"They're going to put you all back in chains."
—Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
It has been interesting to witness the evolution of the two political parties in the U.S. over the last eighty or so years as voting blocks, such as labor and minorities, have gravitated between the two. Labor unions, often tinged by socialism, have traditionally supported the Democrats though rank and file members have moved to the Republicans at various times: Reagan as part of the Reagan coalition in 1980, and Trump under MAGA in 2016. Both times the switches were because of economic conditions. Blacks, however, switched only once and only after a long courtship. There should be a divorce on the horizon
FDR dispatched longtime progressive Republican Harold Ickes to work with black groups during the New Deal era to begin the flirtation. Up until then, blacks solidly voted Republican, support earned by Lincoln. Democratic flirtations with blacks culminated in a marriage of convictions during the 1960 election. Blacks were willing to back either JFK or Nixon. JFK was the first to extend the hand and LBJ closed the deal with the Great Society. From day one, however, the Democrats only wanted voters; they had no intention of actually improving the black community’s lot in life.
Any overtures outside of the Democratic-run plantations toward black voters are met with allegations of racism. A black person who ventures off the plantation is labeled Uncle Tom. It’s like an abusive, jealous lover trying desperately to hang onto the abused spouse. The chains that bind are strong.
Is questioning accusations of racism racist? Of course not, and yet that is always alleged when an objective query of racism is broached. The fact that the true defenders of racism toss the word out like a grenade willy-nilly has diluted the meaning and resulted in a juvenile attempt to cover their racist tracks.
It’s a deflection.
One can delve into the depths of leftist policies over the past sixty or so years and, with empirical evidence, show willful disregard for “equity”, as they so proclaim. “Well-intentioned” people will say the current state of black families is the byproduct of racism. A realist knows that the actions of policymakers is the active attempt to keep blacks on the poverty plantation. What has been perpetrated against blacks by the Left is immoral.
Infectious disease professor Torrance Stephens, Ph.D. wrote in a Substack article:
… [T]hey [the Democrats] are content to shout racism and white supremacy on our behalf, without consultation, as being what we are most impacted by as if we live in the Democratic South of the 1950s and 60s. Shouting very loudly I might add without ever offering solutions to what ills our community. If they did then they would speak on crime, education, illegal immigration, and public health versus what they would lie to keep people free and obviate us from our agency. Instead, they speak on gun control, us being victims, and climate change, shit we DGAF [don’t give a f***] about or benefit from.
The Great Society Was Enslavement
Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and his War on Poverty created the modern-day poverty plantations where poor people are relegated to neighborhoods where abject poverty is a continuum from which it is difficult to extract oneself.
It also birthed affirmative action that pushed unqualified people into jobs and institutional positions that created more animus than success. As an anecdotal aside, tales have been often related that during the 1970s, large corporate entities hired black women to be secretaries, seating them up front like department store window displays. Unfortunately, these women were not qualified for their positions as they did not know how to type or answer phones—nor were they trained to succeed in those duties. The secretarial work was done behind the scenes by more qualified women.
Just as was the attempt with affirmative action, current diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies are but window dressing to cover for failed progressive policies that were never really designed for success.
Our education system created the plantation and the Left has locked students of “color” back into chains. The Left’s overt support of failed teachers’ unions has destroyed opportunities for those children caught up in failed schools. Federal policies to “help” the disaffected have created single-mother families that bare a burden of trying to raise children to succeed in a life surrounded by failures through no real fault of their own.
Economist Thomas Sowell delved into racial and economic differences when looking at the achievement gap between whites and blacks. He looked at whites from the North and South following the Civil War. He looked at blacks who had been freedmen versus those held as slaves. He looked at achievements between native blacks and those who migrated to the U.S. from other nations. Northern blacks outperformed Southern blacks; Northern whites outperformed Southern whites; Northern blacks outperformed Southern whites. Foreign-born blacks outperformed native blacks. His conclusion was culture, wealth, and education held the key to achievement and had little to do with race.
Leftist policies, as Sowell proved, have had very little positive impact on black society in America.
The poverty rate among black families fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent in 1960, during an era of virtually no major civil rights legislation or anti-poverty programs. It dropped another 17 percentage points during the decade of the 1960s and one percentage point during the 1970s, but this continuation of the previous trend was neither unprecedented nor something to be arbitrarily attributed to the programs like the War on Poverty.
In various skilled trades, the incomes of blacks relative to whites more than doubled between 1936 and 1959 — that is, before the magic 1960s decade when supposedly all progress began. The rise of blacks in professional and other high-level occupations was greater in the five years preceding the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than in the five years afterwards.
By the Left’s design, the future of blacks in America must continue to run through the Left. To keep blacks voting Democrat, blacks must always be faced with debilitating social structures that only “the Democrats can solve”. That’s why Democrats always play the race card; it is why Republicans and those from the Right are always depicted as racists aiming to put blacks back in chains. The race card is played to hide the Left’s racism.
Unless we do something about this [orderly integration], my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point.
—Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
Education is the Key
Instead of trying to make predominately black schools better, the Left attempted to wave their magic wand and sprinkle their pixie dust to even the playing field. Blacks were bussed into predominately white schools while whites were bussed into predominantly black schools. Was this done as a serious attempt to influence a better outcome for blacks or as a form of retribution to Southern whites?
Regardless, it failed.
After bussing was abandoned, the serious business of education reform began. First was the cabinet reorganization and the creation of the Department of Education in the Carter Administration. Then began a series of presidents with agendas, poking their fingers into the pie. None of it made schools better and actually focused education on teaching to the test in order to qualify for federal programs that had no direct influence on making schools better.
Somewhere along the way, Leftists saw that people with college degrees made more money over their lifetimes than those without.
Once again, the Leftist pulled out their wand and pixie dust and declared every young person must have a college degree. This raised the expense for colleges and cheapened the degree itself. It also further damaged public schools and their willingness to offer alternative and vocational education. Kids who sought professional skills other than skills attainable in a four-year college were pushed aside under the new policy of everyone-gets-a-college-degree. No regard was paid to whether these degrees were unlocking something special within a student or simply kicking the failed education of students down the road to the colleges.
Faced with students that have no basic abilities to read, write, and preform mathematics, the colleges are simply passing them along to a worthless degree; unqualified graduates without any meaningful employment have no ability to pay back student loans. Another link in the chain.
Over the past fifty years, the educational gap between races has been somewhat closed but a new front has been opened; the gap between rich and poor has risen sharply. It is this economic disparity that has further trapped black families inside poverty plantations and doomed their children in a rinse-and-repeat loop.
Affluent parents are able to navigate college-focused public schools. They have college degrees and can coach their children better than parents who lack higher levels of education. Affluent families are not rife with community upheavals and disfunction.
Professor Stephens adds:
Nationally, around 18% of black 4th-graders were determined to be proficient or higher in reading. By the eighth grade, just 15% compared to 42% for whites. Also nationally, 84% and 85% of Black eight grade students accordingly, are not proficient in mathematics and reading.
School Choice
Despite the call for school choice, in and of itself, the plethora of new schools the policies create do not, so far, affect test scores in a highly meaningful way, though somewhat more positively than traditional government-run schools. The true measure then should be post-graduation accomplishments. This is where school choice has made a meaningful impact.
When one thinks about school choice, the thought automatically gravitates to students receiving vouchers for private and parochial schools. In reality, private schools can be just as deficient as public schools. Instead, in a true free market education system, the private and public school system would be expanded to include trade schools (welding, pipefitting, HVAC technicians, technology hardware, as example), boarding schools for at-risk youth to remove them from dysfunctional communities, and paraprofessional schools designed for students wanting to work toward being medical technicians, paralegals, and bookkeepers, as example. These all represent careers and opportunities that have tremendously higher earning potentials than empty set liberal arts degrees can ever deliver.
Government public schools are a one-sized-fits-all solution to a bunch of square pegs. The teaching methodology changes when government policy changes. If the government wants college degrees, the focus becomes college preparatory. We should want a base of education with the focus solely on a concrete bed of reading, writing, and arithmetic. If all can read and write at a level proficient enough to compete in the jobs market, systemic poverty will recede.
By eighth grade, at least 85% of all children should be reading at a twelfth grade level. In the last four years of education, logical reasoning should be emphasized and a child prepared for their next steps in life, whether in a college setting or the traditional workforce. A high school degree should equate to a two-year college degree. If our education system reforms to that point, a typical college degree should only take two to three years to complete, rather than the four to five years currently. Those who have no desire for a typical college degree can find meaningful and financially rewarding careers. This drives down the cost of education at all levels.
For any perceived racial disparity to be erased, education and opportunity must increase and, through conservative principles, this can be achieved. School choice is one of the primary policies that—when expanded beyond traditional college-bound education—will create an employee marketplace that is diverse and well-educated. Strong anti-crime policies, especially in poverty-dense communities, will create a more stable world for children to mature and be educated enough to extract themselves from poverty.
Republicans and Right-leaning political and cultural groups must reach out to those trapped in poverty cycles and work with them to enhance their safety and development. Listen to them about what they need. Work with them to develop policies that help them to achieve—not to simply give them lip service in the hopes they vote Republican. If it is done properly, the work in and of itself will ensure success for all involved. Yes, we want the disaffected voting with us, but more importantly, we want them to succeed. In the end, that is what it will take for this nation to return to prosperity and cultural stability.
The Left’s “racist” card should be mocked and ridiculed. They’re guilty of unfathomable harms to our society and should be cursed by all those who they have “helped”.
Note:
Daniel Patrick Moynihan authored a report in 1965, The Negro Family: The Case For National Action, that identified single-mother families as the primary driver in the collapse of black families (and any family, regardless of race). The War on Poverty greatly exacerbated the situation. A good analysis:
The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies—Rejecting the Moynihan report caused untold, needless misery by Kay S. Hymowitz