Employment and Manpower Problems in the Cities: Implications of the Report of the National Adivisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Hearings Before ..., 90-2, May 28, 29, June 4, 5, and 6, 1968

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Page 152 - Congress hereby declares that it is the continuing policy and responsibility of the Federal Government to use all practicable means consistent with its needs and obligations and other essential considerations of national policy, with the assistance and cooperation of industry agriculture, labor, and State and local governments, to coordinate and utilize all its plans, functions, and resources for the purpose of creating and maintaining, in a manner calculated to foster and promote free competitive...
Page 89 - Cause I didn't even know what you was talking about. That's happened to me a lot." "Hell, you're nothing special. That happens to everybody. Nobody knows everything. One man is a doctor, so he talks about surgery. Another man is a teacher, so he talks about books. But doctors and teachers don't know anything about concrete. You're a cement finisher and that's your specialty.
Page 88 - A crucial factor in the streetcorner man's lack of job commitment is the overall value he places on the job. For his part, the streetcorner man puts no lower value on the job than does the larger society around him. He knows the social value of the job by the amount of money the employer is willing to pay him for doing it. In a real sense, every pay day, he counts in dollars and cents the value placed on the job by society at large. He is no more (and frequently less) ready to quit and look for another...
Page 92 - The streetcorner man is under continuous assault by his job experiences and job fears. His experiences and fears feed on one another. The kind of job he can get — and frequently only after fighting for it, if then — steadily confirms his fears, depresses his selfconfidence and self-esteem until finally, terrified of an opportunity even if one presents itself, he stands defeated by his experiences, his belief in his own self-worth destroyed and his fears a confirmed reality.
Page 134 - This conclusion underlines the difficulty of really improving the economic status of Negro men. It is far easier to create new jobs than either to create new jobs with relatively high status and earning power, or to upgrade existing employed or partly-employed workers into such better-quality employment. Yet only such upgrading will eliminate the fundamental basis of poverty and deprivation among Negro families.
Page 130 - Resources devoted to social programs have been greatly increased in many areas. Hence, few of our program suggestions are entirely novel. In some form, many are already in effect. All this serves to underscore our basic conclusion: the need is not so much for the government to design new programs as it is for the nation to generate new / will.
Page 81 - Still others, like Bumdoodle the numbers man, are working hard at illegal ways of making money, hustlers who are on the street to turn a dollar any way they can : buying and selling sex, liquor, narcotics, stolen goods, or anything else that turns up. Only a handful remains unaccounted for. There is Tonk, who cannot bring himself to take a job away from the corner, because, according to the other men, he suspects his wife will be unfaithful if given the opportunity. There is Stanton, who has not...
Page 83 - With or without stealing, and quite apart from any interior processes going on in the man who refuses such a job or quits it casually and without apparent reason, the objective fact is that menial jobs in retailing or in the service trades simply do not pay enough to support a man and his family. This is not to say that the worker is underpaid; this may or may not be true. Whether he is or not, the plain fact is that, in such a job, he cannot make a living. Nor can he take much comfort in the fact...
Page 82 - ... streetcorner world. These men differ from the others in degree rather than in kind, the principal difference being that they are carrying out the implications of their values and experiences to their logical, inevitable conclusions. In this sense, the others have yet to come to terms with themselves and the world they live in. Putting aside, for the moment, what the men say and feel, and looking at what they actually do and the choices they make, getting a job, keeping a job, and doing well at...
Page 221 - For the urban poor — families with current incomes of about $5.000 a year and less — there has been hardly any new housing construction during the 22 years since World War II and there was very little of such construction in the preceding 20 years from 1926 through 1945. Almost a half-century of rapid change in our cities — including the great Negro migration — has passed with hardly any housing construction for low-income families.

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