Today is the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech, and some people see lots of progress for black Americans since then. But that progress is only partial, and one of America’s shames is that the descendants of people who were slaves still don’t get a fair break today.
The main progress has been political. One of King’s dreams was that “even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.” Today, more than a quarter of the Mississippi legislature is black, up from approximately zero in 1963. Nationwide, the number of black elected officials has grown from less than 1,500 in 1963 to more than 10,500 today.
There has been far less progress economically. For people with full-time jobs, Census data show that black incomes have increased from about 63 percent of whites in 1963 to more than 75 percent of non-Hispanic whites today, which is a little progress. But black unemployment rates are so much higher that black per capita incomes have grown only slightly, from about 55 percent to 58 percent of non-Hispanic whites. The gap between black and white wealth has actually grown in the last 50 years.
Hispanic incomes are also lower than non-Hispanic whites, but the incomes of second- and third-generation Hispanics are much closer to whites’. Like most ethnic groups that have voluntarily immigrated to this country, Latinos have eagerly joined the nation’s economy and improved their economic standing over several generations. Asian incomes, for example, average 95 percent of whites’. Only blacks remain stuck where they were several generations ago.
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Why so little progress? One answer is the breakdown of black family structure, thanks in large part to federal welfare rules which allowed welfare payments only to families with no man in the house. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan correctly foresaw, this led to generations of single-parent families.
Another answer is the way in which civil rights laws and rules were imposed. The initial federal civil rights acts made “Jim Crow” segregation illegal and insured that blacks had the right to vote. These laws made the major contribution toward black political progress. But other laws and court rulings went beyond this to mandate integration and affirmative action. As well-intentioned as these policies were, they did more harm than good by creating resentments that linger to this day.
As much as I’d like to believe we live in a society free of discrimination, there is plenty of evidence that employers routinely, if subconsciously, discriminate against blacks. High schools that serve predominately black neighborhoods, even in “progressive” cities such as Portland, have excessive drop-out rates, partly due to the fact that the best educators gravitate away from those schools.
Needless to say, “smart-growth” policies aimed at reducing homeownership and auto driving rates by making housing and driving expensive don’t help. In fact, they hurt low-income families of all races far more than middle- and upper-class families.
America still hasn’t paid the full price of four centuries of slavery and one of overt discrimination against people based on their color. That price will only be paid when people can talk about King’s speech as a point of historical, if shameful, interest, not a measure of the lack of progress over half a century.
In the past I adopted Abraham Lincoln’s thoughts on the matter, now inscribed in stone on the right (north) side of the Lincoln Memorial, that for every drop of blood shed unjustly during slavery another drop of blood was shed in the Civil War. But indeed, Biblically the poor suffer due to injustice and we are charged to fight for justice for the poor. Presumably this will help lift them out of their “poverty.” What we allowed the feds to due to our poor through welfare, abortion, no-fault divorce, zoning/building codes, education, is quite the injustice.
Or maybe it’s the thug life that’s done in many like my former 15-year-old student who scribbled violent rap lyrics in his notebook and wrote that his goal in life was “to get rich by any means necessary.” He was a wonderful student with an ankle monitor imposed upon him for breaking into an elderly woman’s house and for vandalizing private property.
The Antiplanner wrote:
But other laws and court rulings went beyond this to mandate integration and affirmative action. As well-intentioned as these policies were, they did more harm than good by creating resentments that linger to this day.
Certainly mandated “busing” of school children in an attempt to bring about racial integration failed – and failed badly – in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The public schools there are much more segregated now than they were before busing (which was ordered by a federal judge in the 1970’s), as the court not prevent massive white flight (and later middle-class black flight) of families with school-age children moving to the next tier of counties beyond Prince George’s.
Stated differently, mandated school busing probably has caused some families to move further from employment centers and other activities than they would have without busing.
Needless to say, “smart-growth” policies aimed at reducing homeownership and auto driving rates by making housing and driving expensive don’t help. In fact, they hurt low-income families of all races far more than middle- and upper-class families.
