few blacks who have attained middle-class status has blinded most whites to the continued poverty and hopelessness of the masses of black people.

For most of them the issue is still survival. Political gains don't amount to much when economic servitude continues to be the principal fact of life. A whole generation of young black urban dwellers has simply been abandoned to unemployment, poverty, and crime.

We have been in our neighborhood long enough to have watched black children grow into teenagers. We have seen the promise of youth wasted by the hard facts of growing up without hope for the future. Substandard housing, bad health care, broken families, and violent neighborhoods are the daily realities for black young people. All of a sudden the kids are 16,17, and 18, lacking adequate education and left without the prospect of good jobs--or even any jobs--and denied the full possibilities of life. Some who once played recklessly on the streets have slowly become sullen, cynical, and angry. Others turn to alcohol, drugs, and to more serious crime. Some will eventually end up behind prison bars.

This too is violence against children, but it isn't an issue for most white Americans. Now, with a new administration, the official neglect of the poor is sanctioned and even justified in the name of sound fiscal policy. The poor are always made to pay for the sins of the rest of society. Always.

Even whites who were once allies of the civil rights movement have gone on to other issues and concerns. The issue of race no longer attracts the way it used to. Blacks struggle now for economic justice, and that battle is much more threatening than marching for legal desegregation.

This month we introduce a series of articles on the future of black people in America. We began working on this series almost a year ago, and the more we have worked on it, the more we have realized how much we need it.

White racism is this country's oldest and deepest sin. We have yet to come to terms with it and the way it has poisoned our national life and corrupted the American spirit.

The history of black people in this country has served as a mirror in which white people could see the truth about our society and about ourselves. It is time that we look again and look harder than we have ever done before.

Jim Wallis was editor-in-chief of Sojourners when this article appeared.