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

by Jason L. Riley

The preponderance of evidence continues to show, as it has for decades, that minimum-wage laws tend to lead to overall job loss, which is bad enough. But the most insidious aspect of these policies is that the job loss is concentrated among the least-educated and least-skilled workers—the same group that minimum-wage advocates are trying to help. And blacks, it so happens, are over-represented in this segment of the population. According to 2011 Census Bureau data, the median age for blacks in the United States is 31, versus 37.3 for all Americans. The black population is growing faster than the total population—it grew by 15 percent between 2000 and 2010, compared with growth of 9.7 percent among all groups over the same period—and the young black population is growing especially fast. The Census Bureau projects that the number of black persons under age 18 will grow by 5 percent between 2015 and 2025, “while white, non-Hispanic juveniles will decrease by 4%.”9 Blacks are also more likely than the general public to be living in poverty—28.1 percent versus 15.9 percent—and their median household income of $33,460 significantly trails the national median of $50,502.10 When it comes to educational achievement, the gap between blacks and whites is especially pronounced. A 2010 Schott Foundation for Public Education survey of all fifty states concluded that just 47 percent of black males complete high school. In some major cities like New York and Philadelphia, that rate is 20...