It is often conveniently forgotten that the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama (which began after Ms. Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was arrested for refusing to vacate her seat on the bus for a white person) was effective in part because the organizers had access to private automobiles for car-pooling and taxicabs operated by black drivers charged the same 10 cent fare as the buses – beyond that, some persons used nonmotorized modes of transport (including their feet) to provide mobility to persons that might otherwise have had to ride the segregated transit buses.
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At the time of his death he had been kccked out of school.
We never heard the whole story.
Lowell
It is odd how people have bought into the myth of MLK, much like they’ve bought into the myth of the detestable warmonger Abraham Lincoln:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/1991/02/lew-rockwell/the-economics-of-martin-luther-king-jr/
A survey done by statisticians asked groups of children in elementary school. “What do you think there are more of…Black doctors or black basketball players?” And responded basketball players (untrue) then asked “What do you think there are more of…black lawyers or black baseball players”
Compared to blacks, Asians and Jews have done remarkably well..incredibly well for themselves. And unlike their counterparts, they receive far less advirtisment and political coverage. Blacks make up 12% of the US population and 13% of Congress where as Asians have received little political representation and statistically are doing better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boijt5OBdy8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbAsD0lEpuA
If young school children confused total number of blacks in basketball with percentage composition, their answers make more sense. (And do we expect an eight-year-old to have a firm grasp on the difference between a total nominal measurement and ratio?) Not sure what your point was for posting that first paragraph, but to follow up, if diversity and exact representation of population were strength, the NBA would be out of business. It in no way reflects the actual percentages contained in the population. Could it possibly be based on actual merit? Perish the thought.
Of course King was an anticapitalist Marxist. He was anti-profit. It’s rather ironic that he copyrighted his “I have a dream” speech given his communistic tendencies. Guess it’s OK for his family to profit.
After genuflecting to the King, had to slog through hours of inane in service and listen to statements like “we are a collective” and “my dream is that everyone has an equal piece of the pie” and “diversity is race” and “a better term is ‘differently abled.'”
Uuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.
Frank didn’t say enough. MLK copyrighted his speech and the family now prohibits the speech publication and video unless they pay huge sums to the King family. The US taxpayers paid the King family over $700k just to build a monument to MLK with his words engraved.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-you-wont-see-or-hear-the-i-have-a-dream-speech/2013/08/27/09d2a07a-0e66-11e3-bdf6-e4fc677d94a1_story.html
To go meta for a minute, isn’t it interesting how a hugely successful political movement is now handicapped by its success 50 years ago? The civil rights movement accomplished amazing things 50 years ago with a charismatic religious leader preaching a new tactic of non-violence to challenge the power structure.
Now we have “religious” leaders chosen by liberal media who are black but of extremely questionable moral character (Sharpton and Jackson), who are desperately trying to find a racial injustice like the 1960s , and clinging to replay the race victim card from the 1960s.
Sometimes a successful approach that changes society dooms the movement to trying to exploit a society that was actually changed.
There is only 1 black senator in the US–and he wasn’t invited to the MLK ceremonies.
Why? He is a Republican. MLK would not have been proud of that type of discrimination.
This tells blacks that you better act the way the Democratic establishment tells you to act–or else. An insult to all black Americans.
“This tells blacks that you better act the way the Democratic establishment tells you to act–or else.”
I was in the trenches of a Cal State campus working to pass Prop 209 — also known as the California Civil Rights Initiative. (I was a registered Democrat at the time, and my mentor professor, also an advocate for the CCRI, was a self-labeled liberal Democrat.)
During hearings in Sacramento, my jaw dropped when I heard State Senator Diane Watson shriek at Errol Smith, an African-American businessman from Los Angeles providing testimony: “We don’t want a color-blind society! Freedom is not free! I want Mr. Smith to understand that when they sent the boat back to Africa, you’ll be on it. I remind you that you are an African-American.”
I’m no longer surprised when Marxist, African-American Democrats ostracize or tell other African-Americans to GTFO over ideological differences. To quote Sherman Alexie, “Sharing dark skin doesn’t necessarily make two men brothers.”