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Black Americans Failed by Good Intentions: An Interview with Jason Riley — Transcript

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0:00My beef with the black left is that they
0:02want to keep the focus on what
0:04government or Washington or politicians
0:08or whites in general can do for blacks
0:10or should be doing for blacks instead of
0:12what blacks can do for themselves.
0:20Hi, I'm Nick Gillespie with Reason TV
0:22and today we're talking with Jason
0:23Riley. He works at the Wall Street
0:25Journal editorial page and he's the
0:26author most recently of the excellent
0:28new book, Please Stop Helping Us: How
0:31Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to
0:32Succeed. At the start of the book, you
0:34write, "The sober truth is that the most
0:37important civil rights battles were
0:38fought and won four decades before the
0:40Obama presidency. The black underclass
0:43continues to face many challenges, but
0:45they have to do with values and habits,
0:47not oppression from a manifestly unjust
0:49society. Blacks have become their own
0:51worst enemy. and liberal leaders, you go
0:54on to say, are essentially abetting
0:56that. What is the typical black
0:58experience? And is there this fixation
1:00on a kind of black underclass that no
1:02longer actually exists or is
1:03representative or what what what does it
1:06mean?
1:06Well, I don't know that there's a
1:07typical um black experience, which is
1:10progress in and of itself. Uh you have a
1:13big black middle class now. Most blacks
1:15are not poor
1:16in this country, but the problems of the
1:19black underclass continue to dominate
1:22the discussion and rightly so. And they
1:25do continue to be representative of
1:27blackness writ large,
1:29so to speak. We need to talk about these
1:31problems. And what I'm talking about is
1:32culture. One of the reasons I wrote this
1:34book is I think there's a hesitancy,
1:36particularly among those on the left, to
1:38discuss black culture. And I don't know
1:41how we're going to address those
1:42problems if we're afraid to talk about
1:43them. And you talk and I want to get to
1:45this. You say much more disturbing is
1:47that half a century after the civil
1:49rights battles were fought and won,
1:50liberalism remains much more interested
1:52in making excuses for blacks than in
1:55re-evaluating efforts to help them. And
1:57you talk about the civil rights acts of
1:591964 and 65 as liberalism at its best.
2:02Civil rights activism, you know, set the
2:04stage for those victories and what they
2:06achieved.
2:07Well, the 1964 act gets at legal
2:10discrimination in the country. the 1965
2:14voting rights act uh makes voter
2:17registration possible and actual voting
2:19possible. uh they made this country a
2:21more just society and I think what
2:23thudood Marshall and Martin Luther King
2:25and Rosa Parks and the freedom writers
2:27and those folks were fighting for was
2:30worth fighting for and I think all
2:32absolutely necessary
2:33absolutely necessary and all Americans
2:35can be happy that they made this country
2:37more just then you get Lynden Johnson
2:40coming in and saying that's not enough
2:41equal opportunity isn't enough
2:44we need equal results and I question
2:47whether that is a legitimate or even a
2:51reasonable goal. Since you don't see
2:54equal results among groups historically
2:57in America or anywhere else in the
2:58world, maybe the best you can hope for
3:01from government is equal opportunity.
3:03Then it's up to those groups to take
3:05advantage of those opportunities.
3:07There's no question that the black
3:08experience with the possible exception
3:10of Native Americans is an, you know, was
3:13an infinitely more punishing and
3:15oppressive experience. So it's not
3:17completely out of bounds that you would
3:18say, you know what, equal opportunity is
3:20not enough? I mean, it may be wrong,
3:22but you can you can understand the
3:23impulse.
3:24What have what have the results been of
3:26trying to go beyond that? That's what I
3:27look at in the book. Have these efforts
3:30helped or harmed black Americans?
3:32As you point out in the book, the black
3:34unemployment rate is essentially double
3:35the white or the the national average.
3:38What are the programs that were put in
3:40place supposedly to help blacks?
3:42Well, these are anti-poverty. These are
3:43anti-poverty programs. and also um wage
3:47floors.
3:48Mhm.
3:48And I'm talking about minimum wage laws,
3:50Davis Bacon and so forth. And if you
3:53look at black employment prior to the
3:56implementation of those policies, you
3:58saw much better outcomes in the 1940s,
4:00well into the 1950s, you saw black labor
4:03participation rates higher than what we
4:05have today.
4:06And and just to put a button on that,
4:08it's insane in a in an America that was
4:10manifestally more discriminatory and
4:12prejudice. You you had blacks
4:15for all the legacies of slavery, all the
4:17legacies of Jim Crow,
4:20they couldn't keep
4:22black employment from being essentially
4:26parallel with white employment in the
4:28same environment.
4:29Young blacks without skills, like all,
4:32you know, young workers who have
4:33relatively low skills, are they priced
4:35out of the labor market and then they
4:37they just can't get work or are you
4:38saying that it's anti-poverty programs
4:40that allow them to get by without a
4:43number of factors. One is yes pricing
4:45people out of the labor force. When you
4:47make it more expensive to hire people,
4:48fewer people get hired and you are
4:51particularly hurting less skilled, less
4:53experienced workers by by raising the
4:56cost of hiring them. Now the left sells
4:58this as an anti-poverty
5:00program. But most poor households are in
5:03that category because they have no
5:05workers,
5:06not because they have workers who are
5:08paid too little.
5:09Right? You can't confuse uh poor
5:12households with households with minimum
5:14wage workers,
5:15right?
5:16And a lot of that confusion results in
5:18trying to use the minimum wage as an
5:19anti
5:20or the left or liberals, they tend to
5:22look at the person who keeps a job and
5:24goes from making $4 an hour to $6 an
5:27hour if they keep Yeah. But but they
5:29they ignore the people who never get
5:31hired.
5:31They they ignore the people never get
5:33hired and they assume that those people
5:35will keep their jobs and and work at the
5:37same number of hours. Let's look at
5:39poverty. Between 1940 and 1960,
5:43black poverty in America fell by 40
5:46percentage points
5:48in 20 years. That's before a civil
5:51rights act, before voting rights act,
5:53before Brown v. Board of Education.
5:55Well, during the Brown v. Board of
5:56Education phase. Now, it continued
5:59to fall
6:00through the 70s and the 80s, but at a
6:02much slower rate. M you had a much
6:04stronger black family
6:06coming out of slavery throughout
6:08reconstruction into Jim Crow. Two parent
6:11households
6:12were much more likely among blacks than
6:15what you have today. And in some years,
6:17according to the census,
6:19two parent households exceeded
6:21among blacks. The rate exceeded that
6:23among the whites. and and and the
6:25difference today and I would argue
6:27largely as a result of these efforts to
6:29help blacks you have seen the
6:31disintegration of the black family and
6:34until blacks repair that damage which is
6:38and and there is significant damage
6:40there I don't see how these other
6:41outcomes are going to improve
6:44what can the government do to actually
6:46if in fact single parent households are
6:48the problem
6:50again to the title of the book it's not
6:52about what I want the government to do
6:53it's what I want the Stop doing stop
6:56raising the minimum wage and pricing
6:58blacks out of the labor force. Stop
7:00mismatching kids with schools in the
7:03form of affirmative action and setting
7:04them up to fail. Uh stop trying to
7:06replace uh a father in the home with a
7:09government check.
7:10And it doesn't Can I ask I mean because
7:11you you open the book with a discussion
7:13of the last time that you saw your
7:15father. Your your parents were divorced.
7:17So, you know, fathering is not I mean,
7:19ideally, one assumes it's in the
7:21household with the kids, but it's not
7:23necessarily, you know, you you can be a
7:26parent and a father while not living in
7:28the same.
7:29These kids need a father's presence in
7:32their lives. And we know all the bad
7:33outcomes associated with not having a
7:36father present. You have people out
7:38there calling for for slavery
7:39reparations or another huge wealth
7:42redistribution scheme in America to help
7:44solve black poverty. Here's a black
7:46poverty program. Married couples in this
7:48country who are black have a poverty
7:50rate in the single digits and have for
7:5220 years. There's your anti-poverty
7:54program. Get married before you have
7:57kids.
7:58My beef with the black left is that they
8:00want to keep the focus on what
8:03government or Washington or politicians
8:07or whites in general can do for blacks
8:09or should be doing for blacks instead of
8:12what blacks can do for themselves. This
8:14is the polar opposite of what you got in
8:16say Martin Luther King's generation who
8:19made black self-development a priority,
8:21right?
8:22And he was in a long line of civil
8:24rights leaders who did that. I quote
8:25from Frederick Douglas and Booker T.
8:27Washington.
8:28Uh both men born slaves,
8:30right?
8:31Who said all we can really ask for the
8:33government is equal opportunity. Then
8:35it's up to us to take advantage of those
8:37opportunities. Now today you have civil
8:39rights leaders saying until racism has
8:41been vanquished from America blacks
8:43cannot be held responsible for the
8:45criminality for the attitudes towards
8:47education for the work habits and so
8:49forth. Again the complete opposite of
8:52what previous civil right and the reason
8:54behind that be is because the civil
8:56rights movement has become a civil
8:58rights industry. They have a vested
9:00interest in keeping a certain narrative
9:01out there to maintain their own
9:03relevance. If it really is about black
9:06culture, if it really is about a racial
9:08conversation that black people need to
9:09have among one another,
9:12then what the NAACP is out there trying
9:14to do, what Jesse Jackson is trying to
9:16do or Al Sharpton is trying to do is
9:18less and less relevant. So, one of the
9:19reasons I wrote the book is because I
9:21think there is an audience for what I'm
9:23saying, a receptive audience that agrees
9:26with me on these cultural issues, even
9:28though there supposed black leaders out
9:30there don't want to talk about it
9:32because it's not in their vested
9:33interest. Who is a younger generation of
9:35black leaders you think that are that
9:37are sending the right message?
9:39There are people like Artur Davis,
9:40former congressman. Uh another former
9:43congressman, Harold Ford Jr. has been
9:45saying these things, but I don't think
9:46it's Harold, by the way, a Democrat from
9:49Tennessee, right, from the Memphis area.
9:51So,
9:51uh I don't I don't think it's
9:53necessarily generational, though. I
9:56think you have many ministers in the
9:58black community, uh, many black parents
10:00who get get what I'm saying in this book
10:03and want to talk about these issues. Um,
10:05again, they they may not selfidentify as
10:07conservatives, but I think, um, there
10:09are a lot of them out there who share
10:10the same values. So I mean your broad
10:12thesis is that the a lot of programs
10:16that were put in whatever their
10:17intentions are having negative effects
10:19because they allow the perpetuation of a
10:21kind of dependency culture or a culture
10:24that that gives rise to a lot of social
10:26problems.
10:27Um how does affirmative action fit into
10:29uh into that?
10:30Again affirmative action another
10:32well-intentioned policy intended to
10:35increase the ranks of the black middle
10:36class increase the number of black
10:38college graduates. and I talk about it
10:40in this book mostly in the education
10:43sector
10:43and what it's done at the higher
10:45education level in particular. Um, and
10:48what you have is a mismatch problem and
10:50we saw that when California ended its
10:53ban on racial preferences back in 1996.
10:57What happened after that ban took place
10:59is that black graduation rates increased
11:02by more than 50%. not only overall but
11:05in some of the more difficult
11:06disciplines like math and science and
11:08engineering again by more than 50%. So a
11:12policy intended to help increase the
11:14number of black graduates was resulting
11:16in fewer doctors, fewer lawyers, fewer
11:19engineers than we otherwise would have
11:21had. Well, what happened is that these
11:23schools were funneling blacks
11:26into environments where they didn't
11:29match the educational credentials of the
11:31average student at the school.
