CONCLUSION
The civil rights struggles of the mid-twentieth century were liberalism at its best. The efforts culminated in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed racial discrimination in employment and education and ensured the ability of blacks to register and vote. This book’s intention is not to downplay the accomplishments of Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., the Freedom Riders, the NAACP, and others who helped to destroy significant barriers to black progress and make America more just. Rather, my goal is to assess some of the social policy and thinking that arose from the ruins of Jim Crow. Good intentions aside, which efforts have facilitated black advancement, and which efforts have impeded it?
In 1988, nearly a quarter of a century after the Great Society initiatives were launched, Nathan Glazer published The Limits of Social Policy, a critical assessment of two decades’ worth of programs that were premised on the liberal belief that government action is the best way to improve the lot of people and their communities. “Against the view that to every problem there is a solution, I came to believe that we can have only partial and less than wholly satisfying answers to the social problems in question,” Glazer wrote. “Whereas the prevailing wisdom was that social policies would make steady progress in nibbling away at the agenda of problems set by the forces of industrialization and urbanization, I came to believe that although social policy had ameliorated some of the problems we had inherited, it had also given rise to other problems no less grave in their effect on human happiness.”
Unlike Glazer, many liberals today, still riding high on those good intentions, don’t seem particularly interested in reconsidering what has been tried, even though fifty years into the war on poverty the picture isn’t pretty. While gains have been made, significant racial disparities persist in some areas and black retrogression has occurred in others. The black-white poverty gap has widened over the last decade and the poverty rate among blacks is no longer declining. The black-white disparity in incarceration rates today is larger than it was in 1960. And the black unemployment rate has, on average, been twice as high as the white rate for five decades. In fact, black America has long been stuck in a severe recession. Between 1963 and 2012 annual black unemployment averaged 11.6 percent, while the average annual national unemployment rate during recessions over the same period was only 6.7 percent.
Confronted with these statistics, liberals continue to push for the same “solutions” that clearly haven’t worked before. In 2014 President Obama announced yet another federal initiative aimed at helping blacks. He called for more preschool education, even though studies—like the one on Head Start released by his administration in 2012—have found “no significant impacts” in education from such programs. Obama said that he wants to increase reading proficiency and graduation rates for minority students, yet he opposes school voucher programs that are doing both. And he called for more of the same job-training programs that liberal politicians have been pushing for decades despite scant evidence of their effectiveness.
“The gains from participation are, at best, very modest, even three to four years after entry,” reads a report prepared for the Labor Department on the benefits of the federal government’s biggest job-training program. “Overall, it appears possible that ultimate gains from participation are small or nonexistent.” That report was released by the Obama administration in 2009.
In his history of American liberalism, The Revolt Against the Masses, Fred Siegel wrote of a “liberal flight from evidence and empiricism” on racial matters beginning in the 1960s. The political left, wracked by guilt over America’s diabolical treatment of blacks, decided to hold them to different standards of behavior. “African Americans were invited to enter into the larger society on their own terms. The schools, which had once helped set white-skinned peasants on the path to success, ceased incorporating dark-skinned peasants from the backward South into mainstream culture,” wrote Siegel. “Discipline as a prerequisite for adult success was displaced by the authentic self-expression of the ill-educated. The newcomers, it was said, were not culturally deprived; they were ‘differently abled,’ more spontaneous and expressive.” Liberals naively sought to improve conditions for blacks without passing judgment on antisocial black culture. “Like devout Christians getting right with Jesus, liberals struggled to get right with racism,” wrote Siegel. “They wanted to help blacks in the worst way, and that’s just what they did.”
After George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, President Obama explained the black response to the verdict in this way: “They understand that some of the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history.” Obama was doing exactly what liberals have been conditioning blacks to do since the 1960s, which is to blame black pathology on the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws. And the president is conditioning the next generation of blacks to do the same.
But this is a dodge. Those legacies are not holding down blacks half as much as the legacy of efforts to help them “overcome.” The left’s sentimental support has turned underprivileged blacks into playthings for liberal intellectuals and politicians who care more about clearing their conscience or winning votes than advocating behaviors and attitudes that have allowed other groups to get ahead. Meanwhile, the civil rights movement of King has become an industry that does little more than monetize white guilt. King and his contemporaries demanded black self-improvement despite the abundant and overt racism of his day. King’s successors, living in an era when public policy bends over backward to accommodate blacks, nevertheless insist that blacks cannot be held responsible for their plight so long as someone somewhere in white America is still using the n-word.
Liberalism has also succeeded, tragically, in convincing blacks to see themselves first and foremost as victims. Today there is no greater impediment to black advancement than the self-pitying mindset that permeates black culture. White liberals think they are helping blacks by romanticizing miscreants. And black liberals are all too happy to hustle guilty whites. The result, manifest in everything from black studies programs to black media to black politics, is an obsession with racial slights real or imagined.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas touched on this phenomenon when he told an audience that 2014 America seems more color conscious than when he was growing up in the segregated South. “My sadness is that we are probably today more race- and difference-conscious than I was in the 1960s when I went to school. To my knowledge, I was the first black kid in Savannah, Georgia, to go to a white school. Rarely did the issue of race come up,” Thomas said. “Now, name a day it doesn’t come up. Differences in race, differences in sex, somebody doesn’t look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah. Every person in this room has endured a slight. Every person. Somebody has said something that has hurt their feelings or did something to them—left them out.”
