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FORTY-FIVE YEARS AGO Gunnar Myrdal published his masterwork on race relations in America, An American Dilemma. He began his chapter on the economic situation of blacks with the following summary:

The economic situation of the Negroes in America is pathological. Except for a small minority enjoying upper or middle class status, the masses of American Negroes, in the rural South and in the segregated slum quarters in Southern cities, are destitute. They own little property; even their household goods are mostly inadequate and dilapidated. Their incomes are not only low but irregular. They thus live from day to day and have scant security for the future. Their entire culture and their individual interests and strivings are narrow.(p. 205)