Jason Riley On “False Black Power?”

[Music] welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson Jason Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute a columnist for The Wall Street Journal and a commentator for Fox News born in Buffalo New York mr. Riley earned a bachelor's degree in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo mr. Riley is the author of several books including please stop helping us how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed and his most recent volume which we'll be discussing today false black power Jason welcome thank you for having me I want to get to the argument in false black power but let's start with your conclusion what is false black power and what is true black power a false black power is political power political clout true black power is human capital something that can't be taken away from an individual or a group by human capital all I'm referring to it's a it's a term that economists use but it's essentially it refers to culture cultural traits habits behaviors attitudes that allow a group to produce economic value in what they're doing and that human capital I argue is much more important than having political capital when it comes to advancing a group socio-economic way all right the argument in false black power your point of departure goes back more than half a century to the Moynihan report of 1965 written by then Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan later became a longtime senator from New York the formal title of the report the Negro family the case for national action Moynihan noted the rise among black families in inner cities of families headed by single women and wrote the Negro family in urban ghettos is crumbling why did Matt Moynihan believe that the families were crumbling what the cause he associated with that welcome the well this this had grown out of the black migration out of out of the south which was very hard on families frankly other what I just wanted to brief book readable and I picked it up thinking here we have a polemic we have an argument it's it is that but it is that it is deeply concerned with history with african-american history alright so and it is because it's it's concerned with an aspect of black history that I don't think gets a lot of attention people sort of think we went from slavery to Rosa Parks refusing to sit down on a bus or go to the back of a bus and and and then the civil rights movement took us to where we are today but I think we're missing a lot of material here and that is the period in between the end of slavery in the beginning of the the modern-day civil rights movement and the advancement that was going on within the black community frankly at a time when the federal government was could care less what was going on there had there was no civil rights act there was no Voting Rights Act yet this was during Jim Crow this is post reconstruction and I think that this period of black history is underappreciated what was going on at that time how were blacks advancing or not advancing at that time period and I think when we talk about what should be done today to help last right we should look at this period and study this period what was going on and that and that's so my hand misses it doesn't he well what would Han found was actually common knowledge among a lot of black scholars there wasn't a lot of originality to what Moynihan was saying the originality was that Moynihan was saying if the government was saying it but he relied on a lot of black sociologists at the time who had reached a similar conclusion people at a Franklin Frazier and there were this was this this this observation about what was going on breakdown Latin America family the breakdown America was something that others had been observing what was new was that it was in a government report put out by by the lab right all right and next up in your argument is a book a 1976 book by the way this makes you argument that I had not even heard of this book 1976 book the black family in slavery and freedom by Herbert Gottman a professor at the City College of New York and Guttman wrote if enslavement caused the widespread development among African Americans of the fatherless mattre focal family that is to say the rise of families headed by single women where the fathers were absent and Moynihan in one way or another suggested this was a result of slavery if enslavement caused it then such a condition should have been even more common among urban Afro Americans closer to the time of slavery and Guttman said that's not what the evidence shows did the evidence show so Guttman was critiquing the Moynihan report right he didn't like the fact that Moynihan had attributed the breakdown of the black family to slavery he said wait a minute I agree with you that we've had this breakdown but can we attribute it to slavery let's look at what was going on the black family both during slavery and in the years immediately following slavery and if you look at say census data going back to the late 1800s all the way through the 1940s rates of black marriages exceeded rates of white marriages during this entire period in every census from 1890 to 1940 black marriage rates are higher than white marriage rates so if if slavery is the cause of a black family breakdown that we see in the 60s and 70s and 80s wait a minute did it skip a few generations this legacy of slavery skip a few generations and then reassert itself or is something else responsible for this breakdown and Guttman was it wasn't was very liberal I mean I I think he self-identified as a Marxist actually so he didn't have a he was an honest person he was an honest intellectual right and he said