Beyond the usual “Why him?” are a hundred larger questions. Why can the United States send forces halfway around the world to disarm Somali drug warlords but not halfway across town to disarm American drug warlords? Why is the government set up so that the national-security adviser each morning gives the president a briefing on world events (“Four people were killed in the Middle East, Mr. President”), but the war at home provokes little more than a few rhetorical expressions of sympathy? Why is it easier to buy an assault rifle-designed for nothing but killing people-than a prescription remedy for the common cold?
Shall we continue? Why are there actually fewer cops on the streets of many cities than 20 years ago? Why, in Chicago, for instance, are there three times as many police patrols in white areas as in minority areas (according to a University of Illinois study), with the extra police assigned to public-housing projects still insufficient to make up the difference? Why do we hear so much about the right to “bear arms” and be safe from “unreasonable searches and seizures” but so little about the constitutional notions of “domestic tranquillity” and “equal protection of the laws”? Why are security measures applied in housing projects only after headlines, then dropped again until the next big incident? Why can’t they just tear more of the crime-infested high-rises down?
The answers to these questions are fairly obvious: a culture of neglect, a craven gun lobby, a bureaucratic mind-set that would rather cut uniformed officers than paper shufflers, institutionalized racism, civil libertarians with little idea of life in a war zone, weak-kneed politicians, parents who take no responsibility for their children, citizens with short attention spans, disastrous federal housing policy.
Then again, once in a while, a simple (if politically difficult) idea comes along that renews one’s faith in the struggle. Under a court order in a housing-desegregation case known as Gautreaux, 4,000 low-income Chicago families were relocated throughout city neighborhoods and 50 suburbs. Beginning in the late 1970s, they were quietly moved into “scatter-site” housing in middle-income-often largely white- areas. Early studies by the Northwestern University Center for Urban Affairs showed huge employment gains for the adults, who, surrounded by a world of work, found it for themselves. This year the center learned what happened to the children in the suburbs. After some academic-adjustment problems in the lower grades, the results were stunning. The high-school-graduation rate for those who left the ghetto was 95 percent, with slightly more than half of those going on to college. Gautreaux students were nearly twice as likely as those who stayed in the inner city to find jobs. Overwhelmingly, the kids reported being happier in their new surroundings. Integration (yes, integration) worked.
Right now the program is small and relatively uncontroversial. Next year a pilot project will expand it to six other cities, with 500 families in each. Bill Clinton is treading carefully, but some aides are eying “portable” housing vouchers that could enlarge the program to meaningful numbers. What happens then? The fear is that giving poor families what they need most-namely, a chance to escape their neighborhoods-will turn out to be political dynamite. Many white suburban politicians are simply scared of the idea. And as Chicago’s innovative housing chief Vince Lane has found, many black urban politicians believe they stand to lose political clout when their neighborhoods shrink.
Clinton says one of his big heroes is Robert F. Kennedy. The man he chose last week to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development, former San Antonio mayor Henry Cisneros, is a Bobby Kennedy fan, too. RFK’s most famous line, borrowed from George Bernard Shaw, is: “Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were, and say, ‘Why not?’” Saving the Dantrell Davises of America, giving hope to Patrick Daly’s young students-these are “Why not?” questions. Why not take a chance on real gun control, on more cops (Clinton has promised 100,000 extra nationwide, perhaps through a “police corps”), on scatter-site housing? Clinton comes to Washington with his ears ringing with economic advice. Let them ring, too, with the sound of not-so-distant gunfire, summoning him-and the rest of us-to the war at home.
