Cover Story Between Two Worlds

By Richard Lacayo

By any standard, Jarobin Gilbert is a success. A Harvard-educated linguist with degrees in international law and finance, he commands a handsome salary as a globe-trotting NBC vice president who negotiated the broadcast rights to the 1988 Olympic Games. But every so often, Gilbert is rudely reminded that for people like him, there are still some things success cannot provide -- simple things, like a taxicab. Late leaving for the airport to catch an important business flight, Gilbert stood on a busy avenue futilely hailing cab after speeding cab. Finally he phoned his secretary for assistance. She got one on her first attempt. Gilbert's secretary is white. He is black. "It's pretty hard to feel like you're mainstream," he says with a sigh, "when you're wearing $2,000 worth of clothes and you can't catch a cab at night."

It has been a revolution without much fanfare, but a revolution nonetheless. While the nation's attention focused on the plight of the urban underclass, millions of black Americans marched quietly into the mainstream, creating a vibrant middle class with incomes, educations and life-styles rivaling those of its white counterpart. For them, the passions and suffering of the civil rights struggle have culminated, as they were meant to, in the mundane pleasures and pangs of middle-class life. Theirs is the infrequently told success story of American race relations.

Statistics tell some of that story. The past decade has seen a 52% increase in the number of black managers, professionals, technicians and government officials. The gap between black and white median income is wider now than it was in the late 1970s -- largely because blacks did not recover from the last recession as completely as whites did. Still, roughly one-third of all black households have solidly middle-class incomes of $35,000 or more, compared with about 70% of all white households. Blacks manage the department stores that once rejected their patronage. They make decisions at corporations where once they worked only on assembly lines. They preside as mayors of cities and represent congressional districts where they were formerly denied the right to vote. They live in exclusive suburbs that once excluded them and send their children to leading schools and universities that once blackballed them.

But for all its undeniable progress, the black middle class still seems more to be poised on the banks of the mainstream than to be swimming in its current. Its members are haunted by a feeling of alienation from the white majority with which they have so much in common, a sense that somehow they still do not quite fit in. They speak again and again of "living in two worlds." In one they are judged by their credentials and capabilities. In the other, race still comes first.

Around the turn of the century, W.E.B. DuBois described the "twoness" felt by blacks, forced by segregation to see themselves both from the inside and from without, as they might appear to a hostile white world. Today the white world is less hostile. But achievement and a limited degree of acceptance have failed to remove all traces of ambiguity from the lives of the black middle class.

Rather than welcoming blacks into the mainstream, some whites feel threatened by their arrival. They seem to believe that the good life -- the desirable neighborhood, the right school, the best country club -- is for whites only. Blacks in token numbers may be tolerated. But when their numbers exceed a so-called tipping point, many whites go on the defensive. A generation ago, the color bar was rigid and well defined: no blacks allowed. Now it has become a shifting barrier that can suddenly materialize, curtly reminding blacks that no matter how successful they may be, they remain in some ways second-class citizens. As black psychiatrist James P. Comer wrote in his family memoir, Maggie's American Dream, "Being black in America is often like playing your home games on the opponent's court."

Stanley Grayson is New York City's deputy mayor for finance and economic development. His wife Patricia is a vice president at National Medical Fellowships, an organization that promotes the education of minority students in medicine. Together they earn about $200,000 annually. But more than once while she was sorting clothes in the laundry room of the luxury apartment house in which they have lived for eight years, Patricia has been approached by white residents who have tried to hire her as a maid. Her husband has seen white residents close the elevator door in his face when he tried to board. Evidently they took the well-dressed 38-year-old Grayson, one of the highest- ranking officials in New York, for a mugger. "It makes me sizzle," he says, "because it means that no matter what I accomplish as an individual, I will always be judged by what people see first, my color."

Such affronts may seem insignificant to whites, but they are reshaping the racial agenda for the next decade and beyond. The problems of the urban black underclass -- unemployment, drugs, teenage pregnancy, hopeless schools -- are more urgent than ever. But for the black middle class, there are new preoccupations. Not just job-creation programs, but job promotions. Not just high school diplomas, but college tuition. Not just picket lines, but picket fences. An agenda, in short, for a full partnership in the American Dream.

Superficially, middle-class blacks already seem to be living that dream. Leon and Cora Brooks have spent more than a decade at IBM, where he is a dealer account manager and she is a senior personnel specialist. They have a comfortable home in the affluent and mostly black Los Angeles neighborhood of Baldwin Hills; they have a Mercedes in the garage and a daughter at California State University at Northridge. Leon Brooks jokes, "We're a typical white family that happens to be black."