let's look at the evidence here and not make assumptions and what's what's incredible is today we continue to make these assumptions about how to explain the social breakdown we see in the black community today we automatically ascribe it to the legacy of slavery or the legacy of Jim Crow when in fact there are many many other factors that we should be considering false black power I'm quoting you during slavery its immediate aftermath and on through the first quarter of the 20th century so we've got about almost eight decades there that you're covering here the vast majority of black children were raised in two-parent households black marriages were as long-lasting and stable as the marriages of economically comparable whites and the black female headed homes that did exist tended to be like their white counterparts comprised of older widows not teenagers raising children alone because the history and this is one of your principal points here the history has been so forcibly submerged I read that and thought is Jason right can that possibly be so yeah it's it's it's not the narrative that you see coming out of the left or the traditional civil rights groups who of course have their their their own agenda and that that's the reason they push the narrative that they do but know the facts the facts are the facts Peter you find that when you speak at colleges and university I know you do a lot of that of course you're on Fox News and other shows do people write you and say that can't be so do you do there is later amount of disbelief yeah that that how can this be true this doesn't seem right it's somewhat counterintuitive but yes I do I do get that and again it's because we have accepted this narrative that what we see today in black in America is a result of the legacy of slavery in Jim Crow and what I argue in the book is that what we see today is the legacy of the Great Society so the legacy of 60s programs that were well-intentioned trying to help low-income blacks in particular but had unintended consequences and today we see the consequences that those policies engendered and that's welcoming at the Barack Obama false black power Obama's election was the culmination of a civil rights strategy that prioritized political power to advance blacks and eight years later we once again learned the limitations of that strategy let's take both of those assertions the culmination of a civil rights strategy right explain that well prior to the 1960s I think that the black leadership in this country had been focused on developing that human capital that I talked about earlier on Washington is Booker T Washington Frederick Douglas all through the 20s 30s and 40s blacks were focused on becoming more literate educating themselves Frederick Douglass gave a famous speech in which he said essentially stop helping us didn't he well I mean that's so the government government wasn't gonna come save blacks and they understood that and so they said about the hard work of improving themselves and tremendous progress was being made if you look at what was going on in black America prior to the 1960s in terms of black education advancement blacks entering the skilled professions black homeownership rates black-white income gaps for shrinking even in the criminal justice system Peter in the 1940s the black homicide rate fell by something like 18% in the 1950s it fell by another 20% so here you had these black white gaps in the criminal justice after that we see today's after the migration to to the northern since oh there's right and that's an interesting point because you would have expected to find the opposite because urban communities tend to be more violent than rural communities yes so you have this huge influx of people from urban communities to rural South urban communities and yet you see a decline in violent crime among this group incredible incredible but again but my point was that the advancements that blacks were making prior to the modern-day civil rights movement is something we seldom study or discuss or take into account in any length and I think this is a period of time that deserves a lot more study what were blacks doing to to narrow gaps that were narrowing at this time and have since either stalled slowed or in some senses reversed course and started to widen and again and my point is that blacks were focused on developing that human capital and they were doing in the end they were doing that then we get the 1960s and the shift calm there's a shift to acquiring political capital integrating political institutions the Voting Rights Act comes along and it was a tremendous success you had voter registration rates in 1964 in the south places like Georgia Alabama single digits black voter registration rates a year after the Civil Rights Act they're up to the 50% 60% I mean it was a tremendous success right it worked and then the leadership the black leadership in particular turned to focus on electing more black officials and the thinking was if we could elect more black officials the rest will take care of itself black socio-economic advancement will flow naturally from black political clout we just need to get more of our kind into office and the rest will take care of itself we need our share of political political power and this strategy too has been a success on its own terms in other words black political office holders have proliferated in this country between 1970 and 2010 they went from fewer than 1,500 to more than 10,000 including black mayors black governors black congressmen black school superintendents black police chiefs and fire chiefs blacks and and in large cities with large black populations Philadelphia Cleveland Chicago Los Angeles New