Liberals immediately went about setting Thomas straight. Charles Blow, a black New York Times columnist, informed the associate justice that “the racial reality of blacks in the South in the 1960s was that race- and difference-consciousness was virtually inescapable, and often stifling.” Never mind that Blow was born in 1970, while Thomas was born in 1948. “It’s unclear to me,” continued Blow, “whether Thomas is being amnesiac in his recollections or if he was contemporaneously oblivious. Either way, being unable to acknowledge and articulate the basic fact that race was—and remains—a concern for others is disturbing.”
Much more disturbing is that half a century after the civil rights battles were fought and won, liberalism remains much more interested in making excuses for blacks than in reevaluating efforts to help them.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A special debt of gratitude goes to the Arthur N. Rupe Foundation and Searle Freedom Trust. I also want to thank David DesRosiers, Roger Kimball, Sam Schneider, Kacey Chuilli, and Carol Mann. I’ve had the good fortune to work at the Wall Street Journal for the past twenty years, where I developed the ideas explored in this book. I thank all of my colleagues on the editorial page for their support and encouragement. Finally, my wife, Naomi, made it possible for me to write at home during evenings and on weekends with three small children around. She then read and helped edit the manuscript. I thank her for her insights, her patience, and her indulgence.
ENDNOTES
CHAPTER ONE
1.Robert Pear, “Median Income Rises, but Is Still 6% Below Level at Start of Recession in ’07,” New York Times, August 21, 2013.
2.Andrew Kirell, “Tavis Smiley: Black People Are Not Better Off Under Obama,” Mediaite, October 12, 2013, http://www.mediaite.com/tv/tavis-smiley-black-people-are-not-better-off-under-obama-president-ought-to-be-held-responsible/.
3.Carol M. Swain, The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge to Integration (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 403.
4.Fredrick C. Harris, “The Price of a Black President,” New York Times, October 27, 2012.
5.See, for example, the Washington Post poll results published in August 2012 showing that 74 percent of all respondents, and 65 percent of blacks, expressed support for voter ID laws, http://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2012/08/12/National-Politics/Polling/question_6226.xml?uuid=Nd4PSOTWEeGXOe75nF-yhQ.
6.Department of Justice, http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/ag/speeches/2011/ag-speech-111213.html.
7.NPR, “Voting Rights: What’s a Reasonable Requirement?” December 18, 2011, http://www.npr.org/2011/12/18/143916145/voting-rights-whats-a-reasonable-requirement.
8.David B. Muhlhausen, “Photo ID Laws Do Not Reduce Turnout,” Heritage Foundation, May 5, 2009, http://www.heritage.org/research/testimony/photo-id-laws-do-not-reduce-voter-turnout.
9.Artur Davis, “Alabama Voices: Should Have Supported Voter ID Law,” Montgomery Advertiser, October 17, 2011.
10.Bureau of the Census, “Blacks Voted at a Higher Rate Than Whites in 2012 Election—A First, Census Bureau Reports,” press release, May 8, 2013, http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/voting/cb13-84.html.
11.Janell Ross, “Grim Economic Picture Hasn’t Shaken African American Support for Obama,” Huffington Post, August 31, 2011.
12.Clarence Thomas, My Grandfather’s Son: A Memoir (Harper, 2007), 178–79.
13.Norman Podhoretz, ed., The Commentary Reader: Two Decades of Articles and Stories (Atheneum, 1966), 412.
14.Joseph M. Bessette, ed., Toward a More Perfect Union: Writings of Herbert J. Storing (AEI Press, 1995), 257.
15.Michael C. Dawson, Not in Our Lifetimes: The Future of Black Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2011), viii, ix.
16.Robert J. Norrell, Up From History: The Life of Booker T. Washington (Belknap Press, 2009), 13.
17.Ibid., 15, 16.
18.David Remnick, “Going the Distance: On and Off the Road With Barack Obama,” New Yorker, January 27, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/01/27/140127fa_fact_remnick?currentPage=all
19.Ibid., 16.
20.Michael A. Fletcher, “Fifty Years After March on Washington, Economic Gap Between Blacks, Whites Persists,” Washington Post, August 27, 2013.
21.Thomas Sowell, Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality? (Quill, 1984), 32.
22.Michael Barone, The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again (Regnery, 2001), 17.
23.Ibid., 20.
24.Ibid., 21, 22.
25.Gary Orfield and Carole Ashkinaze, The Closing Door: Conservative Policy and Black Opportunity (University of Chicago Press, 1991), 4–7.
26.J. Harvie Wilkinson III, From Brown to Bakke: The Supreme Court and School Integration: 1954–1978 (Oxford University Press, 1979), 236.