But because they happen to be black, families like the Brookses are likely to encounter galling day-to-day insults that few whites will ever face. Blatant racism among whites may be a dwindling thing, but a less candid style of prejudice persists. The bank loan officer gives a cool reception to black customers regardless of their credit rating. Shop security guards treat middle-aged black shoppers like suspected thieves. Health clubs give black applicants the runaround. Even the FBI, which is charged with investigating complaints about discrimination, has had its difficulties. Last week its director, William Sessions, ordered sweeping changes in the bureau's affirmative-action program after findings that there had been discrimination against black and Hispanic agents.

The most affluent African Americans still have difficulty buying homes wherever they want to live. The suburbs are dotted with gilded ghettos such as Chicago's Chatham neighborhood and North Portal Estates in Washington, middle- class and upper-middle-class areas from which whites fled when blacks began to arrive in large numbers. A study by two University of Chicago researchers, Douglas S. Massey and Nancy Denton, shows that middle-class blacks are significantly less likely than Hispanics or Asian Americans to live among whites -- so much so that an Asian or Hispanic with a third-grade education is more likely to live in an integrated neighborhood than a black with a Ph.D.

Real estate agents still frequently steer black buyers away from white areas. So-called redlining, in which banks and mortgage institutions proscribe lending in certain neighborhoods, also remains a common practice. Two years ago, when Michael Lomax, chairman of the Fulton County, Ga., board of commissioners and a candidate to be the next mayor of Atlanta, applied for a home-improvement loan, he was turned down at two local banks before he got his money at a third one. A subsequent investigation by the Atlanta Journal- Constitution discovered that banks had redlined the plush but mostly black Adams Park residential area where Lomax lives, though an average home is valued at $200,000.

As a boy in Mississippi, says Clifton Taulbert, "I was taught to look down, not to look into white people's eyes." Somewhere along the line, Taulbert, 44, started looking up. A former marketing manager for the Tulsa-based Bank of Oklahoma, he is now co-owner of a parking facility near Tulsa International Airport. His partner in the venture, Fine Airport Parking, is a white college friend, Michael B. Fine, who invited Taulbert to join him after he started the business five years ago. Says Taulbert: "I had an expertise that he needed. Period. Race has never entered into things."

Unlike well-off blacks in earlier generations, the black middle class that has blossomed in the wake of the civil rights movement is not constrained by the boundaries of race. Even before the Civil War, a modest economic elite of teachers, clergy and small tradesmen had emerged among free blacks, mostly in the North. By the late 19th century, industrialization had opened the way for blacks to enter the working class in larger numbers. Their paychecks in turn spurred growth in the ranks of black professionals and shopkeepers who catered to them. But that embryonic middle class was hedged all around by barriers of segregation, blocked from most dealings with the far more lucrative white market.

The contemporary black bourgeoisie is far more tightly linked to the broader American economy. Minority entrepreneurs once made their fortunes by serving black buyers ignored by white enterprises, in the manner of Motown founder Berry Gordy and Ebony magazine founder John H. Johnson. The new generation is epitomized by financier Reginald Lewis. Nineteen months ago his TLC Group, Inc., a leveraged-buyout firm, agreed to buy the international foods division of Beatrice Companies, Inc. (total sales in 1986: $2.5 billion). That made TLC the largest U.S. business to have a black executive at the helm.

Yet, for blacks the workplace can be a psychological minefield, seeded with racially fraught encounters that most whites never notice. If a white subordinate resists direction from a black supervisor, the manager may wonder if race is a factor in the insubordination. If a black is passed up for a promotion, he may conclude, rightly or wrongly, that race held him back.

The problem is compounded by the fact that middle-class blacks are often relatively isolated at work, typically finding themselves greatly outnumbered by white co-workers. When the workday ends, more often than not, blacks and whites who have labored shoulder to shoulder go their separate ways. Interracial socializing off the job remains rare enough to be remarked upon when it occurs. At some colleges, black faculty feel so isolated that they have negotiated telephone allowances into their job contracts to help them stay in touch with blacks teaching at other campuses around the country. "Coming to work every day is like putting on your armor," says Jim Johnson, an associate professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, where the 1,837-member faculty has just 38 blacks.

