Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed

by Jason L. Riley

But Johnson’s speech wasn’t a victory lap, as some anticipated. Instead, it was mainly about what government should do next on behalf of blacks. This was merely the “end of the beginning,”

It was a war on poverty and racial inequality, and he was going to win it by redistributing wealth and pushing numbers-based racial remedies.

“For the only time in this century except for four years in the late 1930’s, a President’s party had a 2-to-1 majority in both houses of Congress. The economy was strong and growing. And most people not only shared the President’s dream for an end to poverty and racial injustice and a better life for all Americans but also believed with him that it was in the Government’s power to fulfill that dream.”

What if public-policy makers risk creating more barriers to progress when the goal is the ever-elusive “equality as a result”? At what point does the helping start hurting?

Minimum-wage laws might lift earnings for people who are already employed, but they also have a long history of pricing blacks out of the labor force. Affirmative action in higher education was intended to address past discrimination, but the result is fewer black college graduates—particularly in the fields of math and science—than we’d have in the absence of racial preferences.

And so it goes, with everything from soft-on-crime laws that make black neighborhoods more dangerous to policies that limit school choice out of a mistaken belief that charter schools and voucher programs harm the traditional public schools that most low-income students attend.

Upward mobility depends on work and family. Social programs that undermine the work ethic and displace fathers keep poor people poor, and perverse incentives put in place by people trying to help are manifested in black attitudes, habits, and skills. Why study hard in school if you will be held to lower academic standards? Why change antisocial behavior when people are willing to reward it, make excuses for it, or even change the law to accommodate it?

The persistently high black jobless rate is more a consequence of unemployability than of discrimination in hiring.

The black-white learning gap stems from a dearth of education choices for ghetto kids, not biased tests or a shortage of education funding. And although black civil rights leaders like to point to a supposedly racist criminal justice system to explain why our prisons house so many black men, it’s been obvious for decades that the real culprit is black behavior—behavior too often celebrated in black culture.

“Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, ‘What should we do with the Negro?’” said Douglass. “I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall.... And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs!”

The history of 1960s liberal social policies is largely a history of ignoring this wisdom. There is no question that the civil rights lobby has benefited tremendously from the programs launched by the Great Society. So has a Democratic Party that rewards black constituents with government handouts.

When Fox News’s Sean Hannity asked black talk-show host Tavis Smiley in October of 2013 if black Americans were “better off five years into the Obama presidency,” Smiley responded: “Let me answer your question very forthrightly: No, they are not. The data is going to indicate, sadly, that when the Obama administration is over, black people will have lost ground in every single leading economic indicator category. On that regard, the president ought to be held responsible.”2 Blacks seemed to disagree. According to Gallup, Obama’s job-approval rating among blacks was 85 percent (versus just 43 percent among all groups) when Smiley made those remarks.

A black member of Congress told political scientist Carol Swain that “one of the advantages, and disadvantages, of representing blacks is their shameless loyalty . . . You can almost get away with raping babies and be forgiven. You don’t have any vigilance about your performance.”3

Liberals like to complain that, the twice-elected President Obama notwithstanding, we are not a “post-racial” society. The reality is that they wouldn’t have it any other way. Race consciousness helps cohere the political left, and black liberalism’s main agenda is keeping race front and center in our national conversations. That’s why, for example, much more common black-on-black crimes take a back seat to much less common white-on-black crimes. The last thing that organizations like the NAACP want is for America to get “beyond” race. In their view, racial discrimination in one form or another remains a significant barrier to black progress, and government action is the best solution.

Voter ID laws preceded Barack Obama’s 2008 election, and in places like Georgia and Indiana minority turnout increased after the laws were passed. A 2007 study by the Heritage Foundation concluded that “in general, respondents in photo identification and non-photo identification states are just as likely to report voting compared to respondents from states that only required voters to state their name.”8 The findings applied to white, black, and Latino voters alike. The spectacle of a black president’s black attorney general pretending that the black franchise is in jeopardy in twenty-first-century America struck many people as intellectually dishonest political pandering. That included black lawmakers who have argued that voter ID laws are necessary to help ensure ballot integrity. “When I was a congressman, I took the path of least resistance on this subject for an African American politician,” wrote Artur Davis, a former member of the Congressional Black Caucus who left office in 2010. “Without any evidence to back it up, I lapsed into the rhetoric of various partisans and activists who contend that requiring photo identification to vote is a suppression tactic aimed at thwarting black voter participation. The truth is that the most aggressive contemporary voter suppression in the African American community, at least in Alabama, is the wholesale manufacture of ballots, at the polls and absentee, in parts of the Black Belt.”9

“Racial inequality remains a brute fact of life in this country,” he wrote. “In order to transform America into a just democracy, it is necessary to rebuild black politics.”15

John Lewis, the 1960s civil rights activist who would later become a congressman, suggested that Washington deserved to be “ridiculed and vilified by his own people for working so closely with white America.”

