I’m only partly in agreement with Jason L. Riley’s observations in his most recent Wall Street Journal column. I agree with this:
The greatest success of the civil-rights movement wasn’t a new government program but getting government off the backs of blacks by defeating Jim Crow. Nothing the government has done since then in the name of advancing blacks has been more effective than simply ending government-sponsored discrimination. Black poverty fell by 40 percentage points between 1940 and 1960. It continued to decline in the wake of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society interventions, but at a much slower pace.
Similarly, blacks were joining middle-class professions at a much faster pace in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s than they would after affirmative-action programs were implemented in the 1970s. In fact, we now have evidence that suggests racial preferences have been not only ineffective in helping the black poor but also counterproductive. After the University of California system ended race-conscious admissions policies in 1996, black and Hispanic graduation rates rose dramatically.
Liberals also insisted that more black political representation would translate into more black upward mobility, but the historical record says otherwise. Poor blacks in Marion Barry’s Washington in the 1980s, and Sharpe James’s Newark, N.J., in the 1990s, saw their economic plight worsen. Even under our first black president, racial disparities in income and homeownership widened. It turns out that political clout is neither sufficient nor even necessary for a group to advance economically. Blacks and Hispanics experienced record low poverty and unemployment rates before the pandemic under President Trump, who has rarely been accused of bending over backward to help minorities.
Where I differ is here:
If history is any guide, what blacks most need from the government is for it to get out of the way. Stop forcing poor black children to attend failing schools by denying them school choice. Stop increasing the minimum wage and pricing black young adults out of jobs. Stop implementing occupational licensing regulations that prevent black entrepreneurs from starting a business. And stop pretending that policing is a bigger problem than violent crime in poor black neighborhoods. In 2019 there were 492 homicides in Chicago, according to the Sun-Times, and only three of them involved police.
I agree that school choice and limiting occupational licensing to where it’s genuinely needed would probably help blacks. But I don’t think that what blacks need most now is for the government to “get out of the way”. That was 50 years ago. I think that what blacks need most now is for government to perform its most basic function: enforce the law and do it without regard to race. The law should not be applied more harshly to blacks than whites or more leniently. It should apply to all who break the law without respect to race. Gain the trust of black people by protecting them from violent crime.
That applies to immigration law, too. Being reluctant to enforce our laws because people are fleeing from lousy countries may be well-intentioned but hurts blacks disproportionately.
Some unsolicited advice from a TV guy:
“I might say that we should stop lending money,†Rowe added. “We don’t have to lend money to kids who can’t pay it back to train them for jobs that don’t exist anymore. I might have that kind of conversation with him, assuming he wanted to have it.â€
https://www.movieguide.org/news-articles/former-dirty-jobs-host-mike-rowe-shares-his-advice-for-the-next-president.html
That’s a battle I have been fighting for decades. There are many reforms that need to be made including compelling higher educational institutions to have more skin in the game. As it is they can keep raising their prices, the incoming students will obtain loans, and loans they can’t repay can’t be discharged via bankruptcy.
My favorite example is journalism schools. Each year they graduate more people than are employed in the entire sector.
The getting government out of the way by doing away with Jim Crow thing always bugs me. The Job Crow laws just put into law what people were already doing. Note that when they went away it took government intervention to keep people from continuing with Jim Crow practices.
I favor making eligibility for loans tied to school performance. Conservatives favor for profit schools, a large number of which perform abysmally. So what happens is that they con students into going to their schools. Students take out lots of loans. Students cant get a job with worthless degree but school makes lots of money. Conservatives then make sure that students cant declare bankruptcy. (Note that the for profit schools are allowed to declare bankruptcy.) If the for profit schools that perform so badly, this should apply to other schools also, are not allowed to accept student loans then we dont see those student loan problems.
Agree that occupational licensing should be fixed. Still dont think the evidence for school choice is all that compelling.
Steve
School performance? Conning people? Is it Porsche’s fault if a guy buys a car he cannot afford? Frito-Lay’s fault if a guy develops Type II diabetes? Whatever happened to individual responsibility?
Try this: the government should stop giving out/backing student loans for worthless degrees. A Women’s Studies degree is worthless from Harvard, or Muncie Jr College. A profit or non-profit school. What we need is a government smart enough to help pay for trades education and the like, but not another damned fool philosophy or polysci major.