11:33And so they were outmatched and many of
11:35them dropped out or switched to easier
11:37majors. Um after the ban took place,
11:40kids were being better matched with
11:42schools where they could do the work
11:44and therefore you had better graduation
11:46rates. But the but the way the whole
11:48affirmative action debate has evolved,
11:51graduation rates aren't the priority.
11:53Diversity is the priority. The the the
11:56the campus has to look like America. The
11:58the college catalog has to be properly
12:00colorcoded. Whether kids are actually
12:02graduating is a secondary concern at
12:04best. The freshman class is what
12:06matters. And a good example of this in a
12:08nutshell
12:09is a study some years ago done of MIT,
12:13black kids at MIT. Black kids at MIT
12:16scored in the top 10% on the math
12:18section of the SAT of all kids in the
12:20country
12:21of any color,
12:23but they were in the bottom 10% of
12:25scores on the math section of the SAT at
12:27MIT.
12:28Right? So you have these very smart
12:30black kids who would be hitting it out
12:32of the park at a less selective school,
12:34but they're struggling at MIT. And MIT
12:37could care less because their campus
12:39looks like America,
12:40right? Uh that leads to one of the
12:43places where uh government policy and I
12:45guess in in the context that we're
12:47talking about here uh is going in the
12:49right direction and it's really kind of
12:50getting out of the way of people
12:52creating their own culture, which is
12:53school choice. you write a lot about K
12:55through2 school choice and this is a
12:57fascinating issue because it tends to
13:00unite kind of libertarian or
13:01conservatives uh as well as inner city
13:04blacks in particular. Talk a little bit
13:06about you know what's what's the value
13:09of school of school choice and why it's
13:11a good thing that that seems to be on
13:12the rise.
13:13Well, it works. That's the value of it.
13:15It works. And the problem is that this
13:18whole debate we have about school choice
13:21is not really about whether school
13:23choice works. It's about whether public
13:26education should be primarily a jobs
13:28program for adults.
13:30That's the real debate that's going on.
13:32What do you mean by that? You know,
13:33we're in
13:34what I what I mean by that is that uh
13:37first of all, it's hugely popular among
13:39the very people who want it and need it
13:41most. lowincome, inner city, black and
13:44Hispanic people. For decades, it has
13:46pulled off the charts. And I use this as
13:48another example of the disconnect
13:50between the black rank and file and the
13:53black leadership,
13:54your Jesse Jacksons, your all sharptons,
13:56your NAACPs
13:57who tend to oppose school choice because
13:59they are siding with the unions who do
14:02not like it. Not because it doesn't
14:04work, but because many of these charter
14:06schools and many of these schools where
14:08the vouchers would be used aren't
14:10organized and their primary concern are
14:13the adults in the system, not the kids.
14:15And so you see them fighting for laws
14:18that have no educational justification.
14:20Last in, first out hiring policies.
14:23There's no educational justification for
14:25that. Hiring teachers after two years in
14:28the classroom, giving them a job for
14:30life, making them impossible to fire.
14:31There's no educational justification for
14:33that. Those are job protections. And yet
14:36you see the unions fighting for them,
14:37even to the detriment of the children
14:39they claim to represent. And then you
14:41see these organizations like the NAACP
14:43who take money from the unions siding
14:46with the unions over the kids and the
14:48parents of the kids who they claim to
14:51represent.
14:52School choice as a movement. I mean,
14:53there were no charter schools in 1996.
14:55The first one in the country uh opened
14:57its doors in Minnesota in 1997. Now
14:59there are tens of thousands. What has to
15:02happen for it to become the new the new
15:04normal?
15:05One of the one of the arguments that
15:07opponents of charter schools and
15:08vouchers make is that they can't be
15:10scaled up to replace our public school
15:13system. That's that's a red herring.
