Black Leaders Should Focus on Economic Mobility, Not Crime

In January, Black political leaders in New York City celebrated a return from oblivion. Out of power for decades, they captured four key municipal offices and looked ahead to the prospect of rewarding their base.

Six months on, however, the issue of crime is commanding their attention and threatens to squander a rare moment of governance. These leaders must find a way to pivot from crime to economic development to stabilize their endangered middle class.

Mayor Eric Adams, City Council President Adrienne Adams, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg oversee competing structures of municipal government; however, as leaders of an ethnic political class, they are punching well below their weight. Specifically, they are wedded to an agenda of street-crime reduction to the exclusion of addressing severe levels of Black unemployment and middle-class erosion.

The dynamic is not exclusive to New York City, of course, as fragile Black middle class constituents in Chicago, San Francisco, and other cities watch their representatives focus on crime rather than on economic imperatives.

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Make no mistake, there is a connection between managing “quality of life” issues like crime and economic stability. However, the priority placed on crime prevention—and especially gun violence—may be disproportionate to the actual threat, and create unintended obstacles to employment.

Yet, there is little appetite to place things in perspective; the fact is that crime rates are low by historical standards. The common use of 2020 as a baseline year to gauge criminal activity today can be misleading. That’s because 2020 was an anomalous year due to the pandemic. In NYC, the overall crime rate dropped as hospitals became morgues, streets emptied, and people lived as shut-ins.

At the same time, the experience played a role in sparking violent incidents that captured public attention. The number of murders increased from 319 in 2019 to 462 in 2020 and 488 in 2021, but the uptick is still a far cry from the 2,262 murders in 1990!

Understandably, the historical perspective can be cold comfort to residents intimidated on subways or confronted at ATM machines. Murders and shootings have actually dropped over the past one-year period, but the offenses that most violate our personhood—robbery, rape, car theft, assault—are on the rise and driving negative opinion polls. Clearly, the new Black political class has a responsibility to address legitimate concerns for public safety, not least because their own constituents are disproportionately burdened.

Nonetheless, the trend may not justify calls for a return of the heavy-handed policing of Mayor Rudy Giuliani from 1994-2001. A persistent political myth holds that Giuliani’s emphasis on quality of life enforcement stopped a rising crime rate. In fact, crime was falling during the administration of David Dinkins (1990-1993) and before the implementation of the since-discredited policing tactics that former commissioner Ray Kelly—and Mayor Adams—are trying to restore. One of these controversial tactics was the NYPD policy for detaining young people known as “Stop and Frisk.” In 2013, a federal court judge ruled that it was conducted in an unconstitutional way and reinforced a “form of racial profiling.”

What it all suggests is that Black NYC leaders must find a way to give equal attention to the problems of crime reduction and to the economic improvement of their communities.

The need for a pivot is urgent if the Black middle class is to stem alarmingly high unemployment, underemployment, and population loss. This may be the last time that the community is in a position to appeal to leaders from their ranks.

SHRINKING POPULATIONS, SHRINKING OPPORTUNITIES

Since 2010, the city population grew modestly to about 8.4 million people, while the Black population shrank noticeably, according to the 2020 Census. The demographic spectrum today is about 32 percent white, 29 percent Hispanic, 22 percent African-American, and 14 percent Asian. Black New Yorkers, as a historically monolithic voting bloc, tend to have high turn-out rates compared to the other minority groups.

However, the advantage of mobilization is short-term as Blacks fail to thrive—with more than 15 percent of adult workers unemployed and nearly twice as many youths. The middle class is struggling to keep its head above water and advance its occupational status in the globalized labor market.

A whopping 25 percent of Black workers face underemployment, and remain stuck in the deep recession of the pandemic. Many young men encounter barriers to employment as a result of minor criminal records incurred from exposure to over-policing. The Black employment profile is the worst of any ethnic group in the city, according to James Parrott, an economist at the New School of Social Research. Still, city authorities seem reluctant to highlight a condition as destructive to social order as crime.

A consequence has been an exodus of middle-class talent and families. Over the last decade, the Black population contracted by nearly 5 percent, and the trend bodes ill for the future of the community—and for the viability of its political class.

