Chris Rock and 'Real Things to Protest'
Now that the Oscars are over, let’s take a look at how black concerns are being addressed by the political leaders who take their support for granted.
No one would mistake funnyman Chris Rock for a political conservative, but his observational humor has never spared liberals—including fellow blacks—as the nation witnessed once again during Sunday night’s Oscar telecast.
“The political left’s ultimate objective is to strip blacks of their capacity to make choices and act on their own. The only thing more disconcerting... is watching black leaders play along in an effort to stay relevant.”
Mr. Rock had been taking major guff from black Hollywood types and others for agreeing to host the awards ceremony in a year when no black actors were nominated. He pushed back at critics during his opening monologue. Mr. Rock mocked black celebrities who successfully command tens of millions of dollars a film and then denounce the entertainment industry as racially “unfair.” More pointedly, he urged viewers to keep matters in historical perspective.
The big question is why are we protesting “this Oscars, why this Oscars?” Mr. Rock asked. “It’s the 88th Academy Awards, which means this whole no-black-nominees-thing has happened at least 71 other times.” He noted that in the 1950s and 1960s black people didn’t have time to protest trivialities like the lack of recognition from Tinsel Town “because we had real things to protest,” such as the denial of basic civil rights. Al Sharpton, whom Mr. Rock mentioned in passing, has nothing better to do these days than boycott the Oscars because serious black leaders like Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr. fought and won infinitely more consequential battles—such as against legal racial discrimination and voter disenfranchisement—more than 50 years ago.
Mr. Rock’s Oscar riff was meant to poke fun, and it did. Yet wittingly or not, he also touched on serious themes that conservative commentators have been sounding for decades. The disconnect between the agenda of liberal black elites and the needs of the people they claim to represent is as wide as ever.
Here we are in an election year when black voters may well decide whether Democrats win the White House. It is a near certainty that blacks will secure the nomination for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. And President Obama, who remains very popular among blacks, will be Mrs. Clinton’s biggest asset in the general election. So what are black leaders demanding in return for helping to deliver this key voting bloc?
Judging from what we’ve seen in the debates and what we hear from the Democratic candidates on the campaign trail, not much more than lip service. Regular recitations of “black lives matter” and vague promises to address “systemic racism” seem to suffice.
The Democratic candidates have gone out of their way to reassure black voters that white oppression explains racial disparities, and that more government is the solution. The black underclass is being told in so many words that they bear little or no responsibility for their circumstances. They are being told that black incarceration rates are a bigger problem than black crime rates. They are being told that white racism, not antisocial behavior and counterproductive attitudes toward work, school and marriage is the more significant barrier to upward mobility in America today.
The political left’s ultimate objective is to strip blacks of their capacity to make choices and act on their own. The only thing more disconcerting than watching liberals pursue that agenda is watching black leaders play along in an effort to stay relevant. Bernie Sanders is promising free college tuition. But the average black 17-year-old has the reading and math skills of the average white 14-year-old, and the achievement gap in science is even wider. For blacks, the bigger problem would seem to be college readiness, not affordability. Someone with an eighth grade education is going to struggle as a college freshman, even if the tuition is free.
Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton have chosen to stand with teachers unions against education reforms that are producing more college-ready minorities. And the civil-rights establishment doesn’t mind a whit.
Black leaders could leverage this black political clout and demand that the next Democratic president vow to expand educational options for low-income kids by allowing them to leave failing public schools and attend alternative institutions with a better record of success. But if you are Al Sharpton or the NAACP, the needs of poor black students take a back seat to the needs of Al Sharpton and the NAACP.
Teachers unions want to keep students in unionized schools, while civil rights groups and the Democratic Party want to continue receiving financial support from teachers unions. I’m sure black lives matter to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders and civil rights activists—just not as much as union support matters.
Blaming racial disparities today on slavery and discrimination may help elect Democrats and keep the civil-rights industry flush, but it does little to address those disparities. Chris Rock is right. Blacks used to have more important things to worry about than the lack of Hollywood diversity. They still do.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal