Glenn Loury, Ian Rowe, and Robert Woodson Debunk Myths about the Black Experience in America

from the title page of nicole hannah jones essay introducing the 1619 project quote our founding ideals of liberty and equality were false when they were written close quote the united states of america a racist fraud with us today three african-american intellectuals who do not buy it glenn lowry ian rowe robert woodson on uncommon knowledge now [Music] welcome to uncommon knowledge i'm peter robinson we're shooting today from the old parkland conference in dallas texas glenn lowry grew up in a rough neighborhood on the south side of chicago and became a tenured professor of economics at harvard at the age of 33. dr lowry now holds a chair in social sciences and economics at brown he also hosts a weekly podcast on the ricochet network the glenn show glenn lowry holds degrees from northwestern university and mit ian rowe grew up in new york and describes himself as quote a proud product of the new york city public school system close quote a fellow at the american enterprise institute and a visiting fellow at the woodson center we're coming to woodson ian rowe is the co-founder of vertex partnership academies a new group of high schools that opened in the bronx this very year he's the author of the new book agency published this month the book and here i quote from mr rose's own material seeks to inspire young people of all races to build strong families and become masters of their own destiny close quote ian rowe holds degrees from cornell and harvard the founder of the woodson center robert woodson grew up in philadelphia during the 40s and 50s participated in the civil rights movement in the 60s and has since the 70s emphasized neighborhood empowerment over government action in improving the lives of african americans two years ago he countered the new york times 1619 project by founding 1776 unites robert woodson holds degrees from cheney university and the university of pennsylvania glenn bob and ian thank you for joining me thank you for having us good to be with you all right the first question takes a moment to set up but i'll set it up and just toss it over to you we're recording today as i mentioned at the parkland conference in dallas a conference that is considering the state of african american lives in america in light of a conference that took place 40 actually 42 years ago would have been 40 if covent hadn't intervened and this conference had taken place on time but the fairmont conference of 1980 which bob woodson attended thomas soule our friend and hero thomas soul at that 1980 conference quote one of the problems in dealing with programs for blacks is that vast empires can be built on these programs these programs definitely prevent poverty among bureaucrats economists statisticians and others close quote so that sums up the spirit of the conference of four decades ago not politics but economics replaced dependence on government programs with education and work since that conference good news the proportion of african-americans living in poverty has fallen from 30 percent in 1980 the year of that conference to 19 today but then there is this income according to the census bureau median white household income in 2017 was 68 000 a year and median black income was 40 000 a year forty years later that gap educational attainment according to a 2019 study in the average school district white students scored an average of 1.5 to two grade levels higher than black students again after four decades a gap in these last four decades the cold war has ended the american economy has more than doubled in size a technological revolution has swept the world and yet these gaps between white and black americans just seem frozen how come glenn well they're not exactly frozen although they are such as you described we do have gaps i think that we have to consider what the government can do through law and policy and what it cannot do i think that we have largely accomplished what the government can do in terms of creating a level playing field of opportunity between blacks and others equality before the law correct non-discrimination voting rights open equal access but there are things the government cannot do the government cannot make families stay together the government cannot raise children it can't influence a culture that may encourage behaviors that are counterproductive it can't break down old habits so in a way the ball is in our court now i speak of african americans the society is open and fair and free to a very great extent otherwise people wouldn't be voting with their feet in the millions and tens of millions to try to come here but we still african americans have our work cut out for ourselves educating our children and taking care of our own business that anyway is the argument that i'd be inclined to make 42 years after thomas soule and others gathered here gathered at fairmont to discuss these issues bob you grew up in a time segregation you grew up in jim crow i really did in a low-income uh black neighborhood in philadelphia and so are you gonna buy gwen's argument let me tell you discrimination is now over the question is how did we thrive in the presence right of segregation yes and the greatest declines are occurring during the time of desegregation i grew up in in 1937 i was on the middle of depression i never heard a gun fired in my life from the time i was there through high school you were born in 37 born in philadelphia 1937. i never heard a gun fired at all 98 of all the households had a man and a woman raising children i never heard of an elderly person being mugged in my neighborhood i never heard of a child being shot in their crib all of these occurred that that that between 1930 and 1940 when racism was enshrined in law black america had the highest marriage rate of any group in society and elderly people could walk safely there so