All were black professionals who have taken full advantage of the new technological and service economies. So there has been progress without a doubt. The fact that black Republicans were in vigorous evidence at the symposium is itself a sign of progress, attesting to a growing diversity of political thought among African Americans. Still, the black vote in the 2000 presidential election was overwhelmingly Democratic, as were the panelists. When the subject of poverty arose, passions soared.
Poverty is still a bitter, intractable reality in the black community.
But panelists disagreed over what to do about those in poverty, how to help the millions of working poor, how to lure people locked into underground illegal markets into legitimate work lives. The percentage of black Americans who are poor remains about twice as high as the corresponding percentage among whites. Depending on the interpretation of the numbers, it may appear that this ratio has not changed much in 30 years. An estimated 25 percent of black Americans live in poverty. A happier consideration is that, thanks to the economic boom of the last nine years, another 10 percent of African Americans have left abject poverty and now belong to the working poor.