York Atlanta so blacks gained a tremendous amount of political clout this strategy the problem is that the rest didn't happen the way it was supposed to in other words if you look at what happened in Marion Barry is Washington DC or Sharpe James's Newark or Coleman Young's Detroit the black poor became more impoverished on their watch I'm in Blackley under black leadership which is not to say that there's a causal link here that because there were black mayors we didn't see black advancement because this black advancement didn't occur under white mayors and white governors in white congressmen - so I'm not making but when a minimum the hope was for us I hope the hope and and and and and and I think that the idea that black political clout would lead to more black economic advancement was misplaced and and the reason we should have known this and this gets into the work of Thomas Sol someone you've interviewed many times who has made this point repeatedly in his scholarship which is that if you look at other groups political advancement is not the route that they took to economic advancement typically the reversed happened a group advanced economically first right and then got involved in politics later that's the root of everything from Jewish Americans to Italians one exception to that rule is the Irish yes who were politically extremely successful you had political Irish political machines running cities like Philadelphia and Boston but there was no Irish middle class to speak of in fact it wasn't until the decline of those political machines that we saw the rise of an Irish middle class and and so if you look at the history of other groups not only in the US but in other countries there was no need there was no reason to expect that simply putting blacks in office was gonna lead to socio-economic advancement for blacks Jason Barack Obama two to two data points here one is obvious a country this is a country in which African Americans make up just 13% of the population the country elected a black man and then it really at him faults black power here's the second point the Obama administration's racial politics almost certainly harmed racial discourse by 2016 polls showed race relations had reached their lowest point in nearly a quarter of a century huge achievement almost everyone would argue I think to elect a black man President of the United States and eight years later somehow Jason contends race relations are worse not better what happened well President Obama is a politician first and foremost and he is a liberal politician who ascribes to identity politics like many others in his party do and protect the fact has probably been worse today than it was when when he was in office this adherence to identity politics and that is appealing to various voting blocs telling them to vote for politicians who look like them who share their racial or ethnic background that that is a priority when it comes to who you should choose to represent you politically appealing to blacks as blacks women as women gay people as gay people not appealing to them as Americans with a common interest that is identity politics and that is something that President Obama practiced and it is a very divisive strategy it helps you get out your base it may help you scare people to the polls rile up voters that you need to support you but at the end of the day you end up with a very polarized electorate and that is what President Obama practiced for eight years using his Justice Department to investigate police shootings all over the country sending his Attorney General Eric Holder out to accuse Republicans of suppressing black voters trying to disenfranchise them pushing for affirmative action programs racial preferences and so forth these are very racially divisive things to do when you're present and to use your platform as president to advance these sorts of things and the result I think was a very divided racially divided electorate Donald Trump you quote in false black power you quote your friend Shelby Steele Hoover fellow here at the at Stanford Shelby Steele rights and you quote perhaps the Obama presidency was the culmination of the age of white guilt our new conservative president that is Trump rolls his eyes when he's called a racist and we all know that he isn't one the jig is up close quote white guilt tell us tell us why you quote that white guilt means what why did it peak under Obama why does Shelby Steele argue that maybe it's it's evaporating disappearing under Trump well I think a lot of white Americans thought that voting for a black president would get this country over a hump and they reelected him because they weren't done congratulating themselves for electing the first black president what oh wait but you just said something really fun it's be witty but that's not in other words to make this record too many white voters at the election and then the reelection was about white people was about themselves right and what Obama symbolized Obama was a symbol you weren't you weren't voting for the man himself necessarily and again we don't hesitate to paint with too broad a brush here but I think many white Americans saw this as saw him as a symbol of progress and and thought we could we could we could achieve some sort of post-racial America which is which is the idea what they were missing is that and this gets back to the identity politics that the Left practices liberals have no interest in a post-racial Society they may claim that they long for one but but when you want racially gerrymandered voting districts you don't want a post-racial Society when you want racial preferences in higher education you don't want a post-racial Society when you name your