and thomas seoul pointed out that the largest decline in poverty in the black community occurred between 1945 glenn uh it reduced from 82 down to 40 and then uh even further and all of this came to a halt in the 60s with a war on poverty that's when uh we saw a dramatic change in the composition of families also income made the reduction in poverty so so i i know that that what 50 years of post slavery i'm 50 years 50 years after 100 years after slavery produced it didn't it didn't destroy our families but the last 50 years you've seen rapid declines and we document why that happens ian so we get the civil rights movement gives us equality before the law correct yeah we grant that and then with roughly the same time in the 60s we get the great society and a vast expansion of the welfare state and much of that is directed toward african americans and bob woodson and i am not about to argue with a grand old man here bob woodson bob woodson says that glenn says equality before the law of course is good and has been substantially achieved is that fair yeah and bob woodson says all of this no matter how high-minded no matter how well-intentioned this vast apparatus of welfare has left us african-americans with shattered families crime crime rates we didn't have how do you explain all this well i think it's first important to establish that not all african-american families are living in poverty of course we're shattered no it's an important the narrative often seems to be when we come to this subject we immediately move to that segment of the black community that has been steeped in pathology in some way and yet since the 60s and and prior black doctors lawyers accountants professionals so there's the president of the united states and the president and even the vice president right so we have to be as obsessed with the success of the black community to understand what are the factors that have driven that level of success as we are seemingly as obsessed with that segment of the black community that has not been successful and you started off your comments by talking about these persistent gaps yes yes it's important to talk about those because there are and i as someone who has run schools in the heart of the south bronx i'm very well aware of these these persistent gaps between black students and particularly white students but it's important to note that in the entire history of the national assessment for educational progress which is the nation's report card it's still the case that in 2019 prior to the pandemic only 37 percent of all american kids are reading at great level and even white kids have never been higher than about 44 of white kids reading at grade level so what's interesting about that it's unlikely that systemic racism is the reason that white kids are not reading at grade level so the question is what are the factors beyond race that are driving low performance outcomes for kids of all races and to the degree that we can start to distinguish this idea that discrimination disparity must equal discrimination we need to break that because that monocausal type of thinking shrouds all of these other factors that are so important in the black and other communities strong families access to school choice high expectations in curriculum these are the things that i think if we were to in a sense not to ignore the impact of racism but put it in its proper context to really ask the question to what extent does racism really explain these disparities given some of the achievements of of equality under the law and the levels of success that do exist within the black community and have hard honest conversations about how these other factors are really driving these disparities okay let let's go to the 1619 project because one aspect of understanding the black experience in america is understanding america right new york times editor jake silverstein introducing the 1619 project he wrote an essay that introduced it quote 1776 is the year of our nation's birth but this fact which is taught in our schools and celebrated every fourth of july is wrong and the country's true birth date was in 1619 the year the first slaves reached north america close quote so the new york times knows what the problem is the country the country was racist from the get-go okay now here's a tweet from brother glenn over here after the 1619 project won a pulitzer prize lowry has the affrontery to post this tweet a group of scholars myself included are calling on the pulitzer board to revoke that prize close quote you'd better explain yourself the new york times come on well it was a pulled surprise for a piece of journalism that was flawed this had to do with the essay that hannah jones pinned to open the magazine special issue in which he alleged that the generation of founding americans who fought the revolutionary war against britain did so in order to preserve slavery or because they felt that britain was a threat to the preservation of slavery in the colonies and distinguished historians have come forward to say that that is simply false so i thought uh and think that uh veracity and accuracy of historical arguments should be at least the necessary precondition for the awarding of a pulitzer prize but i i want to say something else if i may please which is that the reason that uh something like the 1619 project could have such cachet as it does have is because of the disparities the the disparities are the underlying uh fuel to the political bonfire that we saw after the killing of george floyd in 2020. the disparities don't address the problems that are affecting all americans i agree with ian about that but they are nevertheless a very important reality and that has has political consequences the thing that and and and and i think this is at the heart of the issue the disparities have to be addressed the question is what's the theory upon which why those disparities in 1619 