photo credit: therightplanet.com
A
couple of days ago, I posted a chart demonstrating the radical agenda of Black Lives Matter as it relates to race riots in Charlotte and elsewhere. It’s an
important subject in this election season, especially since candidate Donald J.
Trump is going where few GOP candidates have gone: into the inner
cities to explore a “new civil rights agenda” with black leaders such as
Pastor Darrell Scott and Sheriff David Clarke.
Thomas
Sowell, an economist and one of my favorite contributors to various blogsites,
had an article yesterday at Town Hall entitled ‘Favors’ to Blacks. His comments are particularly on topic as to
why a “new civil rights agenda” is in Trump’s platform. Here are some extracts:
Back in the 1960s, as large
numbers of black students were entering a certain Ivy League university for the
first time, someone asked a chemistry professor -- off the record -- what his
response to them was. He said, "I give them all A's and B's. To hell with
them."
Since many of those students
were admitted with lower academic qualifications than other students, he knew
that honest grades in a tough subject like chemistry could lead to lots of
failing grades, and that in turn would lead to lots of time-wasting hassles --
not just from the students, but also from the administration.
He was not about to waste time
that he wanted to invest in his professional work in chemistry and the
advancement of his own career. He also knew that his "favor" to black
students in grading was going to do them more harm than good in the long run,
because they wouldn't know what they were supposed to know.
Such cynical calculations were
seldom expressed in so many words. Nor are similar cynical calculations openly
expressed today in politics. But many successful political careers have been
built on giving blacks "favors" that look good on the surface but do
lasting damage in the long run.
One of these "favors"
was the welfare state. A vastly expanded welfare state in the 1960s destroyed
the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of
racial oppression.
In 1960, before this expansion
of the welfare state, 22 percent of black children were raised with only one
parent. By 1985, 67 percent of black children were raised with either one
parent or no parent.
A big "favor" the
Obama administration is offering blacks today is exemption from school behavior
rules that have led to a rate of disciplining of black male students that is
greater than the rate of disciplining of other categories of students.
. . .
But Washington politicians are
on the case. It strengthens the political vision that blacks are besieged by
racist enemies, from which Democrats are their only protection. They give black
youngsters exemptions from behavioral standards, just as the Ivy League
chemistry professor gave them exemption from academic standards.
In both cases, the consequence
-- unspoken today -- is "to hell with them." Kids from homes where
they were not given behavioral standards, who are then not held to behavioral
standards in schools, are on a path that can lead them as adults straight into
prison, or to fatal confrontations with the police.
This is ultimately not a racial
thing. Exactly the same welfare state policies and the same non-judgmental
exemption from behavioral standards in Britain have led to remarkably similar
results among lower-class whites there.
. . .
If a
“new civil rights agenda” honestly confronts such issues and explores real solutions,
I am all for it. Some of those real solutions will involve eliminating
destructive government interference and shrinking the welfare state. Those are
Tea Party values.
Read
the entire article here.
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