group black lives matter you are not practicing post-racialism the left has no interest in being post-racial and and and even though they regularly claim that they do and I think that's what a lot of people have missed here if you're a progressive if you're a liberal you want to keep race front and center in our national debates oh whether it's relevant to the discussion or not you want to keep it front and center because you think it works for you politically all right two facts sets one from from false black power I'm quoting you Obama oversaw by far the slowest recovery since World War two six years after the recession officially ended the jobless rate for blacks was still above 9% and the jobless rate for black teens surpassed 31 percent yet Obama's share of the black vote was 95 percent in 2008 and 93 percent four years later that's number one here's number two in 2016 Donald Trump received eight percent of the african-american vote the Trump economy is now booming and black unemployment has fallen to the lowest levels ever recorded with the result that Donald Trump's support has soared among blacks from the eight percent who voted for him to the nine percent who now give him positive approval ratings Obama didn't help and received overwhelming support Trump I think what what you would argue is Trump got out of the way of the economy and look who disproportionately benefited African Americans and the support for him riemann remains nugatory you know blacks need economic growth more than they need my present is the lesson here though of course the left but only 9% will know it well there's a lot of history here Peter and it starts with the history or the modern day history of the Republican Party and black Americans blacks typically vote for Democrats and very large majorities and they've been doing so for decades I think partly this has to do with the history of the Republican Party particularly in the post-civil rights era and I should really to clarify that the history of conservatives I should say in the where conservatives were during the civil rights movement and and particularly and where Southern Democrats were the ones that became the Dixiecrats so I think there's a history so you hear Republican parties base shifting from the Northeast down to the south is that the history what what what is the history that the Conservatives that opposed integration oh I see this but where the conservative movement was during the 1950's in 1960s when it came to the issue of integration an ending Jim Crow in the civil rights movement of the 1950s led by Martin Luther King but wouldn't the Democratic southern barrens had far more direct result on keeping Japan prolonging Jim Crow as far long as they possibly could I'm just trying so Barry Goldwater opposed civil rights acts on constitutional grounds never though you do have the history of a higher percentage of Republicans voted for it for civil rights act then Democrats at the time and that was largely a regional right depending on what part of the country you represented it less so then then party but the I'm talking about your sort of John Birch conservative okay and and that that history and I and I think that there are a lot of black Americans today of a certain age who remember that history and are probably simply lost to the Republican Party as a result so I think that's one that's one factor here so there's something historical and simply generation generation well yeah something generational the other issue I think has to do with the lack of outreach among Republicans to the black community Republican politicians typically write off this vote they figure they don't need it to win and time spent seeking voters you're less likely to get means less time seeking voters you're more likely to get so you don't see a lot of Republicans and black communities visiting barber shops and community centers you don't see them advertising on black radio stations ordering black television shows and so forth and and that's reflected in blacks not turning out to vote for Republicans so you have that that history also explains those numbers that that you see there I thought Donald Trump had something going for him that a lot of Republicans did not and that was that he was this public public figure prior to being a politician who was quite popular within the black community particularly his television show The Apprentice had a huge black viewership and I thought that there was an opportunity there for Donald Trump to go into these communities speak to these folks and say you know I'm a businessman I'm a developer I can tell you why these Lots are empty I can tell you where these jobs have gone I can tell you why those prices are so expensive at that vote bodega down the street instead of at the grocery store out in the suburbs vote for me and I and I can begin to fix these that there's the situation for you and he'd have some credibility with these folks a couple things went wrong there one I think was his Bertha ISM that turned off lots of blacks and who will never forgive his efforts to delegitimize illegitimate yes yes the first black president on those grounds and secondly once Donald Trump became a politician he did the same math that other Republican politicians did which is do I need this can I win without this vote and how much time should I spend seeking this vote if I don't really need it so that's the there's a paradox that occurred to me as I was reading false black power where you write understandably so that African Americans have succeeded politically President of the United States and African American but there's an odd way in which by granting such overwhelming support to one party they've placed