project they argue that the united states has anti-black racism in the very dna of the country so think about that so for them there is no other explanation all of these things in terms of family structure access to great schools high expectations none of that matters relative to this force let me quote you ian this is a piece you wrote about the 1619 project as educators and again you run uh charter schools in the bronx as educators we must reject the tired ideas of the 1619 project and i i love this we do our scholars no favors by treating them as victims oh in my entire 10 years of running schools i never had a single parent ask me to make sure in the curriculum we teach our kids that they're just going to be victims of this white power structure abandoning their agency robert woodson on the 1619 project as the woodson center scholar delano squires has noted we are now beset listen to this it's not often i wish i'd written something myself but this is this is really good we are now beset by white liberals who are looking for absolution from sins they didn't commit and black liberals who were looking to be affirmed for injustices they didn't suffer explain yourself i mean it's all of this these this false narrative driven by elites on both sides who are victim signaling and also i think publishing a false narrative that is untrue the assumption is that a lot of the challenges facing a lot of low-income communities about a wedlock birth and and what have you is a direct uh directly attributed to the legacy of slavery and discrimination and so what we do that cannot be true because you knew an african-american community when you were a kid that didn't suffer from any of that no and we all could read you know but we also in our essays did not want to just offer a debate we wanted to offer a counter narrative that was inspirational and aspirational we tell examples of in 1943 when uh eleanor roosevelt there were no black naval officers and so eleanor roosevelt persuaded her husband to force the navy to train them so they trained 16 college-educated men but the navy said we're going to give them in eight weeks what we give the white cadets in 16 weeks so when these men found out about it they covered the windows in their barracks and stayed up all night and studied and when they were tested they scored in the 90th percentile they said oh they cheated so they took them individually they scored in the 93rd percentile and eventually they were commissioned but those test scores are still the highest ever obtained in that school and there are other examples from the past where under horrendous circumstances we outperformed uh we performed in the presence of these obstacles and so these are very important lessons for people because people are motivated to change and improve when they see victories that are possible not constantly reminding them of injuries to be avoided right so glenn if if we could wave a magic wand and give african-americans all americans for that matter but we're talking about african-americans because we've got these disparities some large percentage of kids raised to the age of 18 in a home with both parents present instead of a tiny percentage make it 60 70 there are going to be divorces families have fine let's get it over half give them decent schools really three things as far as i can tell i'm putting this to you i'm not announcing it i'm putting it to you for your correction and the amendment but and then the third we let them grow up in neighborhoods that are safe if we do those threatening those the three things now that there is fundamental equality before the law we could just sit back and let it rip couldn't we from your mouth to god's ears indeed we could um and you know there's no reason to expect that in an ideal society every group is going to come out in equal wealth holdings and equal professional achievement and so on disparities are not discrimination disparities are not even necessarily problematic but the magnitude of the difference at the low end of the socio-economic spectrum of experience for african americans and others is deeply troubling and i think the three things that you name safety and security in your property in person a place where your children can realize their full human potential through a deciduous attention to their development and a home environment that is relatively stable that has 48 hours a day of parental supervision time and not 24 hours a day that has if necessary two salaries to put bread on the table and keep a roof over their heads and not one that models for one's children what healthy family life looks like that has norms and expectations about behavior that are passed on from parents to children sure we'd be okay we'd be okay so here i've got a lecture that you delivered in 2012 raising the issues of morality and values is vitally important the family and church you too listen to this too because i'm going to come to you in a moment the family and church are the natural sources of moral teaching indeed the only sources close quote okay so here's here's the problem if if we all are in agreement that we know actually if we can give african-american kids today the kind of neighborhood in which bob grew up some years ago i won't name the years bob but some years ago i'm proud of it but how do you do it how do you put the family back together for that matter how what what what can we do to reconstruct the african-american church i mean my god i'm i'm a white guy and i was grew up on hymns that were in those days called negro spirituals and that was and i was i was told and growing up in in upstate new york in a white community i was told of the importance of the black church and how african americans endured slavery because of their deep spiritual all of this is true but how do you how do you put it back together you say what can we do and my answer is who are we the collective we of the united states