The End of Civilization As We Know It

SOME PEOPLE SAY that this is the end of American civilization as we know it. It is difficult for Harvard undergraduates to tell whether America is collapsing or not because we can only study what our country was like 50 years ago. But despite our lack of historical reference, most of us harbor the nagging feeling that something is awry.

Unfortunately, the topic is unwieldy: it ranges from Dan Quayle to single mothers; from crack houses to race. In a phrase, I am describing the decline of America. I am not grappling with an amorphous moral problem or some spiritual misgivings. The problem is more practical than that.

This summer I worked in a nice town most of us call their second home. I worked for a public service agency in central Cambridge called Just A Start.

Every summer, Just A Start puts about 100 underprivileged (meaning living below the poverty level) kids to work. Though the youngest is 14 and the oldest 18, their demeanor--their existence--is already a tragic hybrid of childhood and unholy tribulations.

These kids, most of whom I spoke with over those three months, were the product of declining America. At least 60 percent came from fatherless households. Some dealt drugs before work. In the back of their minds, the other kids knew that for all their hard work they would make about one tenth, if not less, of what the dealers made that day.

Concerning one discipline case, I almost blundered when talking to the young man's guardian by calling her his mother. The woman was his grandmother. If she was older than 50, it wasn't by much.

One of our "trainees," as we respectfully dubbed them, got himself stabbed. You might have visited the place where the incident occurred--it was the Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, about three blocks from Harvard Yard.

EVEN IN A CITY That Harvard students think of as safe, there is a side hidden from us. The fact is, 90 percent of the people attending Harvard have lived in basically the same seclusion their entire lives. We hear about poverty, drugs and broken families like those in Cambridge. We read about and statistically manipulate the numbers. But until you live it, you will never know what it means to have no hope like poverty stricken kids in Cambridge and across this entire country.

Crusaders constantly emphasize that there is no justice in the United States, that our country is declining. They ask for recrimination and retribution. We have created a subculture of guilty white liberals who watch "Yo! MTV Raps" and believe they understand the ghetto. Most people are really only capable of understanding, whether they want to or not, "Beverly Hills 90210." The result is a highly educated, tolerant and ultimately uninvolved caste of people who sympathize for the "less socially mobile."

I am not a crusader; neither a liberal nor a conservative. But I do think America needs preventative medicine. America has lived for decades without caring about the ghetto--why should it start? Because now the inner city has begun to grow at a phenomenal rate. It will soon erupt. More of your friends and families bloat the problem each day as they lose their jobs, use drugs and are sexually careless.

The problem has grown because now there is less money for many more people who create larger needs for themselves. The problem is volatile because a select few in the inner city have most of the money and keep it by selling drugs and killing anyone who gets in their way.

The majority of people in underprivileged areas are law-abiding, ambitious and more diligent that we give them credit for. Regrettably, a small percentage of that population sees another way to alleviate its problems, and quickly. They turn to a job that pays $1200 a day, cash. Guess which one that is.

They believe that lovers or babies will fill the void left by hateful, negligent and even abusive parents. Violence becomes both an outlet and a source of their anger. Some of these people are incorrigible, but the others do the same thing you would in their shoes. On top of all that, they taint the lives of the ordinary citizens in the neighborhoods with the fear of death and the reminder that hard work rarely gets you anywhere if you are from the ghetto.

If the problems of the inner city have touched you recently, which is likely, then you must sense that something needs to happen. Reading Chuck D's and Hank Shocklee's media-hyped jabber in Spin and buying Kriss-Kross records does not solve anything--it just gives middle and upper-class consumers some temporary mental satisfaction about their own efforts to be good citizens.

If you are like me, you are too busy or reserved to be involved with an activist group. At the very least, you must vote smart. You must vote for the opinions, not figureheads, that acknowledge that the problems of the ghetto are your problem too. Should you choose to ignore them, they will end up in your face; by then it will be too late. Consider the Los Angeles summer a glimpse of future attractions.

The solution to the decline of America is not to contain the underclass--the solution is to give them opportunity. They, like ever more people in America, need hope. Give them chances and they can easily become the Harvard students of tomorrow. Hope does not come from speeches and advertising campaigns. It does not arise from rap and heavy metal music. People are more practical than that.

IHAVE A FEW suggestions, pragmatic ones, that can restore hope for the underclass, if not give every possible option to eliminate such a status. It will also prevent more of middle America from being consumed by the same tragedy.

Legalize drugs. At this point conservatives have stopped reading. They believe that drugs will permit society to become a hoard of junkies. The economy would supposedly collapse because no one would show up to work.

But the fact is that the drug situation is more analogous to alcohol and Prohibition than any kind of cultureravaging force than Dan Quayle imagines. The market for drugs might expand if it were legalized, but at some point it would stabilize--just as many people are casual users or adverse to alcohol, we can expect a similar reaction to drugs. Some people just won't like the taste, smell or health hazards of the stuff and others will be too conservative with their money to splurge on such perks.

We do not currently realize that if someone wants drugs today, they can get them. But the fact that they are illegal makes the price artificially skyrocket. The bottom line: Legalization will cause a small increase in drug usage and a huge drop in prices. The lower price is the key reason for legalizing drugs. At that point, gang warfare becomes senseless. Why fight over something that now pays us $25 that used to net us $2000? And where do dealers get the big weaponry without the heavy cash flow? Nowhere.

Drug usage is not a solution by any measure; but since we cannot seem to stop millions from using them, we might as well shed the destructive side-effects of murder and robbery by not making it financially worthwhile to do so.

It is not unreasonable to believe that if drugs were legalized, people who stole and murdered for crack money in the past would now buy it with pay from a regular job. Teens would no longer need to cheat their employers and do favors for dealers in order to smoke marijuana like other people drink Jack Daniels.

Of course, like alcohol, drugs need to be regulated--to ensure purity (fewer ODs from bad dope), to prohibit driving under the influence and to allow employers to fire and suspend those who come to work high. Education about drugs needs to be as pervasive as it is about smoking, sex and drinking. Also consider the fact that a sales tax on drugs could make millions for the government just as we would save the millions that now go toward waging a useless drug war.

We must realize that poverty is not entirely racial. When many people hear ghetto, they think "Good Times." The face of the ghetto has substantial numbers of Blacks, but every race shares the problem. Whites, Blacks, Asians-every group is represented. For example, 66 percent of the people on welfare are white single mothers. The media has actually done well in recent years to show the Black individuals are complete and important citizens of America, and that white people are completely capable of being useless.

Reform welfare. Confident single mothers can be terrific parents. Unfortunately, there are as many irresponsible single mother households as there are incompetent two-parent households. Not surprisingly, many single mothers are young and unskilled.

Single mothers do some simple math and realize that they can make more money by not working and having more children instead of by having a minimum wage job. We pay them to have children.

I suggest that the government subsidize major industry with money currently spent on welfare so that they can hire healthy welfare recipients who want to work and pay them livable wages. Also, penalize welfare dependents who become pregnant after they join the system--in essence permitting a woman who joins welfare with a family of four to adequately provide for her group, but penalizing her should she increase the size of the initial family. This is not reproductive Stalinism--it is simply a method by which we ensure that fewer children are born into the mire of poverty by selfish mothers.

AMERICA IS STILL declining. The ghetto is merely a burgeoning symbol of the many problems consuming the entire country. If we can begin with the people who need help immediately, perhaps then we can apply the solution to middle America, which has only begin to feel the itchings of the decline. Otherwise, they may experience something much more painful and widespread, and much sooner than they can imagine.