Corporate affirmative action has helped speed the integration of management -- but at a cost. While such programs have helped blacks break through hiring barriers, many whites insist that their promotions are the result of special treatment. "People always say, 'He got that because he's black,' " says Bernard Kinsey, a Xerox vice president since 1983. "It's frustrating to never get the recognition for having done something." African-American executives contend that their qualifications and performance often exceed those of the whites they are competing against. Says NBC's Gilbert: "We don't give these people enough credit. Look at their backgrounds. They would have been success stories even if there were no affirmative action."

Oddly, the stereotype of the less qualified black is sometimes shared by blacks. The feeling is summed up in a wry phrase: "The white man's ice is | colder." Kenneth Glover, 37, managing director for municipal finance at the Manhattan branch of Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc., recalls prospecting a well- to-do black executive as a potential client. After a telephone conversation, Glover invited the prospect to a face-to-face meeting. It broke off after only ten minutes. Later the client phoned and asked for his account to be transferred to a white investment adviser.

The going gets especially tough for blacks who have climbed near the top of the ladder. There they frequently encounter the so-called glass ceiling: they can see the next step up, but they never get invited to take it. "You have to be twice as good to get the job you want," says Robert Lee Dean, 48, a $50,000-a-year maintenance planner at a Boise Cascade plant in Jackson, Ala. About four months ago, Jerry O. Williams, 50, who seemed poised to become the first black chief executive officer of a FORTUNE 500 company, resigned as president of AM International, a Chicago-based manufacturer of office- automation equipment. His reason: it was taking too long for him to be promoted to the top slot.

Frustrated by the slow pace of change in corporate bureaucracies, many black entrepreneurs have struck out on their own. An example is Peggie Henderson, 40, who co-founded two clothing stores in Tunica, Miss., in 1979. Last year her family, using their own funds and $147,000 in state loans, started the Southern Group, Inc. At first the company provided two disparate services, duplicating videocassettes and distributing chemical cleaners. Recently it expanded into production. A small assembly line now turns out all-purpose cleaner and dishwashing liquid at the rate of about 50 bottles a minute. The Southern Group currently employs about twelve workers. By later this year Henderson hopes to have 150 workers on-line. Says she: "The only way the conditions of black people will improve is for us to provide jobs for ourselves. I think it's going to get worse as far as white people hiring blacks, unless we are super, super people."

Charles Blair, 41, can remember the vacation car trips of his childhood in the 1950s. Before the family took off, his father would carefully map out in advance how far they would get on each tank of gas. He had to be sure they didn't run low on a stretch of road where the service stations wouldn't sell to blacks. Those days are just a memory now -- but a memory Blair wants to pass on to his two teenage sons, to help them understand the hurdles he faced in launching his own management-consulting firm in Indianapolis. "I just try to give them some sense of history," he says. And another thing. "I teach them not to feel inferior. Any barriers that seem to exist -- they can find a way to do something about them."

If the good news is that middle-class blacks are in many ways indistinguishable from middle-class whites, that's the bad news too. Like other ethnic and racial groups, upwardly mobile African Americans often fear that assimilation will mean the loss of identity. In a nation where for centuries being black almost always meant being poor, prosperity itself can seem like a departure from tradition.

Pride in conserving black traditions has contributed to the reviving fortunes of the nation's 117 historically black colleges. Twenty years ago, many of the best-prepared black students turned their backs on such institutions, preferring to get their education at elite Ivy League universities. Now the tide is turning, in part because of a surge of racist incidents at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, Purdue and other prestigious colleges.

Twelve-year-old Khalil Kinsey is one of only three black youngsters in his sixth-grade class in Los Angeles. In school, he says, "kids like to feel my hair because it's fuzzy. They ask questions like do I get sunburned when I go to the beach. Dumb questions like that. Just because I'm black doesn't mean I'm different." Khalil's father Bernard, a Xerox executive, would like his son to someday attend Florida A&M, the mostly black school he and his wife attended. "It's important for a black kid to understand that there are lots of other smart, talented blacks in the world," says Kinsey.

As a result of this outpouring of pride, black colleges have seen their endowments rising. The United Negro College Fund reported a record $44.1 million in contributions for its past fiscal year. Bill Cosby's announcement in November that he would donate $20 million to Spelman College, the Atlanta institution from which his daughter graduated, was another dollar sign of support from black parents.