“Washington’s style of interracial engagement has been all but forgotten, and when remembered, usually disparaged: he put a premium on finding consensus and empathizing with other groups, and by his example encouraged dominant groups to do the same,” wrote Norrell. “He cautioned that when people protest constantly about their mistreatment, they soon get a reputation as complainers, and others stop listening to their grievances. Blacks needed a reputation for being hard-working, intelligent, and patriotic, Washington taught, and not for being aggrieved.”19

A 2013 Pew study reported that 49 percent of Asians age 25 and older hold bachelor’s degrees, versus 31 percent of whites and 18 percent of blacks. The median household income for Asians is $66,000, which is $12,000 more than white households and double that of black households.

both groups looked to control of government as a means of advancement, and both excelled at politics. They built their own political organizations, modeled on their churches: the Irish, hierarchical political machines; blacks, ad hoc organizations assembled by charismatic local leaders. They were initially the object of competition between Democrats and Whigs or Republicans, but within about twenty years both became heavily, almost unanimously, Democratic. Both used politics to create large numbers of public sector jobs for their own people. In some cities where they were majorities—Boston and Jersey City for the Irish, Detroit and Washington for blacks—they created predatory politics, which overloaded the public payroll and neglected to enforce the law, ultimately damaging the cities’ private economies.23

We are in the second decade of the twenty-first century, and a black man has twice been elected president in a country where blacks are only 13 percent of the population. Yet liberals continue to pretend that it’s still 1965, and that voters must be segregated in order for blacks to win office. Never mind that in 1982 five black candidates from majority-white districts won seats in the North Carolina State House of Representatives. Or that from 1983 to 1995 a majority-white district in Missouri was represented in Congress by Alan Wheat, a black Democrat. Or that between 1991 and 1997 Gary Franks, a black Republican from Connecticut, represented a congressional district that was 88 percent white. Or that in 1996 Sanford Bishop, a black Democrat from Georgia, easily won reelection to Congress in a district that was only 35 percent black. Or that in 2010 Tim Scott of South Carolina and Allen West of Florida, both black Republicans, were elected to Congress from districts that are overwhelmingly white. Or that Representatives Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri and Keith Ellison of Minnesota are black Democrats who represent districts that are more than 60 percent white.

By the time the [Voting Rights Act of 1965] was reauthorized in 2006, there had been 40 more years of it. In assessing the “current need” for a preclearance system that treats States differently from one another today, that history cannot be ignored. During that time, largely because of the Voting Rights Act, voting tests were abolished, disparities in voter registration and turnout due to race were erased, and African-Americans attained political office in record numbers. And yet the coverage formula that Congress reauthorized in 2006 ignores these developments, keeping the focus on decades-old data relevant to decades-old problems, rather than current data reflecting current needs.

Finally, they show that black turnout now exceeds white turnout in five of those six states, and that in the sixth state the disparity is less than one-half of one percent.

“Think about how far from the ideals of the civil-rights movement the Left’s definition of civil rights has led us,” wrote Clegg and Thompson. “Universities must be able to discriminate against students on the basis of skin color, and voters must be required to vote only among those of their own kind.”29

A 1985 survey found that most blacks favored the death penalty and prayer in public schools while most black leaders opposed these things. Most blacks opposed school busing, while most black leaders favored it. Three times as many blacks opposed abortion rights as their leaders did. Indeed, on many key social issues, blacks are more conservative than whites.31

And the mounting intraracial disparities mean that the realities of race no longer affect all blacks in the same way. There have been perverse consequences: in part to assuage our sense of survivor’s guilt, we often cloak these differences in a romantic black nationalism—something that has become the veritable socialism of the black bourgeoisie.32

The measure was supported by 61 percent of voters in the twenty Georgia counties where blacks are half of the population. And in the thirteen counties that comprise more than half of the state’s black population, support was an even higher 62 percent. “The bottom line: Georgia’s black counties overwhelmingly desire dramatic new alternatives to the conventional school systems that have failed them for more than a century,” wrote Blackmon.

