taken root among black Americans. The black-white income gap was shrinking. So was the gap between black childrens test scores and those of white children. Perhaps the most heartening gain had been in infant mor- tality. As late as 1964, a black infant was twice as likely to die as a white infant, often of a cause as basic as diarrhea or pneumonia. With segregated hospitals, many black patients received what amounted to Third World care. But that changed when the federal government or- dered the hospitals to be desegregated: within just seven years, the black infant mortality rate had been cut in half. By the 1980s, virtu- ally every facet of life was improving for black Americans, and the progress showed no sign of stopping. Then came crack. While crack use was hardly a black-only phenomenon, it hit black neighborhoods much harder than most. The evidence can be seen by measuring the same indicators of societal progress cited above. After decades of decline, black infant mortality began to soar in the 1980s, as did the rate of low-birthweight babies and parent abandonment. The gap between black and white schoolchildren widened. The num- ber of blacks sent to prison tripled. Crack was so dramatically de- structive that if its effect is averaged for all black Americans, not just crack users and their families, you will see that the groups postwar progress was not only stopped cold but was often knocked as much as ten years backward. Black Americans were hurt more by crack cocaine than by any other single cause since Jim Crow. And then there was the crime. Within a five-year period, the homi-         FREAK ONOMIC S   cide rate among young urban blacks quadrupled. Suddenly it was just as dangerous to live in parts of Chicago or St. Louis or Los Angeles as it was to live in Bogotá.