The Supreme Court takes up segregated political maps, a temporary remedy that has lingered on.
Walter Williams, the late George Mason University economist, liked to caution against citing racial discrimination as a blanket explanation for statistical disparities among groups. “This is not to say discrimination does not exist. Nor is it to say discrimination has no adverse effects,” he wrote. “For policy purposes, however, the issue is not whether or not racial discrimination exists but the extent to which it explains what we see today.” Or choose not to see.
We know that black-white gaps persist in education, employment, income and much else in the U.S., yet there’s no denying that blacks have made tremendous gains. In 1940, 87% of blacks lived below the poverty line. In 2023 it was less than 18%, and the poverty rate for black married couples was 6.5%. This suggests that black impoverishment has more to do with family formation than with racism. According to 2020 census data, there are more than nine million black people with incomes above the white median.
Why doesn’t this progress receive the amount of attention it deserves in the mainstream media or on the political left? Because it undermines a Democratic narrative that pretends no meaningful racial progress has occurred over the past 60 years. Activists raise money and elected officials win votes by convincing people that racial prejudice, in one form or another, explains today’s racial gaps. Exploiting the country’s history of racism to maintain power and influence has become liberalism’s modus operandi.
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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. Follow him on Twitter here.
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