The War on Poverty A Report Card - Jason Riley

and now for tonight's speaker Jason Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist for The Wall Street Journal where he has worked for more than 20 years writing opinion pieces on politics economics education government race and many other subjects he's also a commentator for Fox News where he has appeared for more than a decade and a frequent public speaker after joining the journal in 1994 he was named a senior editorial page writer in 2000 and a member of the editorial board in 2005 in 2008 he published let the men which argues for a more free market oriented u.s. immigration policy his second book please stop helping us was published in 2014 born in Buffalo New York mr. Riley earned a bachelor's degree in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo he lives in suburban New York City with his wife and three children would you please welcome Jason Riley thank you for that for that introduction and thank you for the invitation to speak here this evening I make it a habit of accepting any invitation to speak from a red state it is it's my fan base basically I spend most of my time in two of the bluest cities in the country New York and Washington where almost no one reads The Wall Street Journal editorial page or watches Fox News so when I'm recognized it's usually by someone hostile who's chasing me down the street something to that effect of course those two cities have basically repealed the Second Amendment so I can't even defend myself but boy you know when I fly in a Dallas I can't get out of the terminal without people recognizing me you put me in a hotel lobby in Memphis and I'll have total strangers yelling at me keep giving them hell Riley it's just it's it's it's awesome so so thank you thank you so much for getting me out of blue America for for a few days I really appreciate it but I want to thank Hillsdale and the end the Durrell Foundation for having me here today as as anita mentioned my first book was about immigration my second book was about race so obviously I picked the easy topics the ones that bring us together as a country and make me very popular on social media and cable news but actually tonight I I wanted to talk about something that I think most people do agree on which is that despite a half-century of concerted efforts by civil rights leaders and politicians the black underclass is in pretty and what we're trying is not working very well now the agreement pretty much ends there but it is a start so let's begin with with the good news this year marks the 50th anniversary of what may be martin luther king's most significant achievement the Voting Rights Act of 1965 now last year we celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which of course outlawed discrimination based on race gender religion and gave blacks access to jobs and schools and public facilities that had previously been denied to them but access to the voting booth access to the ballot was still a challenge for blacks particularly in the south President Lincoln said we're government of the people by the people for the people but that's only true if all the people can register and vote the ability to vote is what protects all the other freedoms we enjoy in this country it's how we hold our elected officials accountable for the decisions they make so after the Civil Rights Act was passed dr. King pressed for a Voting Rights Act two and fifty years ago this summer President Johnson signed it into law and it's been a remarkable success just to give you a sense of how successful the Voting Rights Act it's has been in 1964 the year before it passed only 7% of blacks in the state of Mississippi were registered to vote lowest percentage in the south by 1966 just one year after the Voting Rights Act passed black voter registration in Mississippi had climbed to 60% the highest in the south and Mississippi wasn't alone in Georgia it went from 19% to 51% in fact in every southern state the gains were striking today black voter registration in the South were most blacks to live is higher than it is in other parts of the country and in 2012 the last presidential election the percentage of blacks who voted was higher the percentage of whites who voted and for the first time in US history that's how significant the Voting Rights Act has been along with the Civil Rights Act it's represented the culmination of a modern-day civil rights movement and what I wanted to talk about for a few minutes this evening is what has happened in the wake of these civil rights victories and political victories that were supposed to lead to greater economic prosperity particularly for the black poor what is risen from the ruins of Jim Crow terms of policies aimed at blacks in general and the black underclass in particular where has there been progress where has there been retrogression what's working what's not working and how much of what's not working can we blame on racism I think it's a good time to ask those questions because this year also marks the 50th anniversary of the Great Society programs that were supposed to eliminate poverty and reduce racial inequality in America just before assigning that Voting Rights Act into law Lyndon Johnson gave a famous speech at Howard University the historically black college in Washington DC where he talked about what the government should do next on behalf of blacks this was merely the end of the beginning he said and then he said that beginning is freedom and the barriers to that freedom are tumbling down freedom is the right to share share fully and equally in American society to vote to hold a job in our public place to go to school said Johnson but freedom is not enough he added you do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains and liberate him bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say you are free to compete with all the others and think that you have been completely fair to that person Johnson said that the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights was not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result Johnson had moved the goalposts he was saying that equal opportunity isn't enough he wanted the government to ensure equal outcomes but what if Johnson was mistaken what if there are limits to what the government can do beyond removing barriers to freedom what if the best that we can hope for from our elected officials or policies that promote a level playing field and what if policy makers risk creating more problems to progress more barriers to progress when the focus is on equal outcomes I think there are limits even when the policies are well intentioned and I think the past half-century is evidence of that for more than 50 years the political left has pushed for more government assistance for blacks the racial preferences forced integration expanded welfare entitlements and so forth black leaders have urged racial solidarity and prioritized the pursuit of political power between 1970 and 2010 the number of black elected officials in America grew from fewer than 1500 to more than 10,000 including of course a black president but how has this helped the black underclass in 2013 Mississippi had more black elected officials than any other state in the nation yet it continues to have one of the highest poverty rates in the nation including black poverty over the past half century the US has spent some 20 trillion dollars after inflation on anti-poverty programs alone what do we have to show for it the official poverty rate in 2012 was higher than it was in 1966 and the black-white poverty gap has widened over the past decade the racial disparity and incarceration rates is also larger today than it was in 1960 black unemployment on average has been twice as high as white unemployment for five decades yes gains have been made on balanced blacks are certainly better off than they were in 1965 but the track record regarding the black poor is appalling it's clear that government programs aren't the solution to many of the problems this group faces the Great Society programs may be well intentioned but they aren't getting the job done and the question is why the short answer is that the focus has been on redistributing wealth to blacks instead of producing wealth among blacks the lesson of the past 50 years ought to be that simply transferring cash and in-kind benefits and services to the poor does not necessarily make people more prosperous I think blacks ultimately must help themselves they must evolve the same attitudes and habits and behaviors that other groups developed in order to rise in America and to the extent that a government policy however well-intentioned interferes with that necessary self development it's doing more harm than good open-ended welfare benefits do not help people develop a work ethic which is ultimately what they must develop in order to rise out of poverty increasing the minimum wage to whatever the number is today $15 an hour will simply increase the cost of hiring younger or less experienced workers many of whom happen to be black so fewer blacks will wind up getting that first job and the experience that comes with it soft on crime policies make ghettos more dangerous for the mostly law-abiding residents who live there and they make life easier for the criminals who of course prey primarily on the black poor and so on yet all of these policies continue to be pushed in the name of helping the black poor and the promoters of the policies don't seem very interested in reevaluating what has been tried before it's also important to note the progress that was occurring among blacks prior to the implementation of these policies that have been designed to help them programs that often receive all of the credit for any progress that we have seen for example between 1940 and 1960 black poverty in the u.s. fell by 40 percentage points that's before the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Acts were passed that was during Jim Crow that was during a period of open rampant and legal discrimination in this country racial discrimination a 40 percentage point drop in black poverty now poverty continued to fall after the Great Society programs were implemented in the 1960s but at a much slower rate at best the great society continued a trend already in place yet these programs are given all the credit for any reductions in poverty that we've seen the reality is that no Great Society program has ever come close to matching the reduction in black poverty that we saw prior to the implementation of that policy no Great Society program has ever come close to matching what blacks were doing on their own before the government decided to step in and help the notion that black people has helped themselves is not based on some right-wing extremist ideology it's based on experience history shows that there simply is no substitute for a groups self-development government programs cannot save us and an over-dependence on them can do great harm affirmative action racial preferences are another example of a program that gets more credit than it deserves in this case credit for increasing the size of the black middle class again what does the record show well it shows that between 1930 and 1970 the percentage of black white collar workers quadrupled in the u.s. between 1950 and 1960 in New York City alone the number of black accountants increased by 220 percent the number of engineers grew by one hundred and thirty-four percent the number of teachers grew by one hundred and twenty five percent physicians and lawyers grew by 56 percent and 55 percent respectively nurses increased by 90 percent and so on that's before affirmative action policies were implemented that's during a period when you could put a sign in your window that said we don't hire blacks yet in the face of these obstacles blacks were entering the skilled professions at unprecedented rates again yes blacks continued to enter the white-collar professions in the wake of racial preferences but again that simply continued an existing trend there was a substantial black middle-class already in existence by the end of the 1960s it has continued to grow but at a much slower rate and as with black poverty reduction no affirmative action program has ever come close to matching what blacks were doing on their own prior to the implementation of the policy moreover racial preferences have not helped the poor as the proponents promised instead they have worked mostly to help already well-off blacks become better off there have been case studies for example in Atlanta in the 1970s and 80s were under black mayors like Maynard Jackson and Andrew Young the city implemented racial preference policies for hiring black city workers and black contractors well what happened while the number of successful black businesses increased rapidly but average income blacks were left behind and the black poor actually lost ground and that's been the story of the black poor not only in Atlanta of a nationwide in the era of affirmative action the black underclass has lost ground both in absolute terms and relative to the white underclass in the 1970s and 80s and even into the 1990s so we're talking about the first full decades of affirmative action policies the poorest 20 percent of blacks saw their incomes decline at more than double the rate of comparable White's again the empirical data shows that in an era of racial preferences and quotas and set asides put in place to help the lack poor that subset has regressed affirmative action in higher education was also supposed to increase the ranks of black professionals but after California banned racial preferences and college admissions what happened well black graduation rates rose instead of being funneled into schools where they admit it were they were overmatched but admitted anyway for diversity reasons black students started going or started doing with white students and Asian students already do they attended schools that better matched their skill level and as a result more of them graduated a lot more black graduation rates of the University of California system increased by more than 50% after racial preferences were ended including in the more difficult fields of math and science and engineering by more than 50% in other words racial preferences which were sold as a way to increase the size of the black middle class had resulted in fewer black doctors fewer black lawyers and architects and engineers and physicists than we would have had in the absence of these policies but I would also argue that there is a large cultural component to the racial disparities that we see today whether we're talking about employment education incarceration incomes or other measures yeah that's become almost taboo to talk about black cultural problems in America antisocial behavior attitudes towards work school parenting and so forth black kids teasing one another for acting white I've often told the story about a trip back home to Buffalo New York where I was born and raised I was visiting my older sister shortly after I'd begun work at The Wall Street Journal and I was chatting with her daughter my niece who was maybe in the second grade at the time was asking her about school their favorite subjects that sort of thing when she stopped me she said Uncle Jason why you talk white when she turned to her little friend who was sitting there beside her and said don't my uncle sound white why are you trying to sound so smart now she was just teasing of course and I smiled and they enjoyed a little chuckle at my expense but what she said really stayed with me I couldn't help thinking here were two young black girls seven or eight years old already linking speech patterns to intelligence and race even at that young age they already had a rather sophisticated awareness that as blacks white sounding speech was not only to be avoided in their own speech but mocked in the speech of other blacks and I shouldn't have been too surprised by this and I wasn't my siblings along with countless other black friends and relatives teased me the same way when I was growing up and other black professionals from the president and the first lady on down told similar stories what I had forgotten is just how early these attitudes take hold how soon this counterproductive thinking and behavior begins New York City where I'm based has the largest school system in America and 80% of black kids in public schools are performing below grade level 80 percent and a big part of the problem is a black subculture that rejects attitudes and behavior is conducive to academic success black kids read half as many books and watch twice as much television as their white and Asian counterparts for example in other words a big part of the problem is a culture that produces little black girls who are already worried about acting and sounding white by the time they are in second grade another big part of the problem is a reluctance to speak honestly about these cultural shortcomings many whites feel being called racist and many black leaders have a vested interest in blaming black problems primarily on white racism so that is the narrative they push regardless of the reality racism has become an all-purpose explanation for bad black outcome be they social or economic if you disagree in our white you're a bigot if you disagree in our black you're a sellout too often this is the level of discourse schoolyard name-calling even President Obama has been subjected to this treatment when he's broached the topic of black cultural shortcomings on several occasions he's spoken to black audiences about for example absent black fathers when he spoke at Morehouse black college in Atlanta a couple years ago he said quote I was raised by a heroic single mother and wonderful grandparents who made incredible sacrifices for me but I still wish I had a father who was not only present but involved and so my whole life I've tried to be for Michelle and my girls what my father wasn't for my mother and me I've tried to be a better father a better husband a better man Obama told those black men in the audience to be good role models for other less fortunate black men he said the brothers who have been left behind who haven't had the same opportunities we have they need to hear from us we need to be in the barbershops with them at church with them helping to pull them up exposing them to new opportunities we have to teach them what it means to be a man now that might sound like common sense to you and me and there are probably some people in this room who wish this is all Obama would ever talk about but Obama gets slammed by liberals in general and black liberals in particular when he says these sorts of things because he's seen as criticizing black culture condescending the blacks being an elitist most significantly he's accused of letting whites off the hook which is a big no-no on the black left you don't do that but the facts are on Obama's side for decades studies have shown that the likelihood of teen pregnancy drug abuse dropping out of school and many other bad social outcomes increased dramatically when fathers aren't around one of the most comprehensive studies ever done about this concluded that black boys without a father were 68 percent more likely to be incarcerated as those with the father the study said that overall the most critical factor affecting the prospect that a male youth will encounter the criminal justice system is the presence of a father in the home all other factors including family income are much less important one social scientists put it this way if crime is to a significant degree caused by weak character if we character is more likely among children of unmarried mothers if there are no fathers who will help raise their children acquire jobs protect their neighborhoods if boys become young men with no preparation for work if school achievement is regarded as a sign of having sold out if all these things are true then the chances of reducing the crime rate among low-income blacks anytime soon is slim this is what we see playing out in Baltimore and the Bronx st. Louis Chicago in Detroit but you're not supposed to say that it's politically incorrect to say that try to bring up black culture in a debate over criminal behavior today you will have your head handed to you try to bring up the breakdown of the black family in a debate about crime in fact we don't even talk about black crime anymore we talk about black incarceration rates is that the two are completely unrelated we talk about police shootings of black men as a measure of whether America values black lives or whether cops value black lives we have mobs of people all over this country pretending that there's an epidemic of cops shooting blacks and the media has played right along this is nonsense police are involved in approximately 2% a black shooting deaths each year one economist has calculated that a cop is about six times as likely to be shot by someone black as the opposite scenario blacks are about 13% of the US population but commit more than half of all murders in the country roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered each year and 90 percent of them are killed by other blacks the question isn't whether cops value black lives or whether America values black lives isn't the more relevant question whether the young black men doing all of this killing value black lives are we supposed to hold White's to a higher standard than blacks hold each other I think a previous generation the civil rights leaders would have laughed at that notion homicide is the leezak leading cause of death for young black men in the US and it's not because cops are shooting them bad cops should be punished to the full extent of the law and they should certainly be held to a high standard for violating the public trust but if you believe that black lives matter if you want to reduce that black body count as a practical matter should your focus be on the 2 percent of black shooting deaths that involve cops or the 98 percent that don't the violence that is so prevalent in these neighborhoods in these black ghettos has enormous economic consequences the common assumption is that poverty causes crime but the truth is closer to the reverse businesses flee crime-ridden neighborhoods jobs follow property values fall one reason that blacks were progressing at a much faster rate in the first half of the 20th century is that black communities were much less violent back then the violence so prevalent today dates to the policy interventions of the 1960s when coddling criminals became fashionable among judges and among politicians and yes among academics and the government mistakenly believed that a welfare check could replace a father in the home before 1960 two out of three black children were raised in two-parent families two-thirds today more than seventy percent or not and in some of our inner cities many of our inner cities it's as high as 80 or 90 percent before 1960 homicide rates in the u.s. in including among blacks had been falling significantly in fact the murder rate in 1960 was less than half of what it had been 25 years earlier blacks obviously faced much more racism back then but black communities were also much safer and therefore much more conducive to social and economic progress which is what we saw let me close by noting that this concept of self help and self development that I think is essential to black advancement is something that black leaders in this country once understood very well and at a time when blacks faced infinitely more racial barriers than they faced with a twice elected black man in the Oval Office Frederick Douglass a former slave said in 1865 that everybody had asked him and the other abolitionists what to do with the Negro he said I've had but one answer from the beginning do nothing with us if the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength let them fall and if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs let him fall also all I ask is give him a chance to stand on his own two legs Douglass was essentially saying give blacks equal opportunity and then leave us alone Booker T Washington another former slave echoed that sentiment he said that it is important and right that all the privileges of the law be ours but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges Douglass and Washington did not play down the need for the government to secure equal rights for blacks and both were optimistic that they would one day receive equal rights although neither man lived to see that day but both men also understood the limits of government benevolence they understood that blacks would have to ready themselves to meet the far bigger challenge of being in a position to take advantage of opportunities once equal rights had been secured I think the history of the 1960's liberal social programs is largely a history of ignoring that wisdom the Obama presidency is yet more evidence that blacks have progressed politically in this country but if the rise of other racial and ethnic groups is any indication black social and economic problems are less about politics than about culture a black man in the White House is all well and good but it is no substitute for a black man in the home on that happy note I will end and take any questions there Paul Raven Hillsdale College hi I spent the summer of 1966 in Chicago I heard Martin Luther King speak a little Lutheran Church shook his hand but that summer I also met the leadership of Blackstone Rangers and I had the impression that they were being funded by the poverty program of Lyndon Baines Johnson and that attempt was being made to overthrow the existing african-american leadership within the black community and replace it with a new leadership am I right about that and has that had an impact I couldn't possibly speak to that I was born in 1971 so I I really can't speak to that but maybe maybe someone else here that yes does church attendance make a difference I think potentially yes I mean I've spoken to groups of black member of black ministers and they certainly embrace this message of self help and self development and not blame you at all on white racism one of the problems is that their pews are all full of women when in this messages really needs to get to black men and while the church is still a very respected institution in in the black community one of the few left attendance is an issue but yes I think that it still can and does play an important role and what I'm talking about yes oh okay mr. Riley mr. Riley you mentioned the breakdown in the family as a major cause of poverty in other areas and of course this is not just constrained to black families it's also white families and we tend to think what can the government do to reduce this breakdown but what can we as a society do to reduce the breakdown of the family and to strengthen families I don't have the answers I don't pretend to have the answers but I do think that I can play a useful role and talking about and writing about the past what has been tried before what has worked and then the people that do profess to have the answers hopefully will be informed by this track record of success and failure as it may be I think one thing we can do is to have honest conversations about the problem which we don't have in this country we talked about tensions between police and the black community and how to solve these tensions without talking about black crime rates we talk about blacks not trusting cops and so you're getting situations like Ferguson or Baltimore black people call the cops more than anyone in America that's a funny way of showing you don't trust the police the tensions between the police and the black community stem from high black crime rates the police are in these communities because of that is with a 911 calls originated if you want to reduce tensions between the police and these communities you need to reduce crime in these communities if you want to deal with this perception of young black men as being menacing you need to deal with the behavior that is driving those perceptions it's not coming out of nowhere and it's not limited to whites perceiving young black men as menacing other blacks have the same problem so again we need to have honest conversations about the problem I think we have to start there and if we're not going to talk about black crime rates if we're not going to talk about black behavior aren't we're simply not having an honest conversation I'm the president founder of homemakers America so my whole thing is always you know we need to help the moms realize how important they are in homes the communities but things that you have said tonight have been very enlightening that if all the moms are filling the churches and the men still aren't there there's a law here in Nebraska the community learning community and it is a tax that was supposed to help the people in the lower-income communities particularly in North Omaha and I drove kids from North Omaha down to Papillion schools for four months last year and I don't understand what this culture thing is if they care about education so much that they want to take their children from the black community and bring them down into communities with our white kids or they think they're going to get a better education two things with this aside from the tax issue they're going from their community down here to get the better edge education but they're going back home to the completely dysfunctional homes where they're getting most of their understanding of the world there is a major disconnect there and what I would like to know is how do we heal that disconnect obviously the tax isn't working throwing the money at it isn't working but how do we help them with that disconnect if the culture is don't be intelligent but yet they want their children to come to better schools how do we connect the dots not just heal the family but help them see that their children are getting there their greatest influence in that home and if they want to have a better education why are they then counteracting it when they come home well I think this is an example of a disconnect that's been in place for a while between the black leadership and the the needs and desires of rank-and-file blacks and and this is you can some people in this room are old enough to remember the 1970s and the busing wars that we had where the n-double-a-cp types wanted kids put on buses and and and bussed an hour away to school every day rank-and-file blacks never wanted that they wanted good schools belt right there in the community the n-double-a-cp wanted that of course their kids weren't on those buses but but that's so there has long been a disconnect between the agenda of the civil rights industry as I refer to it today and what rank-and-file blacks have wanted and access to better schools is as a perfect example of that I was speaking to someone earlier tonight about this you know for many on the Left public education is first and foremost a jobs program for adults the kids are a secondary concern so failing school stay open even if they're not graduating anyone because they're still providing jobs so school choice is one way to get at this problem to give these parents access to better schools and I think that's where you start with a better education and you build a natural constituency of who are better informed about their needs and how to go about pursuing those needs for the next generation but you have a lot of kids trapped in failing schools and they're desperate to get out and a lot of the policies we have in place won't let them out and it's it's really shameful even you know with this administration blocking school voucher programs in places not only in his backyard in Washington DC but in states like Louisiana where the governor there signed a statewide voucher program Justice Department has come in and said it violates desegregation orders without are on the books from the 1970s so we can't pass this um we can't let this about your program proceed it'll upset the racial balance of schools the racial makeup of the school is more important than whether anyone is learning in the school this is nonsense black kids need quality schools more than they need white classmates I promise you that so if some of the best schools in the state of New York where I am and in the country are highly segregated because these charter schools these high performing charter schools go in to these desperate communities and set up shop and those communities are segregated so the schools and they're being segregated that is not my concern the concerns whether the schools work or not whether they're graduating kids whether they're sending them to college whether the kids are learning in a safe environment this administration has has this anti-bullying initiative it is pressuring local school districts to suspend kids not based on who is doing the bullying but to make sure there is racial parity in suspension rates how do you help the black kid who was in school to learn by not suspending the bullies how is this helpful and by the way why would you expect to find racial parity and disciplinary outcomes in school do you find them outside of school do you think this behavior just starts after they graduate so the whole premise is off but so as are the priorities and so are who I think the policymakers should be sympathized with Obama's gonna release some 6,000 federal inmates because he thinks they were sentenced too harshly in the 80s and 90s he promises us that they are nonviolent we have a very very poor track record of deciding who was going to turn a new leaf when they get out a very poor track record in this country back in 2002 the Justice Department put out a study of 91 thousand people released in 15 states supposedly non-violent more than 20% were really three years for violent offenses including more than 700 murders in more than six hundred rapes Philadelphia tried this as well we need to reduce overcrowding in our prisons will reduce what will send will let the non violent criminals go it didn't work out similar outcomes so we just do a very poor job of determining who's gonna be nonviolent but my bigger point is where are our sympathies why are they with the criminals instead of their victims when these guys get out they are headed back to the hood they are headed right back to these communities where they were raising hell in the first place Hillary Clinton can go out and complain about mass incarceration all she wants Hillary Clinton lives in a suburb of New York not far from where I live multi-million dollar homes when these guys get out they are not headed to Hillary Clinton's neighborhood they are headed back to the South Bronx they are headed back to Harlem they are headed back to the southside of Chicago they will not be her problem how are you helping the law-abiding residents of these communities by going soft on crime you are not and that's you know that's part of my problem with the priorities of some of these policymakers mr. Ali I'm Howard Baker from Baltimore I admire your work so and I've been eager to ask you this question since I knew I'd be here tonight with you and I imagine we're gonna disagree but I'm eager to hear what you have to say with respect to crime it seems that it seemed to me for a long time that one of the most important things we can do for a low-income areas generally a special especially black low-income areas is to repeal prohibition I'm talking about repealing I'm talking about the prohibition of drugs because that drug war creates a tremendous amount of crime those who have disagreements can't go to the courts so they use violence I'm very interested to hear your opinion on that because it seemed to me a long time that it's one of the very most important policies policy changes we should have just for the purpose of reducing crime I think this is a red herring the drug offenses are not what is driving the incarceration rate in America violent offenses drive the incarceration rate in America if you could let me back up a little bit most inmates are housed in state local prisons not the federal prison system so I'll use speakers regarding the state and local prison system which houses around 90 percent of all inmates in the country if you could snap your fingers and send home everyone locked up for a drug offense you would not appreciably change the percentage of blacks behind bars blacks are about 30 minutes in the population they're about 37 percent of the inmates again you could send home everyone in prison black and white who was there for a drug offense blacks would still be right about 37% of