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

by Jason L. Riley

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?

By 2013 Mississippi had more black elected officials than any other state, but it also continues to have one of the highest black poverty rates in the nation. Other measures of black well-being also don’t seem to have improved along with black political progress over the decades. Impressive socioeconomic

And he concluded that black culture, more than anything else, explained the academic achievement gap.

black kids are being asked to sit still in class, pay attention, follow rules, and complete homework assignments—all of which is a huge imposition on them, if not a racist expectation.

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.

Randall Kennedy, a Harvard law professor and affirmative-action advocate, takes Obama to task for denying the obvious:

Acutely sensitive to charges that he supports racial favoritism that discriminates against whites, Obama defines affirmative action in a fashion meant to drain it of controversy. . . . Racial affirmative action does distinguish between people on a racial basis. It does discriminate. It does redistribute resources. It does

preferred racial categories of candidates, promoting some racial minorities over whites with superior records. It does generate stigma and resentment. These issues cannot usefully be hidden for long behind verbal tricks.3

“In order to give minorities more opportunity, do you believe race or ethnicity should be a factor when deciding who is hired, promoted, or admitted to college, or that hiring, promotions, and college admissions should be based strictly on merit and qualifications other than race or ethnicity?”

affirmative action comes with a stigma and reinforces ugly stereotypes of black inferiority. “When few Jews could get into Ivy League schools, and Jewish students had to be superqualified to gain admission,