The situation will get worse without an intervention to improve occupational mobility, according to the 2019 study by the McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility, “The Future of Work in Black America.” The research suggests expedited programs to “help stem the challenges automation poses to African Americans.” Foremost is training for the “middle-skill” occupations in the growth industries: These are jobs that require more than a high school education but less than a four-year degree. Examples include X-ray technicians, dental hygienists, heating and refrigeration technicians, aircraft mechanics, storage and distribution managers, communication equipment workers, tractor trailer drivers, and electricians.

Urban economists consider the lack of a middle-skilled workforce to be an impediment to commercial growth. A workforce initiative for NYC should involve employers and paid training, apprenticeships, and employment in growth industries like transportation and utilities, education and health services, professional and business services, and the fledgling high-tech manufacturing sector.

FOUR BLACK MIDDLE-CLASS PIONEERS

All of which begs the question, can the political leaders pivot from crime to an economic agenda that uplifts Black New Yorkers?

Critics may argue that they owe no special allegiance; that they serve a broader electorate with a primary responsibility to administer municipal services. Yet, the four leaders identify as the proud byproducts of a postwar Black middle class. These pioneers established a tenuous middle class despite racial barriers to well-paying occupations, according to Roger Waldinger’s history, Still the Promised Land. Many used access to education and political power to capture skilled jobs in the public sector but were unable to crack the private sector.

Like New York’s current political leaders, I came of age in the era of the fledgling Black middle class of NYC. As youths, we held the striving workforce in high esteem and felt an obligation to move forward. We were the children of the dream and, with that in mind, the following snippets of biography are meant to recall the obligation to the earlier class.

Let’s begin with Mayor Eric Leroy Adams, raised by a single mother who cleaned the houses of white families in the 1970s. At 61, he exhibits the pride of someone who overcame a learning disability and racial stigma to claw his way to the top. After floundering in grade school, and involvement with a gang, he developed the discipline to complete high school, community college, public college in criminal justice, and a graduate program at a Catholic university.

Joining the NYPD, he rose to the rank of police captain, then represented Brooklyn’s Black districts in the state assembly and as the borough president. He campaigned for mayor on the promise of restoring the city economy and finding a balance between the demands for crime reduction and police accountability. Since taking office, though, his agenda has been subsumed by the immediacy of gun violence.

Adams, a pro-police centrist, is leveraging fear to campaign for the roll back of criminal justice reforms. Many of the reforms were the results of protests over incidents like the 2014 NYPD chokehold killing of Eric Garner, the unconstitutional “Stop and Frisk” policing tactics, and other outrageous actions that gave oxygen to the Black Lives Matter movement. Adams, as mayor, issued a “Blueprint to End Gun Violence” that critics view as a manifesto for a restoration of the “state violence of policing.”

Adams is establishing a national profile as a crime stopper. While some of his ideas are embraced by the Biden administration, like increased funding for mental health, others border on the medieval—like the use of solitary confinement in the city’s jails. His blueprint set off alarm bells at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which condemned a return to tactics discredited by scholars, lawyers, and courts.

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These include sweeps of homeless people, the return of a plain-clothes anti-gun squad, punitive use of bail, prosecution of minors charged with serious offenses as adults, and the use of facial recognition technology prone to bias. Under Adams, the transit police are conducting random bag checks on metropolitan commuters and bus passengers arriving from the South.

His pro-law enforcement stance dovetails with a national trend to roll back reforms to the criminal justice system. In San Francisco, for instance, opponents successfully recalled District Attorney Chesa Boudin, a visible proponent of police oversight, reduced bail, and treatment for addicts. Among his critics was the African American Mayor London Breed, who distanced herself during an outcry over rising crime in the Tenderloin neighborhood. The lawlessness necessitated the declaration of a state of emergency.

In a similar vein, Mayor Adams has been critical of the reformist Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg. The prosecutor, 48, is a graduate of Harvard College and Law School, and considered a Harlem success story—he still lives there with his wife and two children. A former chief deputy attorney general for New York state, he campaigned on a promise to shrink the system of prosecution by declining to pursue low-level offenses. He takes charge of an office with a history of sanctioning the racist practices of the NYPD.