That level of support flatly contradicts one of the flimsiest canards used to criticize Amendment 1—and charter schools in general. That is: the idea that somehow charter schools end up hurting minority or poorer students while disproportionately helping white and middle class children. The actual performance of charter schools in Georgia has always defied such claims. African-American students and all children living in urban areas with failed conventional public schools, like Atlanta, have benefited far more from charters than any other groups.33

the liberal constituencies of America had been waiting for a savior figure. Barack Obama proposed himself. In the eyes of his supporters, he was a promise in a bleak landscape; he possessed an inspirational intelligence and an evident competence . . . he was an embodiment of multi-ethnic inclusion when the country was becoming no longer white in its majority. This was the promise of his campaign, its reality or vain romance, depending on your view.35

The black underclass continues to face many challenges, but they have to do with values and habits, not oppression from a manifestly unjust society. Blacks have become their own worst enemy, and liberal leaders do not help matters by blaming self-inflicted wounds on whites or “society.” The notion that racism is holding back blacks as a group, or that better black outcomes cannot be expected until racism has been vanquished, is a dodge. And encouraging blacks to look to politicians to solve their problems does them a disservice.

having a black man in the Oval Office is less important than having one in the home.

In the late 1990s the black residents of Shaker Heights, Ohio, an affluent Cleveland suburb, invited John Ogbu, professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, to examine the black-white academic achievement gap in their community. Roughly a third of the town’s residents were black, and the school district was divided equally along racial lines. Yet the black kids trailed far behind whites in test scores, grade-point averages, placement in high-level classes, and college attendance. Black students were receiving 80 percent of the Ds and Fs.

“they would say that they did not take their schoolwork seriously because they knew they were going to be passed into the ninth grade anyway.”

“We can’t keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves.”

Today we have people trying to help blacks by making excuses for them. Thus, the achievement gap is not the product of a black subculture that rejects attitudes and behaviors conducive to academic success; rather, it results from “racist” standardized tests or “Eurocentric” teaching styles. Multiculturalists like Geneva Gay, a professor of education at the University of Washington–Seattle, tell us that black kids are underperforming in public schools because of how they’re being taught. “Standards of ‘goodness’ in teaching and learning are culturally determined and are not the same for all ethnic groups,” she wrote. The structures, assumptions, substance, and operations of conventional educational enterprises are European American cultural icons. A case in point is the protocols of attentiveness and the emphasis placed on them in classrooms. Students are expected to pay close attention to teachers for a prolonged, largely uninterrupted length of time. Specific signs and signals have evolved that are associated with appropriate attentive behaviors. These include nonverbal communicative cues, such as gaze, eye contact, and body posture. When they are not exhibited . . . students are [unfairly] judged to be uninvolved, distracted, having short attention spans, and/or engaged in off-task behaviors.

Just 36 percent of black students who speak English at home passed their grade’s math exam, compared to 47 percent of Somali-speaking students. In reading, 56 percent of black students who speak English passed, while 67 percent of Somali-speaking students passed. And kids from Ethiopia and Eritrea scored even higher than the Somali students.11 A 2007 study published in the American Journal of Education found that although immigrants were just 13 percent of the U.S. population, they accounted for more than a quarter of the black students at the nation’s twenty-eight most selective colleges and universities. If “Eurocentric” teaching methods, rather than cultural values, explain poor academic outcomes among black natives, how to explain the relative success of black immigrants from backgrounds much more foreign than those of their U.S. counterparts?

Those three zip codes include parts of Sunset Park, Borough Park and Dyker Heights. They were among the 20 zip codes with the most acceptances to the elite high schools. Yet, the average incomes in those three zip codes are low enough for a family of four to qualify for free lunch (they range from about $35,000-$40,000 a year). That’s striking because most of the other admissions to the elite schools came from middle to upper class neighborhoods.

So while multiculturalists are busy complaining about teaching methods and civil rights leaders are busy complaining about standardized tests, the Asian kids are busy studying.