of america through its institutions its government and its policies can do relatively little there's some fiddling around the margin there's a marriage tax you might not want to have policy that makes it economically rational for people to avoid marriage and so on right there's the when the state speaks what does it say kind of messaging where through public programming of one sort or another you can affirm certain values very thin values not something that violates the sectarian differences between us in terms of faith but at its base in terms of the conveying of norms and the teaching of a way of life that's not something that the large we can do that's something that the communal we it seems to me has to do you say how can we restore our churches well we can't restore our churches but we can bob i guess i'm a radical pragmatist that's my political philosophy but i also know that there's great inventiveness in digi in indigenous institutions there are examples of grassroots leaders in in america like in kimmy gray a public housing a leader in washington in the 80s was abandoned by her husband at age 23 with five children in welfare she got off welfare sent all five kids to college and then through her leadership organized the residents to take charge of their community and in 12 years sent 600 kids off to college eliminating teen pregnancy in that community and and and and so there have been other islands of excellence where people grassroots leaders have have applied old values to a new vision and a new reality and provided an alternative to that that structure that has produced uh the transformation of these communities we need to look at what are these islands of excellence these social entrepreneurs we need to look at the capacity of people to regenerate their themselves and their communities there are all kinds of examples that we have found at the woodson center around the nation where we if we say that 70 percent of the families are raising children with dysfunctional means 30 percent are not how many studies have gone into the homes of the 30 percent to find out how are people achieving against the odds right and what is it that we can do to expand and build on what the 30 percent and so they can expand it to the 70 percent this just takes some imagination but you have to believe that development is possible in order for you to to invest in it ian education's got to be education right for you well what's interesting is that more success in education actually relies very heavily on more success and strong families and strong faith commitments and when you say that how is that how is that the case so when you ask the question how do we revitalize particularly around faith one of the things is to realize there were pockets as as bob has mentioned that there are these islands of excellence where there are already strong faith communities embracing schools so in the heart of the south bronx where i've run we have relationships with churches where we have mentoring relationships reading tutors who are adopting schools and building the connection which is first just based on reading and improving math outcomes but also starts to become a pathway that young people start to see value in developing a faith commitment within within their own lives to glenn's point there is no top-down suddenly we're just going to have a much broader engagement in faith however we should recognize the power of what already exists and create bonds between the institutions that right now are so fractured so may i ask it occurs to me the three of you are tremendously accomplished but you're also educated undergrad mit is where you got your doctorate as i recall and your undergrad degree is northwestern union northwestern at mit cheney and penn and cornell and harvard so how did the three of you do it if could if if this isn't too personal if you go back to your family you were encouraged by your families you got excellent education when you were a little kid how did it happen for the three of you let's start with you bob well first of all my dad died when i was nine leaving my mother with a fifth grade education and five kids to raise and so there was no encouragement on that she was she was just trying to hold on she was just trying to hold on and my my friends were a year older to me and so they graduated so i dropped out of high school and went into the military the air force and entered the space program and they saw and i got trained and i finished my ged in the service and went to university of miami when i couldn't walk on the campus because of segregation so but they had extension courses on the base but i decided when i looked at how bad blacks are being treated in the south and i said their education is no better than mine if i wanted respect i have to go so from that day on i worked hard graduated got my ged came out and went to a blessed to go to cheney had a loving professor who took these 13 veterans under his wing we went all we we went 12 hours a semester and then we went all summer so we could finish on time and so it was a grind for me um because i had not read a book cover to cover until i went to college and so meant i had to go into the library to make up background reading but then i was able to go thank god they didn't have affirmative action glenn and they sent me right to university of penn but i went to a black college who took me in and then i prepared me to compete at penn and i did very well at the graduate school so you for you it was i was the first person in my family to finish college you spotted it as the way out right of being disrespected that that i saw blacks were being mistreated in the south i saw this i didn't want to be treated like that but i knew that i had to prepare myself if i didn't want to be treated like that so i thought my destiny was in my own hands and so that's why and what's your story with regard to education i came up