e may question, for instance, whether such an undertaking would appeal to the crucial population of unemployed black males, young men who have often disdained employment opportunities during periods of high growth and low unemployment. Lemann does not linger on the subject, but The Promised Land is replete with examples of male irresponsibility toward work and family. While one can certainly envision some energetic mothers pulling themselves out of the welfare system by working as, say, school paraprofessionals, the idea that such jobs would draw inner-city men into the work force will strike many as too optimistic, to put it mildly.
Another objection is that blacks are already overly dependent on government employment, an apprehension reinforced by statistics in this book regarding the heavy reliance of blacks, particularly college graduates, on government jobs. And to those engaged directly in government work should be added those who owe their employment to private-sector affirmative-action plans, another indication of the thoroughly unhealthy degree to which the employment situation of black Americans depends on the political mood of the country.
Finally, Lemann’s abiding faith in the ability of the federal government to stimulate the massive transformation he calls for is open to serious question. His assessment of the War on Poverty can easily be read as a cautionary tale about the unintended consequences of the most idealistically motivated state initiative. The jobs approach favored by Lemann was by his own reckoning hardly considered, nor was it pressed even by the civil-rights lobby. And had the Johnson administration launched such a massive jobs program, one can easily imagine how it would have been subverted through the piling-on of rights, the inevitable clamors for inclusion by other “oppressed minorities,” and demands for more and more expenditures as the program was seen to be failing its goals.
If Lemann’s policy prescriptions are not always convincing, however, he does challenge those with alternative solutions to deal honestly with certain hard facts about the ghetto poor. Particularly cogent is his refutation of those who believe that blacks can emulate the experiences of immigrant groups and escape poverty through entrepreneurship. By Lemann’s account, the limited experience of Southern Negroes with private enterprise has been fatally eroded by life in the ghetto; the one successful businessman in his book, who appears in the concluding chapter, got his start through the anti-poverty program.
Nor is it necessary to concur with Lemann’s policy proposals to appreciate the achievement of The Promised Land as a work of historical journalism. Lemann does not have the answer to today’s racial dilemma, but he addresses the full dimensions of a crisis which so many others would prefer to shun.