Vision Circle

The Harlem Project

The one thing I haven't heard many candidates speak on is urban poverty. The proverbial elephant in the closet. I'm willing to bet that I can predict what the candidates would say if they DID say something. Bush would talk about individual initiative and empowering people to help themselves through faith-based initiatives. Kerry would talk about public/private partnerships and tax incentives, along with raising the minimum wage.

After welfare reform passed in 1996, the national debate on poverty seemed simply to shut down. Most conservatives explain poverty by looking to culture and behavior: bad parenting, high out-of-wedlock birth rates, teenagers who don't know the value of an honest day's work. To most liberals, the real problems are economic: underfinanced public schools and a dearth of well-paying semiskilled jobs, which make it nearly impossible for families to pull themselves out of poverty. Canada says he believes that both assumptions are true. He agrees that the economy is stacked against poor people no matter how hard they work, but he also thinks that poor parents aren't doing a good enough job of rearing their children. What makes Canada's project unique is that it addresses both problems at once. He keeps the liberals happy by pouring money into schools and day-care centers and after-school programs, and he satisfies the conservatives by directly taking on the problems of inadequate parenting and the cultural disadvantages of a ghetto home life. It's not just that he's trying to work both sides of the ideological street. It's that Canada has concluded that neither approach has a chance of working alone. Fix the schools without fixing the families and the community, and children will fail; but they will also fail if you improve the surrounding community without fixing the schools.

The article. While no one wants to say it, this idea--which I think we can all agree is worth trying--smacks of The Great Society. Definitely in a good way. I think I know what the data is going to show in a few years, when that first group comes out.