through public education in chicago in the mid 60s it was not half bad i i got a decent high school education i was a very young father i dropped out of college went back to a community college for a couple of years got discovered by a math teacher there and recommended for a scholarship at northwestern which is what got me to evanston where i finished the last two years of my college education i did very well and had options and i ended up at mit but my inspiration came from my father who was a self-made man very hard-working finished college and law school at night was a certified public accountant ended up with a distinguished career as a manager in the internal revenue service and even though he and my mom broke up pretty early in my own life he was a constant presence in my life and a constant source of encouragement and inspiration and cajoling he wouldn't let me fail wow and ian what's your story i mean with regard to education you were squared away enough by the age of about 18 to head off to cornell how did that happen how did that happen well like with most of us our parents played a huge role my parents were married for 48 years before my father uh passed away and they were from jamaica west indies so they they came to the united states in the mid-1960s during a time of incredible racial turmoil so they had no they were under no false illusion of the challenges that would face and i remember my father always used to say in jamaica i was a man i was a man it wasn't until i came to the united states that i realized that i was a black man wow so it's very profound but even with that he said this is still a place where through strong family strong faith strong education our lives can be better and so i was in new york city public schools k through 12 i went to brooklyn tech high school and uh you know growing up you and you know another thing my parents also they frankly didn't like the way that they said they saw other young black men being raised and and the the kinds of ideas that they felt they were being exposed to so i had a a very sheltered um education k through 12. so of course individual experiences are just that individual experiences but we've got in two cases out of three we've got parents who are playing a crucial role and in the third case it's just personal heroism i don't know any other way to describe this man's life so how is this i still how do you how do we graft you guys what what how do we take a a dna sample and and and spread this how is how is your experience replicable you are looking at me as though i'm asking the dumbest damn no it's not a dumb question it's just a hard question peter right uh i i think we have to live in the 21st century which is where we are right now for my money the kind of work that ian is doing building from the ground schools that can effectively educate young people is one part of the answer to your to your question that's a lever we can put look at seven in ten babies born to a black woman in this country are born to a woman without a husband that's seven in ten when bob woodson was coming along in the 1930s and 1940s that number was 1 in 10. [Music] i don't know you know you can pull on a string and you can un weave a fabric and it will unravel before your eyes pushing on that string is not going to put humpty dumpty back together again we got a hard problem here well my my response is that what i try to do is write down i have a book called this is commercial lessons from the least of these will identify what are the the 10 principles that one can follow to know how to find people like this and how to promote them but also i i think on what i'm inspired about capitalism is that 80 60 of apple's income comes from something that didn't exist eight years ago right so there's ingenuity so i i look for that same spark of entrepreneurship in the social marketplace too so i hope to be able to appoint people through my my my example uh and to look among the people suffering the problem to look for a spark of innovation some system that people can employ that will take uh what seems to be the salvation of a few and expanded to to the many so i i rely in in my trust is in in the invent inventiveness of people can i go back to a point all three of you have made and that tom soul makes repeatedly and that is that for african americans that first century from the end of slavery to the civil rights and it's pretty much an even century the civil war ends in 1865 the big civil rights legislation comes in in 64 and 65. well let me just quote tom saul this is tom writing in 2015 despite the grand myth that black economic progress began with the passage of the civil rights laws the cold fact is that the poverty rate among blacks fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 by 1960 and that was before any of these programs began nearly a hundred years as the supposed legacy of slavery found most black children raised in two parent families almost 80 percent in 1960 but 30 years after the liberal welfare state found the great majority of black children being raised by a single parent two-thirds or so and by 1990 and so this is just staggering there is a century of african-american history growth and prosperity and trust is it is staggering the from slavery to educational attainment climbing out of poverty intact families and nobody and nobody knows about it did you read about it did you read about it in the 16-19 process i did not i would oh we have it in 1776. that's why so can i ask just first why has this century of history been ignored been submerged and it's politically inconvenient to focus on it i mean there's no surprise here this is politics where did we start in 1865 you had four million people who had been enslaved persons suddenly emancipated and made citizens they were largely illiterate they were largely landless some had skills because it was in the slave owners interest to have his property