themselves outside the usual competition between parties for votes exactly so Democratic politicians have very little incentive to do anything other than take African Americans for granted they will get that vote there's on the margin there's a question about whether they can drive up the percentage of people blacks voting but they'll have the vote and Republicans by contrast have no incentive to do anything other than write them off they're out they've by somehow or other they've they're not making self they're not taking advantage of the two-party system the other thing the other phenomenon you see are more extremist politicians in other words the Congressional Black Caucus is among the most liberal as the most liberal voting record of in Congress so the blacks that do get elected have no reason to make any appeals to the other side so you're you're not only giving all your votes to Democrats you're giving your all your votes are the most liberal Democrats and and it's funny because it has come back to haunt I think black politicians who want to seek higher office and then need to appeal to not just winning a congressional district but winning the whole state and it makes it more difficult to make that that transition and now we're seeing a phenomenon where black politicians who had successfully done this risen as moderates now find themselves in a much more progressive Democratic Party Cory Booker's than inaudible Harris Harris Cory Booker the Cory Booker that ran Newark New Jersey is not the Cory Booker run for president the Kamala Harris who was a prosecutor out in California for many years before she became a senator is not the common law Harris running for president now they're crowded into this progressive Lane of the Democratic Party trying to be more extremists than their previous political careers would suggest that they really are what is to be done the Atlantic's Donaghy C coats the United States owes black Americans reparation payments quote American prosperity was ill-gotten and selective in its distribution what is needed is an airing of family secrets a settling with old ghosts what is needed is a healing of the American psyche and the banishment of white guilt reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness Jason I think the best response to reparations to the reparations argument that I've ever come across came from Shelby Steele where he said that slavery can be endured and overcome it cannot be repaid and I agree with that I'd also add that Coates does a brilliant job of explaining why so many previous programs to help blacks have not worked in his Atlantic article that kind of a lot of attention he goes through various Great Society programs one after another that were advanced expanded resources report bureaucracies were expanded to help blacks and that the results has been negligible and sometimes in some cases blacks are worse off and then at the end of this piece he calls for yet another wealth redistribution program in the form of reparations and my question is why would this one be any more successful than all the ones you've just explained to me haven't worked in the past I have I I don't I have I don't follow the lot I have a ninja because the late Charles Krauthammer late the late Charles Krauthammer suggested reparations if they're part do you remember this part of what he called a grand compromise I'm quoting Charles Krauthammer this is this goes back eight years I believe reparations would be paid he suggested fifty thousand dollars for family of four he actually named numbers we then end the affirmative action experiment that has been disastrous for african-americans and for America as a whole and we return to the original vision of Martin Luther King jr. color blindness fine reparations and that's it after that colorblindness no more affirmative action no more special identity programs would you buy that if that no could be struck I don't know I wouldn't buy and I don't think most Americans would buy you when you talk about reparations in the 21st century you're talking about people who never owned slaves paying reparations to people who were never slaves who's going to be before that so this great act of justice is unjust it's crazy all right we can't go back and fix this we have to move forward I think that there's an argument for ending affirmative action on their own on its own merits I think it's it's it's it's it's harming it's not just ineffective it's actually doing great harm in the name of helping blacks so I think there's a there's a case to be made for doing that but no I don't think that that that that that reparations are politically feasible nor would they in practice be any more effective at helping the black poor than all the other previous wealth redistribution schemes that have been put forward over the past half so here's Jason Reilly's program false black power in quoting after emancipation blacks set out about set out acquiring the values habits and skills necessary to thrive in a capitalist system the gains were steady and undeniable if blacks want to begin replenishing that human capital true power they shouldn't look to politicians they should look to their own past right you know explain that well the problem with looking to politicians is that the politicians have their own agenda and it's not always going to be the agenda that the black poor in this case need in particular and I'll give you an example with with President Obama take education as you know school choice is tremendously popular in the black community particularly among low-income blacks there for charters there for vouchers at much higher rates than whites Obama becomes present United States and spends eight years