Street crime has demanded the attention of the two other Black NYC leaders as well, City Council President Adrienne Adams and the Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.

Adrienne Adams, 61, is the first Black president of the city council, the second most powerful post in the city government. She grew up in a middle-class family in Hollis, Queens. Her father was a UPS truck driver and her mother a corrections officer. There is no relation to the mayor, though they were classmates at Bayside High School in the late 1970s. She went on to study at Spelman College in Atlanta, and work as a flight attendant and corporate trainer, before being elected to the City Council.

As council president, she brings the people skills of a married mother of four and grandmother of 10. It probably helped her to get the unruly 51-member body to pass the city’s $101 billion budget. She has been critical of Mayor Adams’ plans to restore the anti-gun squads and to use solitary confinement in the jails.

Jumanne Williams, 46, holds the office with the least authority—but one that suits his talent to crusade. Born to immigrant parents from Grenada, West Indies, Williams overcame a learning disability to complete studies at Brooklyn Technical High School and Brooklyn College. After a stint as a community organizer, he was elected to represent Council District 45, which covers the Flatbush area of Brooklyn. He sponsored the landmark Community Safety Act, a law to end the police tactic of “Stop and Frisk” detentions.

As the public advocate, Williams is empowered by citywide voters to investigate complaints of municipal services and propose fixes to the city council. The advocate is a non-voting member of the council, with the right to introduce and co-sponsor legislation. Now he is campaigning for governor of New York with the backing of numerous progressive-oriented groups.

All of which leads back to how leaders can pivot from crime to an economic agenda? It may require a Black unity conference to spotlight the gravity of the problem. Any of the four leaders has the standing to convene the conference. They might consider how leaders in Pittsburgh, New Haven, Buffalo, and other cities weathered public anxiety over crime to address economic development.

A critical component is leadership committed to transformation, according to Denver South, a magazine for a turnaround city: “For a city in an economic crisis to spark a turnaround, it takes committed leadership across the sectors of government and private investment moving towards a unified vision.”

One topic for the prospective conference would be paid training and hiring for seasonal youth employment. These jobs tend to be short-term incentives with an eye towards reducing crime temptations. In fact, most of the political leaders have announced summer jobs for youths funded through the budgets of their offices. Why not bundle the programs into a larger package of investments in sustained youth employment?

Another conference topic could be training and hiring for the new federally funded infrastructure projects. Congress recently allocated $1.2 trillion for roads, bridges, internet, drinking water, mass transit, clean energy vehicles, and power generation. The projects create a need for skilled workers in the construction trades, an industry resistant to Black workers in the past.

In the coming years, NYC stands to use its allocation to invest $10 billion for public transit; $13.5 billion for highways and bridges; $685 million for airports; $175 million for new electric vehicle charging stations and money for broadband and clean energy projects. They will require thousands of skilled workers from craftsmen and truck drivers to designers and accountants; some jobs pay relatively high wages for people without college degrees. Certainly, the political leaders are in a position to shape who will do the work and how they will be trained.

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A final topic should be on developing the skill sets of the adult labor force. The conference could look for ways to align workers with paid training to meet the demands of companies; most of all, trades that will last as occupations adjust to new technology. According to the National League of Cities, turnaround projects devised programs with a vision to “build equitable and inclusive cities.”

In Boston, for instance, former Mayor Marty Walsh (now Secretary of Labor in the Biden administration) launched a green jobs project for stormwater infrastructure and building maintenance. Mid-sized cities in New York state, such as Buffalo and Syracuse, retrained people to do skilled trades in construction and health services.

In closing, New York City’s Black political leaders must seize the moment to bolster its fragile middle-class base. They should consider the value of a unity conference to expand the agenda from crime to economic development, as well as to prove that they are leaders capable of doing two things at once, exceedingly well.

In this case, that would be addressing concerns over public safety while elevating the economic opportunities of its most marginalized communities.

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