27.Abigail Thernstrom, Voting Rights—and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections (AEI Press, 2009), 6.
28.Ibid., 9.
29.Roger Clegg and Joshua P. Thompson, “Two Points on Shelby County v. Holder,” National Review Online, February 25, 2013, http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/341443/two-points-ishelby-county-v-holderi-roger-clegg.
30.Thernstrom, Voting Rights—and Wrongs, 20.
31.Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cornel West, The Future of the Race (Vintage Books, 1997), 33.
32.Ibid., 36–37.
33.Douglas A. Blackmon, “Who Powered the Passage of the Charter School Amendment in Georgia?” (blog), November 8, 2012, http://www.slaverybyanothername.com/blog/who-powered-the-passage-of-the-charter-school-amendment-in-georgia-african-americans-who-have-been-chronically-denied-good-public-schools/.
34.Tracey McManus, “Georgia Legislative Caucus to Join Lawsuit Against Gov. Nathan Deal Over Charter School Amendment,” Augusta Chronicle, November 11, 2012.
35.David Remnick, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama (Knopf, 2010), 24.
CHAPTER TWO
1.Margaret Mead, Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World (Dell, 1968), 195–98.
2.Luke Rosiak, “Fathers Disappear From Households Across America,” Washington Times, December 25, 2012.
3.Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Peter Knobler, Giant Steps: The Autobiography of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Bantam Books, 1983), 16.
4.John U. Ogbu, Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003), 35.
5.Ibid., 23.
6.Ibid., 24, 25.
7.Felicia R. Lee, “Why Are Black Students Lagging?” New York Times, November 30, 2002.
8.Ogbu, Black American Students, 222.
9.Ibid., 255.
10.Geneva Gay, Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research and Practice (Teachers College Press, 2010), 23–24, 27.
11.Brian M. Rosenthal, “‘Alarming’ New Test-Score Gap Discovered in Seattle Schools,” Seattle Times, December 19, 2011.
12.Yasmeen Khan, “Most Eighth Graders Matched to a High School of Their Choice,” WNYC, March 15, 2013, http://www.wnyc.org/story/301978-high-school-admissions/.
13.Beth Fertig, “Around Sunset Park, Tutoring Is Key to Top High Schools,” WNYC, March 12, 2013, http://www.wnyc.org/story/301916-around-sunset-park-tutoring-is-key-to-top-high-schools/.
14.Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (HarperPerennial, 1990), 95, 96.
15.Robert Christgau and Greg Tate, “Chuck D All Over the Map,” Village Voice, October 22, 1991.
16.Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader (Basic Civitas Books, 1999), 482.
17.Michael Eric Dyson, The Michael Eric Dyson Reader (Basic Civitas Books, 2004), 408, 416.
18.James P. Comer and Alvin F. Poussaint, Raising Black Children (Plume, 1992), 252, 357.
19.Niko Koppel, “Are Your Jeans Sagging? Go Directly to Jail,” New York Times, August 30, 2007.
20.Juan Williams, Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America—and What We Can Do About It (Three Rivers Press, 2006).
21.Michael Eric Dyson, Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind? (Basic Civitas Books, 2005).
22.Ta-Nehisi Coates, “This Is How We Lost to the White Man,” in Best African American Essays 2010, eds. Gerald Early and Randall Kennedy (One World/Ballantine, 2009), 161, 168.
23.Nathan Glazer, The Limits of Social Policy (Harvard University Press, 1988), 13.
24.“Idea Broker in the Race Crisis,” Life, November 3, 1967. Cited in Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (Tenth-Anniversary Edition) (Basic Books, 1994), 29.
25.“Black America: Waking Life,” The Economist, August 24, 2013.
26.Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals (Encounter, 2005), 6.
CHAPTER THREE
1.Cited in Dinesh D’Souza,
The End of Racism (Free Press, 1995), 267.
2.Linn Washington, Black Judges on Justice: Perspectives from the Bench (New Press, 1995), 71.
3.“Book Discussion on Black Judges on Justice,” C-SPAN video, 59:02, April 20, 1995, http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/transcript/transcript.php?programid=142160.
4.Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New Press, 2010), 11.
5.Ibid., 16.
6.Ibid., 4.
7.Ibid., 148.
8.Ibid., 138.
9.Ibid., 192.
10.Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (Scribner, 2008), 343.
11.Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (Basic Books, 1995), 28.
12.William J. Stuntz, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice (Belknap Press, 2011), 37.
13.Lucas A. Powe Jr., The Warren Court and American Politics (Belknap Press, 2000), 408.
14.James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnstein, Crime and Human Nature: The Definitive Study of the Causes of Crime (Free Press, 1985), 29, 461.
15.Stuntz, Criminal Justice, 21.
16.Heather Mac Donald, “Distorting the Truth About Crime and Race,” City Journal, May 14, 2010, http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon0514hm.html.
17.Heather Mac Donald, “Is the Criminal-Justice System Racist?”, City Journal 18 (Spring 2008), http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_criminal_justice_system.html.
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