trying to shut down a school voucher program in his own backyard in Washington DC that was started by his predecessor George W Bush why why the first black president in could enhance this program that he knows poll after poll shows is popular in the black community the reasons that Barack Obama is no longer simply another black person he's now a black president he has a special interest that are are nipping at his heels he wants to be reelected he has to indulge these special interests one of whom are teachers unions who oppose school choice because many of these schools aren't unionized and don't use union labor so Obama has a choice am I going to side with my political benefactors or am I going to side with this black constituency that helped put me in office he made his choice he sided with the teachers unions and that's what you're going to see because politicians want to get reelected and and and win and win their interests part ways with those of the people they claim to represent they're gonna put their own interests first because that's what that's what politicians do and that is the problem for low-income blacks looking to politicians to be their Savior it's it's not going to happen what what we want are for blacks to be in a position to thrive no matter who's in office and and and and and that's where other groups in America are and and and they weren't always there but but they are today one of the flipside of this if you hopeful are you hopeful by the way one of the statistics that I just so discouraging when Moynihan when the Moynihan report came out in 1965 he treated as alarming red flags and out of wedlock birth rate of 25% that rate is now over 70% by the way I should note that among all groups it's gone above white Americans it's over 30% now but Wow how do you how do you put a family how do you put the family back together how do you how do you or is the idea that if you get if you how do you do it do you have to destroy that you have to undo unravel the Great Society programs in order to permit ordinary human flourishing to begin taking place again those programs that have in place perverse incentives yes you do need to get rid of them you-you-you can't replace a father in the home with a check it just doesn't it doesn't work the government's not very good at raising children there they're not very they're not very good at it so yes the right incentives do need to be in place I'm not in favor of eliminating the safety net but it should be temporary and in many cases for too many people in this in this country it's become generational the safety net so um but but yes it as I say with the title please stop helping us in the previous but it's not really a matter of what we need the government to start doing this work needs them to stop doing I don't think there's a there's a there's a silver bullet government program out there that can fix all this what we need the government to do is to get out of the way so that this self development can take place human s relations are as strong in the black community as anywhere else your government stopped supporting them sure sure sure but we will follow that's the argument yes when we talk about the honesty of culture that's what we mean but it's also important to add that culture isn't static so just because one culture today may be more successful than other cultures doesn't mean that will always be the case and again even if you don't like comparisons between blacks and immigrants and many don't because many blacks have a different a different backgrounds your coming here as a slave is different from sailing over here voluntarily but look at if you don't like those comparisons then let's compare blacks today the attitudes and black communities today with the attitudes and black communities of a previous era and and there you see stark stark differences there was no acting white criticism that that kids threw at one another generations ago the way they do today it wasn't considered shameful to to be smart to raise your hand in class to know the answer to be bookish those weren't sneers in the 1920s and 30s and 40s the way they have become today those are cultural attitude changes that have happened in this country among blacks over the past 50 years they've shifted one way now and there's no reason they can't shift back but what we do need is for our leading thinkers today and our politicians and our policy makers to stop making excuses for antisocial behavior that they see today Jason which is what too often too often happens a few final questions here so much of what you've been saying just now and again so much of false black power is a history book and you assert again and again and again there are about eight decades of african-american history by the way we're taping this in Black History Month there are about eight decades from emancipation at the end of the Civil War during the Civil War if you wanted data from the Emancipation Proclamation to the passage of the Great Society in the mid sixties actually that's a century so there's nearly a century of African American history that has simply been forgotten or you might even argue oppressed and I have to say I'm aware of it only because I read it in three places the works of Thomas Sol Shelby Steele and Jason Riley full stop are you so so we've got these competing narratives one says african-americans are where they are because of the legacy of slavery and the other says no you're missing a century of progress that stopped and in some case was was reversed do you see any signs that among let's let's say African American Millennials the rising generation have a greater awareness of the history that you and Tom soul and Shelby Steele