Born to a working-class family in a rough part of Washington, Kenneth Glover thinks he was lucky to get out alive. "One-third of the friends I grew up with are dead," he says. "Another third are in jail or on dope. The rest of us just made it." He did more than just make it. A magna cum laude graduate of the University of Maryland, the Chicago investment counselor recently co- founded the Harold Washington Foundation. Named for the late Chicago mayor whom Glover once served as campaign manager, it provides grants to blacks for education, health care and the arts. "The black middle class has not done enough to keep the door of opportunity open," Glover insists. "Many of them try to assuage their conscience with an annual check to the Urban League or the N.A.A.C.P. Our job isn't over once we send that check."

One of the most sensitive issues for the black middle class is its relationship to the ghetto poor. University of Chicago sociologist William Julius Wilson has elaborated a persuasive theory suggesting that the worsening status of the underclass is inextricably tied to the flight from the inner city of most of its upwardly mobile black population. Its departure not only deprived poor youngsters of successful role models but also knocked the props from under churches, schools and other neighborhood institutions that provided stability and support for the impoverished. Middle-class flight, together with economic shifts that have resulted in a dearth of low-skill factory jobs, dooms the inner city to social isolation and despair.

Though they may sympathize with the tragedy of the underclass, many middle- class blacks are not prepared to remain inside the ghetto. They point out that they have worked hard to spare themselves and their families deprivation. Typical is Richard Parsons, president of the Dime Savings Bank in New York City. "Why should I live in Harlem?" asks Parsons, who resides in a wealthy Westchester County, N.Y., suburb. "If given a choice between unsafe streets and poor schools on the one hand, and peace and quiet and quality schools on the other, who wouldn't pick the best neighborhood and the best schools? The black underclass is not just our problem. It's all of society's problem."

Nevertheless, the decline of the underclass imposes a psychological burden, in part because whites remain far too willing to associate all blacks with welfare dependency, crime and broken families. Moreover, many middle-class blacks feel personally guilty about the unpromising prospects of poorer blacks. That may be the most unfair burden of all, since the black middle class by itself does not have nearly enough resources to lift the underclass into the mainstream. Patricia Grayson speaks for many affluent blacks when she observes, "One person can do only so much. I think it's unfair for people to try to make successful blacks feel guilty for not feeling guilty all the time."

The truth is that all of the nation should feel ashamed and enraged by the sorry condition of the underclass. Its misery in the midst of an affluent society is a disgrace. While the growth and strength of the black middle class prove that the U.S. has gone far to untangle its racial conundrum, racism remains at the top of a long list of unsolved national problems. The success of middle-class blacks is mainly the product of their own hard work and tenacity. But it would not have occurred without the national consensus, embodied in civil rights legislation, to dismantle segregation and create equal opportunities for all. Further strides toward that goal depend on a renewed commitment to the elimination of prejudice -- and an economy buoyant enough to ensure opportunities for all Americans.

There are already unsettling signals that the future growth of the black middle class is in jeopardy at its source. For one thing, while rates of college enrollment by black women have remained steady, the number of black males enrolled in colleges declined from 470,000 to 436,000 between 1976 and 1986. That represents a drop of 34,000 students during a period when total college enrollment grew by more than a million and the proportion of black students who finished high school climbed from 68% to 76%. Possible explanations include the shift from grants to loans in federal aid for higher education, a lack of aggressive recruitment by colleges and tougher entrance requirements.

Future progress might be stifled by an economic downturn. University of Maryland sociologist Bart Landry, author of The New Black Middle Class, predicts that by the end of the next decade 56.4% of all black workers and 63% of all white workers will be in the middle class -- provided the economy expands at a healthy clip. If it does not, Landry warns, the expansion of the black middle class could come to a sudden halt. Says he: "During periods when the economy is tight, discrimination asserts itself."

"Society is still going through the shock stage," says Roy Roberts. "Some people continue to be amazed when they discover ordinary blacks who are hardworking and successful." Three months ago Navistar International used a $400,000 incentive package to lure Roberts from General Motors to become vice president and general manager of its $3 billion truck-manufacturing operation, which accounts for 75% of Navistar's revenues. He is now one of the most powerful black executives in the country. Last year, when Roberts was looking for a house in a wealthy Chicago suburb, the real estate agent asked what he did for a living. Pop singer? Baseball player? "It never occurred to him that I could be a corporate executive," Roberts explains. "But it's not his fault. It just shows that America isn't used to us yet."

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With reporting by Thomas McCarroll/New York, Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles and Don Winbush/Atlanta