the inmate population it is violent offenses that are driving the incarceration rate in this country by far it's not even close this idea that we are locking up young black kids caught with a joint is not true there is no room for these folks you are not going to prison or jail if you get caught with a dime bag by a cop that is a myth it's simply not true so I can be agnostic on the drug war whether it should be legal or illegal it can be completely agnostic I think there are a lot of good arguments for ending the drug war and and and and legalizing recreational use of some of these substances but the idea that you are going to appreciably affect the percentage of blacks locked up I think is completely off-base because it is not drug offenses that's driving the incarceration right this will be our final question Dan Stacy and Jackson County Republican Committee down in Kansas City I wonder certainly I think many of us resonate with what you're saying tonight and would like to move this this ball forward however you can say these things with some degree of acceptance simply because of your color some of us don't have that opportunity or don't share that same opportunity how can all of us move this ball forward and not be part of the problem but share truth well I I it's not your fight that's that's really what it comes down to I think that blacks ultimately have to themselves these calls for a national conversation are silly I mean you can all join in the conversation I welcome your input but ultimately blacks have to figure this out for themselves the conversation has to be had with these young black kids in Chicago shooting each other and who who have no role models who have no no sense of what it means to be a man or what it means to be black for that matter and they're gonna need an authority figure in their lives and typically traditionally historically that has been a father and maybe a minister can fill that role maybe a teacher can fill that role but ultimately this is something the black community is gonna have to work out on its own and it's not about reinventing the wheel here it's about getting back to a time period when we did not have these levels of violence in the black community and I think I'm optimistic that that can happen but it's hard for it to happen when you're letting people out of prison early and sending them back to the community sooner rather than later to raise hell it's hard for it to happen when you have a false narrative out there about cops shooting black men left and right for no reason at all it's hard for that to happen when everyone from a President United States on down is indulging this black lives matter movement nonsense so yeah there are from a public policy perspective and this goes to the title of my last book please stop helping us I think there are things that the the government can do and the policymakers can do from the standpoint of simply no longer doing things we know don't work stop raising the minimum wage that prices these young kids out of the labor force you know stop trapping them in failing schools stop with the occupational licensing requirements that prevent them from star a business a hair braiding salon a cab service or so forth government can get out of the way but I don't think the solutions are necessarily going to come from Washington or from politicians other groups traditionally have not gone this route the civil rights movement made a decision back in the 60s to pursue political power over economic power they were not the only group to go this route but this is the route they chose and traditionally and historically both in the US and outside of the u.s. that is a route to slower progress most other groups have not gone that route politics political power has come later if at all the Irish are an example of a group that chose the same route as the blacks if you go back to the 1920s you had Irish political machines running major cities in the United States from Boston to Philadelphia to New York but the Irish underclass was struggling the Irish masses were struggling and in fact it wasn't until the decline of those Irish political machines that you saw average rises in Irish incomes in America the politics did not bring along the masses and the blacks have chosen that route it's a much slower route most other groups have not worried about elected officials not worried about group leaders speaking on their behalf and and and and participating or creating some sort of racial or ethnic spoils system to bring goodies back home to the community that has not been the focus they focused on intact families and educational achievement and so forth look out if you look at America today and which group is hitting it out of the park in terms of incomes in terms of educational attainment Asians how much political clout do Asians have in America it's just traditionally not been the route that most successful groups have made trying to rise from poverty to prosperity so so I don't think these solutions are going to come from Washington ultimately this is about the black community getting its act together and that will start with an honest conversation about the problem which i think is not white racism it's about black culture and attitudes and behaviors being conducive to socio-economic success and that's frankly not a conversation that the civil rights community wants to have because if it's not about white racism anymore al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are irrelevant and they can't let that happen so they are going to keep white racism front and center in our national conversation because they need to stay relevant and that's that's the problem we have and of course the media continues to run to those guys to speak on behalf of black America so it's hard to start the right conversation

Channel: Hillsdale College

Views: 25,952

Rating: 4.9337349 out of 5

Keywords: Free Market Forum, Jason Riley, Hillsdale College (College/University), Poverty (Film Subject), War On Poverty (Event)

Id: aEoIgYSfP44

Length: 58min 43sec (3523 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 22 2015