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Leaders look to build on '90s gains

Sunday, July 27, 2003

By Gary Rotstein, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

When National Urban League leaders talk of black families' history of overcoming hardship, they cite the slavery era's forced separation of parents from children and one another.

Today, they say, the most serious obstacles to family stability are economic.

A robust national economy in the late 1990s helped black households in particular claim a higher percentage of married parents living together, increased home ownership and reduced teen pregnancy and child poverty rates.

	A father's greatest gift: Being there Single moms face spectrum of choices Rewards of saving are more than wealth Index to Urban League coverage

Gains among African-American families in those areas equaled or, in many cases, surpassed those for other races. Statistics for black households still appeared dismal overall compared with white families, but at least the gap closed on some indicators of potential well-being.

Such strides, and questions about how to continue them, produced the theme, "The Black Family: Building on its Resilience," for the Urban League conference running through Wednesday at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.

Speakers will talk about evolving gender roles, high incarceration rates, the influence of the extended family and other topics. But a running thread, for the speakers and other researchers, is the possible closer link between economic circumstances and domestic well-being for black families than for others.

Researchers are awaiting data on whether socio-economic progress for black households has been halted or reversed by the recent economic slowdown, which many suspect is the case. The unemployment rate stood at 11.8 percent for black workers in June, more than double the overall national rate.

"If you have economic instability, you have family instability," said Robert Hill, a researcher on racial issues who will be speaking Tuesday at the conference.

The difference between black adults and their white counterparts in likelihood of marriage, divorce and remarriage has widened for decades, analysts say. African-Americans, either with or without children, have become far more likely than others to be single.

That is attributed in part to economic changes that hurt blacks more than whites, including a decline in the manufacturing sector and growth of service sector jobs in suburbs more than cities.

"There's more friction in homes, and more divorces and more non-marriages" when money is scarce, said Hill, of the Westat Inc. research firm.

U.S. Census Bureau estimates for 2002 showed the percentage of black children living with both their parents at 39 percent, up from 33 percent in 1995 but still barely half the number for white children, 75 percent.

The percentage of black kids living only with their mother stood at 48 percent, down from 53 percent in the mid-1990s but still huge compared with the 18 percent of white children just with mom.

Such data creates a question which deserves more attention: longtime black vs. white disparities or the more recent improvements in narrowing the gap. Until there's evidence that the progress is long-term and can survive economic ups and downs, the focus is likely to remain on the more negative chasm.

"You can't lose sight of the fact that all of [the statistics] point to a very bad economic situation for the single-mother head of household," National Urban League President Marc Morial said. "If [recent unemployment numbers] are the beginning of the re-emergence of the old disparities, we have great concern."

In 1999, according to census data, 46 percent of the Pittsburgh region's single black mothers were living with their children in poverty, while that was the case for 10 percent of black, married-couple households.

While many African-American woman raise children successfully without husbands -- often with support from other family members -- they encounter far more obstacles in doing so, said Larry Davis, dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work.

"A good two-parent family is better than a good single-parent family," Davis asserted.

"My main concern for single-parent families is the wealth accumulation is far inferior," he said. "The groups doing the best in America have the highest employment rates, the highest two-parent family rates and the highest college-attendance rates."

While black families appear far different statistically from white families, some researchers say the differences are tied to their economic levels rather than distinctive cultural or social interests. Some studies controlling for income differences have found far more similarity between the races in family makeup and interest in marriage.

The Rev. J. Lavon Kincaid Sr., whose Laketon Heights United Methodist Church in Penn Hills is a mixed-race congregation of varying income levels, said that he's seen no difference between white and black families in the level of breakups and other dysfunction.

"I feel it's a much bigger factor of socio-economics and education," he said.

One undeniable racial difference, however, is the high rate of incarceration of black males. It is a key factor in reducing the pool of eligible men for marriage and economic support.

Bureau of Justice Statistics data from July 2002 showed that of more than 2 million inmates at all levels nationally, nearly 600,000 were black men ages 20-39. About 12 percent of black men in their 20s and early 30s were behind bars, compared with 1.6 percent of white men.

"Certainly when the male is separated from the family or unable to be gainfully employed, there's no money, no support coming from that male," Morial said.

Davis, who also directs Pitt's Center on Race and Social Problems, said most issues for black families locally are similar to those nationally. But the impact is greater in the city than suburbs, because Pittsburgh itself is about 27 percent black. The county is 12 percent African-American, about the same as the nation, and the region is 8 percent.

The median income of the 20,000-plus black families in the city in 1999 was $24,002, compared with $45,599 among white families.

Nearly 40 percent of the black families in the city had a mother and children at home, but no father, compared this 9 percent of white families in that situation.

Laura Randolph, senior director of asset development and equitable housing for the YWCA of Greater Pittsburgh, said she's seen plenty of examples, however, of single mothers who met challenges of holding a family together.

"It's a red herring to throw the two-parent Ozzie-and-Harriet scenario in there, when that's not working for a lot of people," Randolph said.

"You can't deny the benefit of having any number of stable, income-earning adults in a family loving kids, no question, but on the other hand, is that absolutely necessary in order for children to succeed? No, absolutely not."