light about now III don't I don't see it in fact III when I look at the success of groups like black lives matter and gaining the public's imagination capturing the public's imagination I'm very pessimistic about this I I believe that groups like that or that type of thinking is ascendant in the country right now this the whole social justice movement makes me very pessimistic that this history will start being considered any any time soon I would argue a few more people are right what you're saying but you also have understands in the Academy as well you'd think there are doctoral dissertations this trove of material which has gone unexplored you're right and going back to Moynihan the the reaction the vitriol that he faced after that report scared off a lot of academics and sociologists to studying black culture so since 1965 the subject has been froze it's it's it's it's been it's been it's it's taboo to go there that I think has changed in some sense I've read articles by prominent black sociologists like Orlando Patterson and William Julius Wilson who have said this is this is ridiculous the idea that we can't discuss black cultural pathology when we're talking about racial the idea that we have to pretend that these two things have nothing to do with one another is ridiculous and we have to start talking about that that is not yet the mainstream view but it is I am there's some sense that that among some black intellectuals there's a understanding that we can't go on ignoring anti-social behavior and the role it plays in inequality in this country Jason you talked about the black lives matter the current movements let me ask you about is related movement renaming Calhoun college at Yale taking down Confederate monuments removing statues of robert e lee things that would be concerning the black leadership these would be at the bottom at the very bottom i I just the that that is not what low-income blacks need they need school choice and you have the n-double-a-cp coming out against charter schools and in condemning Calhoun statues I mean there's the disconnect between the priorities of the black leadership and the needs of the black underclass could not be further apart than it is one is symbolic political talk and that's what's happening and the other is serious because these it's it's because the groups like black lives matter now control the narrative of what drives inequality in this country and when you control the narrative it's as if the facts don't don't really matter and and and and and so anecdotes replace data empirical evidence logic reasoning on social media a video goes viral and so this is representative of what is going on in the country because CNN plays it in loop over and over again and other networks pick it up they control the narrative and and it's it's unfortunate but that's that's where we are today Jason last question you've got one book here please stop helping us how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed now your most recent book false black power you are a working journalist who has insistently almost defiantly identified yourself with what is very much a dissenting or contrarian point of view and if you spend a few moments looking at comments on these books on Amazon or googling around mmm whenever Jason Riley right devotes his column in The Wall Street Journal to matters of race and economic advancement you get beat up and so this is a pretty simple question you've just said your pessimism to have attached your career to a lost cause no keeps you feel better about you Jason about your prospects here Thomas all once wrote that there are some books you write for the pure joy of it and and there are other books you write because there are things that that need to be said and and and and other people have better sense than to say them out loud at least III think that these things need to be said people in the past have said them I'm able to say them today people like Thomas Wall and Shelby Steele and Walter Williams have paved the way for another generation of people they've laid the groundwork they've done the research and they're still right and they're still right their arguments are still correct and and this needs to it needs to get out there people need to know that there is an alternative to the narrative pushed by the civil rights old-guard liberals and progressives what so not only what blacks are going through today but how blacks have fared in the past and because of their own self-interest whether it's a an N double ACP who wants to stay relevant or or a Barack Obama who wants to get elected they have a very selective view of which histories they're going to discuss but you need honest thinkers out there giving people the full scope of black history which is more than a history of what whites have have done to Black's that that's not the the some of black history in this country but you might think it is listening to some on the left discuss discuss our past so no I I think that I'm providing something of a public service in continuing to write about these things from a different different perspective because there's there's more than one way to tell this story Jason Riley author of please stop helping us and false black power thank you thank you for uncommon knowledge and the Hoover Institution I'm Peter Robinson [Music] you

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 512,132

Rating: 4.8879137 out of 5

Keywords: Jason Riley, false black power, identity politics, welfare, Great Society, United States, economics, politics, race relations, black community, Obama, nuclear family

Id: bi2hqL5KkHc

Length: 48min 1sec (2881 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 18 2019