ADDICTION: SILENT TOLL ON BLACK MIDDLE CLASS

LEXINGTON, KY. - In a restaurant that valued presentation over portion size,
and with a jazz singer crooning in the background, four people prattled on
about a favorite topic of the middle class: finding reliable domestic help.

Chatter continued until one woman explained why she needed it: She was
rearing alone the four children of a drug-addicted sister. Suddenly, talk
got real.

The man in the group had sole custody of his children because his ex-wife
was a heroin addict.

A second woman bemoaned the financial and emotional burden drug-using older
siblings put on her mother.

And I shared both the pain of watching a sister struggle against the
quicksand of addiction and my failed efforts to save her son from a
self-destructive legacy.

Our candor was unusual for people who did not know each other well, but our
situation is more common than most would admit.

Drug addiction and its consequences are the silent toll on the black middle
class, the reason so many are never able to put much money aside for
retirement or for their children's future.

Many support siblings and their children as well as aging parents,
undermining efforts at building wealth within families and communities.

It's past time for black professional groups -- such as those representing
doctors, social workers, lawyers and journalists -- to demand or create more
effective drug-treatment, prison-rehabilitation and job-placement programs.

While this problem is not exclusive to blacks, the inner cities bore the
brunt of the crack and gun epidemics in the late 1980s and early '90s.

Although crack babies and drive-by shootings no longer dominate headlines,
drug use and its residue of dysfunction are ingrained.

Few would want to deal with this ugly reality; for middle-class blacks, it
blemishes an image of success.

Protecting that image is important because we are often among the few blacks
our co-workers or neighbors know. And there's the fact of professional life
that some people want to see others tarnished.

An example of the anxiety this creates: Long before Anita Hill made her
sexual harassment charges against then- Supreme Court nominee Clarence
Thomas, Washington's black bourgeoisie was all a-titter about his public
acknowledgement that he was rearing the son of a sister with a drug problem.

That made him -- and, by extension, themselves -- seem much too common.

Denial, however, doesn't work for those who need help nor for those expected
to provide it.

Dealing with guilt is a crucial first step. A strange dichotomy exists in
too many black families: Education is preached, but achievement somehow has
an aura of sin.

So those who get ahead feel compelled to donate to relatives who chose not
to get skills or education or just to put out much effort. Not doing so
risks being labeled hostile to family and even to the entire race.

Personal responsibility is the answer for the needy, as well as the middle
class.

We know this country's drug policy has been unfair, having imposed much
tougher sentences on those arrested with cheaper crack cocaine rather than
the more expensive powdered version.

We know those arrests are a key reason that more than a quarter of black men
are in the criminal justice system.

We know that it's hard for people with criminal records to get a new start
in life. And we know that the more self-sufficient men are, the more
marriageable they are -- leading to fewer single mothers in poverty.

So, time to use all those connections and clout we tout to push better
strategies to break the cycle of hopelessness that feeds addiction.

What if -- instead of just styling and profiling during this summer's
convention season -- professional groups decided how best to use their areas
of expertise to further this cause?

Business plans, policies, programs, politics, research, lobbying -- those
are the tools and the power of the professional class. We should use the
skills learned in the workplace to put programs in place so more people can
help themselves.

And that would have the extra benefit of educating national and state
leaders who still confuse the need for a hand up with a demand for a
handout.