People putting their clothes on backwards—isn’t that a sign of something going on wrong? Aren’t you paying attention? People with their hats on backwards, pants down around the crack . . . Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t land a plane with “Why you ain’t . . .” You can’t be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they’re moving ahead on this . . . these people are fighting hard to be ignorant. Five or six different children—same woman, eight, ten different husbands or whatever. Pretty soon you’re going to have to have DNA cards so you can tell who you’re making love to . . . What the hell good is Brown v. Board of Education if nobody wants it?20

Social welfare programs that were initiated or greatly expanded during the 1960s resulted in the government effectively displacing black fathers as breadwinners, and made work less attractive.

More liberal welfare eligibility and benefits were one factor that had encouraged this increase. More generally, the constraints that traditionally kept families together had weakened. In some groups they may not have been strong to begin with. Our efforts to soften the harsh consequences of family breakup spoke well of our compassion and concern, but these efforts also made it easier for fathers to abandon their families or mothers to disengage from their husbands.23

In the South . . . there were a great many outcomes—situations, customs, rules—which were inimical to Negro rights, which violated Negro rights and which were willed outcomes. Intended, planned, desired outcomes. And it was, therefore, possible to seek out those individuals who were willing the outcomes and to coerce them to cease to do so. Now, you come to New York City, with its incomparable expenditures on education; and you find that, in the twelfth grade, Negro students are performing at the sixth grade level in mathematics. Find me the man who wills that outcome. Find the legislator who has held back money, the teacher who’s held back his skills, the school superintendent who’s deliberately discriminating, the curriculum supervisor who puts the wrong books in, the architect who builds the bad schools. He isn’t there!24

The Economist magazine, citing a 2011 Chicago Federal Reserve study, noted that “roughly 60% of black Americans whose parents had an above-average income fell below the average as adults. The figure for whites was 36%.”25 An earlier Pew study found that some 45 percent of blacks (versus 15 percent of whites) who were born into the middle class in the 1960s had slid into poverty or near-poverty. Since it is unlikely that the effects of slavery and Jim Crow are hopscotching generations, perhaps something else is to blame.

The cultural values and social patterns prevalent among Southern whites included an aversion to work, proneness to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, drunkenness, lack of entrepreneurship, reckless searches for excitement, lively music and dance, and a style of religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery. This oratorical style carried over into the political oratory of the region in both the Jim Crow era and the civil rights era, and has continued on into our own times among black politicians, preachers, and activists.26

“One of the most painful admissions I hear is: I am afraid of my own people.”1

Some individuals who avoid encounters with black youths may indeed be acting out of racism, but given that law-abiding blacks exhibit the exact same behavior it’s likely that most people are acting on probability. “If I’m walking down a street in Center City Philadelphia at two in the morning and I hear some footsteps behind me and I turn around and there are a couple of young white dudes behind me, I am probably not going to get very uptight. I am probably not going to have the same reaction if I turn around and there is the proverbial black urban youth behind me,” Theodore McKee, a black federal judge, told an interviewer in the 1990s. “Now, if I can have this reaction—and I’m a black male who has studied martial arts for twenty some odd years and can defend myself—I can’t help but think that the average white judge in the situation will have a reaction that is ten times more intense.”2 (When the interviewer, Linn Washington, also black, was asked on C-SPAN to respond to the judge’s remarks, he said, “I can relate to it because I ride the subways in Philadelphia late at night.”)3

My encounters with law enforcement growing up were certainly frustrating; I was getting hassled for the past behavior of other blacks. But that doesn’t necessarily make those encounters arbitrary or unreasonable. After all, perceptions of black criminality are based on the reality of high black crime...

But any candid debate on race and criminality in the United States must begin with the fact that blacks are responsible for an astoundingly disproportionate number of crimes, which has been the case for at least the past half a century.

population and continue to be responsible for an inordinate amount of crime. Between 1976 and 2005 blacks committed more than half of all murders in the United States. The black arrest rate for most offenses—including robbery, aggravated assault, and property crimes—is still typically two to three times their representation in the population. Blacks as a group are also overrepresented among persons arrested for so-called white-collar crimes such as counterfeiting, fraud, and embezzlement. And blaming this decades-long, well-documented trend on racist cops, prosecutors, judges, sentencing guidelines, and drug laws doesn’t cut it as a plausible explanation.

Yet liberal policy makers and their allies in the press and the academy consistently downplay the empirical data on black criminal behavior, when they bother to discuss it at all. Stories about the racial makeup of prisons are commonplace; stories about the excessive amount of black criminality are much harder to come by.