with skills but most did not so the the saga of african-american history and post-emancipation is largely a saga of victory over the conditions in which they were left at the uh the the onset of their liberation and and i maintained that properly understood it is one of the great epics in all of american history it really is of course it is but there's there is a a dynamic of this that is in order to qualify um to have the civil rights law applied to blacks because originally civil rights laws have nothing to do with blacks when the federal government intervening in the state it was because of the slaughterhouse cases in louisiana where the government came in because they were afraid of of destroying the food supply right so but the black leadership concluded in order to get them to qualify we have to demonstrate that segregation is harmful to us and so we ceased publishing the black colleges used to publish journals highlighting the success of businesses so we had to demonstrate to the to the government that we were harmed by it and so therefore we ceased publishing journals about our success so that was one in unintended consequence of winning civil rights laws so it's that was i'm you see i kind of hold you responsible how's that because you're a pro full professor a chaired professor at a fancy pants university and it should be the duty one of the first duties of fancy pants universities like brown to instruct every kid not just black kids every kid in that epic of that century of progress shouldn't it shouldn't that be how can we expect african americans or americans of any color to understand the true history of this nation and the true that those income gaps don't need to be there right that they didn't used to be there and that is a there is no fact about american existence more important than the facts of that century of achievement am i not am i not making are you preaching to the choir if you're asking me and i do try to give this message in my in my courses but i'm not the only guy and there is a counter narrative and that narrative wants to focus for example on the wealth gap it wants to nurse and nourish a sense of grievance and victimization um it points to um the history of in the very undeniable history of racism and discrimination which extended well beyond the end of the civil war it points to that and it builds the story the story that you see in the 1619 project a story that i think had merit in 1950 but a story that i think is an anachronism in 2022. it's also perverse incentives we've spent 22 trillion in the last 60 years but 70 cents of it goes not to the poor but those who serve the poor so we've created a commodity out of poor people and a lot of black professionals are in the sector that is delivering those services right as tom sowell said these the anti-poverty programs definitely do eliminate poverty among the bureaucrats yes so so what do you make of this this submerged or forgotten century of progress well nicole hannah jones the primary author of the 1619 project wrote an 8 000 word essay in a follow-up in the new york times magazine and it's called what we are owed and in this essay she waxes eloquently and even says there is nothing a black person can do it doesn't matter if you get married doesn't matter if you get college educated doesn't matter if you buy a home doesn't matter if you save none of those things quote can overcome 400 years of racialized plundering end quote so she completely ignores the fact that a in her own life she's done all of those things to lead a life of prosperity but she ignores that full 100 year not only the 100 year history but contemporary because when you do look at the racial wealth gap yes there is a gap based on 2019 data of about a hundred sixty thousand dollars the median wealth of the average white family is about a hundred sixty thousand dollars more than the median wealth of the average black family but take into account just two other factors family structure and education the median wealth of the average married college educated black family is about 160 000 more than the median wealth of an average single-parent white family so perhaps there are factors beyond just race that if we were being honest in this conversation we could collectively tackle and come up with solutions but to glenn's point if the narrative for which you obtain and maintain power is based on this idea of a victimized community then you have a perverse incentive to ignore all of this and just say that america is inherently racist and oppressive okay we're now we're talking about politics and incentives and using the fine the three of you say get an education get married and stay married work hard and there's a political party in this country that for all its flaws fundamentally believes all three of those things now listen to this the proportion of african americans who voted for richard nixon in 1960 32 percent the proportion who voted for donald trump eight percent the first time around 18. and then what i show here is 12 percent the second time in other words even donald trump who drives all kinds of people crazy but he made a concerted effort to reach out to the african-american community there's a marvel i thought it was strike i shouldn't say marvelous but striking moment during the first presidential campaign when he visits a church in harlem and he says what have you got to lose what have you got to lose yes so we still have african-americans voting pretty monolithically for the party of what do we call it victimization well all the things that the three of you have said do african-americans harm how can this be glenn well the democrats sold the bill of goods to the black community that um they were the party of civil rights and that the expanding welfare state was going to take care of everybody and the republicans haven't done such a good job at disabusing people of that idea i'm not a political operative here i'm not sure about all the mechanics of how to win votes but i think that uh there are two things going on one of them has to do with the effectiveness of the democrats um i almost said demagoguery around racial issues i mean what does joe biden say they're going to put you all back in chains you know he says if you want to have a voter id shown before you cast a ballot in georgia that's jim crow 2.0 although all this is about making black people afraid that racists are going to come in the middle of the night and carry us out but the republicans haven't done such a good job we'll see what happens in the coming cycles of framing their approach and asking for the votes of african americans in a way that disabuses us of this view that only the democrats can can lead us to the promised land republicans got there the old-fashioned way they earned it the achilles heel has been race and poverty bill bennett said that when liberals see poor people and black people they see a sea of victims and republicans see aliens and and but what they have done their messaging has been horrible but the republicans yeah but when you look at dick riordan who became the first republican mayor of los angeles in 35 years it's because he understood that you have to plant charitably and then you can harvest politically he went into east l.a two years before he declared and talked to the local people and helped and built an institution there and then when he declared he received the support of people same with steve goldsmith in indianapolis who planted charitably but also look looked uh uh directed the privatization of public services and contracted with churches so that people so he transferred wealth and whatnot and he got the reward desantis was elected by 32 000 votes a hundred thousand blacks voted for him even though they brought in yeah school choice even though he brought in oprah and obama so black america in the 2018 gubernatorial race wait a minute so let's just repeat that ron desantis got elected governor of florida by a very narrow margin he was running against a black man andrew gillum yes and andrew gillum brought in barack obama and oprah winfrey and the okay it's even bigger than barack obama and a hundred thousand blacks voted against oprah and obama and obama and andrew and voted for desantis because of school choice and that's not a so let me so so what about your parents your parents in the bronx understand that the democrats are in work closely together with the teachers union and the teachers union does not wish you well so in our schools we had about 2 000 students almost all low-income almost all black and hispanic we had nearly 5 000 families on our wait list if i were to venture a guess of that total 7 000 i'd say or some families so maybe 10 000 or more adults or more i'd say 90 percent were democrats and voted democrat in new york city but you take away the power to choose a great school for their child in a district in which only two percent of kids historically were graduating from high school ready for college that's what i find interesting about this discussion there is this disconnect between a voting pattern and actually the issues that really resonate with the very people that we're talking about so it's not surprising that what you see in florida was this huge realization like wait a minute that guy actually doesn't stand for what really matters to me and for most low-income folks of any race that has to do with the quality of education for your child and if there were smart people in the conservative republican movement they would they'd recognize they'd be going into black neighborhoods and saying look i'm going to give your kids a chance exactly it's as simple as that what have you got to lose what have you got to lose well really what have you got to gain everything which is the ability to send your school send your child to the school of choice okay couple last questions let me give you two quotations here's frederick douglass in 1865. everybody has asked the question what shall we do with the negro 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 all i ask is give the negro a chance to stand on his own legs and let him alone that's true president barack obama in 2014 because of the civil rights movement because of the laws president johnson signed new doors of opportunity and education swung open for everybody not all at once but they swung open it's perhaps easy to conclude that there are limits to change and we'd be better off if we roll back big chunks of lbj's legacy or at least if we don't put too much of our hope in our government i reject such thinking close quote bob who are you with barack obama or frederick douglass ed victor that's an easy one and i think booker t washington said there are classes of negroes who profit and benefit from our grievance if we lose our grievance they lose their income [Music] but isn't frederick douglass that's just too stark leave the negro alone it sounds hard these these guys are talking at completely different times douglas in the late 18th 19th century in the late 1800s and obama in the 21st century uh there's something called the welfare state it's contentious this quite independently of race saying food stamps are a good thing he's saying medicaid is a good thing he's saying aid to families who don't have enough money to put a roofer ahead and feed their kids is a good thing so frederick douglass wasn't confronted with that question now i'm not saying that obama was right in every respect what i'm saying is that there are two different things going on what does the negro need to do black people i speak in the right old language uh to stand up straight with our shoulders back raise our children and get ahead in life that's one question another question related but distinct is how will we americans organize our social compact with one another i'm talking about health care etc so it's to