It has been 40 years since Newark erupted in a massive six-day racial riot, which took 26 lives. Many more were injured and much of the downtown, not only the shops of the white proprietors but the slum housing of the blacks, burned to the ground.

I was a young reporter for the now-defunct Newark News covering the area.

As I read the reams of copy these days about how race relations have improved so much, I ask myself, what really has changed in Newark? Visiting Newark, just 10 miles from Manhattan, I have come to the conclusion, "Not much."

Oh, there is all sorts of hope now. "Yes, we can" is the motto of the times. And with a young black president who wasn't even a teenager when Newark erupted, there definitely is hope.

Blacks can afford to live in the suburbs now, and realtors will sell them houses — conditions that did not exist in much of the North 40 years ago. My hometown, Maplewood, just five miles from Newark, was lily white then.

There were a couple of reasons. For one, blacks were poorly educated, couldn't get good jobs and couldn't afford to live in a town populated by lawyers and doctors commuting to New York. I can only remember a couple of blacks in my classes at Columbia High School, and I doubt that any went to college. They ended up in dead-end jobs at the deli or the neighborhood garage.

Of course, we enlightened Northerners did not trumpet our racial biases. There were no segregated schools. But those living in the "better" section of town high up on a hill definitely did not want to sell to minorities. It would lower everyone's property values, and the realtors understood that concept.

You might as well have built a wall around the town, and actually, we eventually did put up a few walls between Maplewood and Newark "to keep out car thieves."

But how attitudes have changed!

Today, there all sorts of federal and state programs for impoverished minorities.

Yet, schools in Newark are just as deficient as they were 40 years ago. Violent crime is high. The infant mortality reaches Third World standards. Unemployment, particularly among young black males, is stratospheric.

We have a long way to go in the enlightened North.

But with a black president, who has raised everyone's hopes, we have a chance. Yet, if I, a white liberal, were allowed to offer my views to the incoming president, I would say we must challenge not only white America to do more but to ask black America to do more, too.

He can take the lead from Bill Cosby and ask young blacks, particularly young men, to raise their sights and try harder to get an education. To at least stay in school. And uneducated teenage mothers should learn that bringing a child into the world should wait until they can support the child.

It is has been virtually impossible for white Americans to raise that challenge without being accused of being racists or, at the very least, of not understanding the difficulties the blacks have faced for so long. Even Cosby, one of the most admired black men in the country, was heavily criticized when he told black men to try harder.

Barack Obama has show that a man — and soon, a woman — can get elected president if he works hard. But the heroes among so many in the black community cannot be just athletes and drug dealers.

But a black president can take the lead.

Let us hope that one day, Newark, where I was born, will return as a vibrant city. It is starting. It has a dynamic young mayor. But it will require all of us, black and white, working together to achieve that goal.

E-mail Joe Volz at volzjoe2003@yahoo.com or write to 2528 Five Shillings Rd., Frederick, MD 21701. To find out more about Joe Volz and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.