create a decent society on which democrats and republicans have different ideas and the one thing i'd say i would definitely lean to the frederick douglass quote but again to glenn's point context matters because when he says leave us alone at that time he could rely on the fact that black communities had strong families strong married to parent households he could rely on the fact that of the the church the faith commitment so when he was saying leave us alone i presume he was also saying we have the institutional support that allows us to lead a self-determined life so the reason it sounds harsh today is someone who runs schools i wouldn't say to a kid just leave us alone because i can't count on all of the important mediating institutions which are so crucial for a young person's development so i would make a slight amendment to revitalize the family faith-based organizations educational school choice which then based on those supports leave us alone once we've got those once you've got that yes all right last question here imagine two students one white and one black let's let's say they're college kids they're that age 18 to early 20s and um they're both in a college that responded to the blm movement last year the way that all the colleges responded with listening sessions new committees to examine institutionalized racism on and on and on you know the whole scene and both students they're kids they're idealistic they want to help they want to know what they can do what do you tell the white kid wait what they can do to accomplish help to help the let's put it this way to help eliminate those gaps let's just keep let's just make it quite diff definite those gaps with which we began educational gaps in in the disparity the disparities disparities in education disparities in income broadly speaking to improve the life of that segment of african americans who seem in all kinds of ways to have been left behind so what do you tell them do you tell them the same thing do you say a different thing to the white kid and the black kid how do you answer that question well i certainly wouldn't want to create the impression that the black kid is dependent upon the white kid benevolence to suddenly transform his or her situation i'd much more focus on the black student and talk about the tools that he has within his quiver to be successful and not feel in a sense that he's dependent on whatever it is that white student chooses to do because by the way that white student could be failing and needing to focus on his studies and this black student could be quite exceptional and so i wouldn't even make the assumption that it's this black student who's the one in need of some kind of assistance and i again i think these narratives are the things that sometimes get in the way of our ability to identify the assets that each person has the last quote the the the tokville when he was observing america he wrote the greatness of america lies not in that it's more enlightened than any other nation but in its ability to repair her faults and the reason i love that it talks about this sense of self-betterment and self-development that exists within our country that i want to ensure every young person knows that they have those same tools of self-betterment and self-development you know what let me adjust the question ian just did such a beautiful job of answering the question i asked and answering the question i didn't ask but that i'm about to ask nicole hannah jones in the 1619 project says in effect to kids if you grasp nothing else about this country grasp that the united states of america was conceived in racism what do you say if you grasp nothing else about the united states of america to a kid in a sentence or two what must you grasp that was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal that it is um a great nation that it is the most powerful force for human liberty in the history of the world i mean what is the united states actually i mean we could go into the details of course there was slavery but there was also emancipation etc we defeated fascism on two oceans in the middle of the 20th century we stood down a nuclear-armed soviet union on behalf of a free world we have the greatest engine for prosperity in the history of humankind anything is possible in this country that's why people vote with their feet to come here from every corner of the world the world is moving fast i'd say to nicole hannah jones and anybody else who's listening you can have your head in the 19th century if you want to but the chinese are coming bob woodson what would you say to a kid about this country i would say that when you look back about how blacks have fought in every war to protect this country and not a single one has been guilty of treason it's because we believe as glenn said in the virtues and promise of this country and how can you expect a person to go and risk their lives to defend this country if you say that the country of your origin is racist and therefore hostile to your future but again what i said before that young people are motivated to improve themselves when you show them victories that are possible when you relate to him to all of the victories of of the people in the black community who built hospitals and in in colleges and hotels i would just show them what we were able to do in by embracing the principles of our founders glenn lowry bob woodson ian rowe thank you thank you from the old parkland conference in dallas on behalf of uncommon knowledge the hoover institution and fox nation i'm peter robinson [Music] you

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 273,417

Keywords: Uncommon Knowledge, Peter Robinson, Hoover Institution, Glenn Loury, Ian Rowe, Robert Woodson, Black, America, African-American, Race, Black Experience in America

Id: hIiyIEyUxu8

Length: 58min 52sec (3532 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 25 2022