15:14They don't need to be scaled up. We
15:16don't need a kip in every neighborhood
15:18in America. I live in suburban New York
15:20City. We don't need a kip up there. The
15:22public schools are just fine,
15:23right?
15:24So this we know where we need these
15:25schools. We need them in our inner
15:27cities, you know, in in our most
15:29difficult neighborhoods with the kids
15:31facing the most challenges and that's
15:33where these schools want to be located
15:35and that's what we need. We don't need
15:37them everywhere. So this argument that
15:38oh we can't voucherize the whole system
15:40or create charterize the whole system so
15:42we can't do anything is a is a dodge and
15:44it should be dismissed out of hand. Uh
15:46but where these schools are locating
15:48they are getting results. But you you do
15:50have a leadership out there from the
15:52president on down who talks one game,
15:55but his actions do something different.
15:57So he talks a lot about school choice,
16:00but his administration is trying to shut
16:01down a voucher program in Louisiana.
16:04Right?
16:05He talks a lot about school choice, but
16:07he's been trying to shut down a voucher
16:08program in DC since the day he entered
16:11the Oval Office. The president of the
16:12United States has never found a public
16:14school good enough for his own children,
16:16either before he was president or since.
16:18He tells us, "Be patient. I'll fix those
16:21public schools while his kids attend
16:23private schools." So, and again, he has
16:26a whole another agenda, which is to
16:28continue his support from labor, from
16:31the teachers unions, from others who
16:33have a vested interest in the status
16:34quo, no matter what.
16:36No matter that that status quo is
16:38harming harming our most vulnerable
16:40kids. I think it's appalling. Speaking
16:43of Obama, when he was uh you know when
16:46he was elected um many people both on
16:49the right and the left, you start your
16:51book with a a kind of discussion of
16:53you know this really this is like a
16:56pretty great moment where you know
16:57finally America has like moved past a
17:00certain stage in race relations. Do you
17:02think um kind of discussions of race
17:04have gotten better or worse um or are
17:07they or at least we having more now
17:09since Obama has become president? And
17:11should we look forward to a period and
17:13and how would we get there where race is
17:16no longer uh the kind of open wound that
17:20it seems to be in American political and
17:22cultural discourse.
17:23We're not post-racial.
17:24Um
17:26but I'd argue that the left has no
17:28interest in being postracial. They claim
17:30they want to be post-racial, but they
17:32really don't. They want to keep race
17:34front and center in our national
17:35conversations because it serves their
17:37agenda. That racism is the allpurpose
17:40explanation for what ails black America.
17:43There are a lot of people making a lot
17:44of money on that narrative and they want
17:46to keep it out there. There are
17:48political parties who who who who gain
17:52and keep political power with that
17:54narrative out there and they want to
17:56keep talking about it.
17:56By the same token, I mean, you know, I I
17:59mean I'm I'm not a partisan one way or
18:01the other. I don't know that you are,
18:03but you know, what is the Republican
18:04party doing to send a message to uh you
18:08know, both to to black America? I mean,
18:10what what did Mitt Romney get? What what
18:13should what should they be doing? And
18:15how responsible are they for the fact
18:17that they're lucky if they get 5% of the
18:19the black vote? And it was, you know,
18:21there was a time when the Republican
18:22party actually was the black party.
18:24Oh, yeah. These things uh these things
18:26change uh over time. loyalty to parties
18:28change over time. That's certainly true.
18:30There is some black outreach among the
18:32GOP. Uh today you have people like Paul
18:35Ryan making an effort. Um Chris Christie
18:38in his re-election bid in New Jersey
18:40went into Camden introduced himself did
18:42pretty well among blacks. Um
18:45in the past you've had people like Jack
18:47Kemp
18:47known for his work in the inner cities.
18:49You had Richard Rearen out in LA. You
18:51had Steven Goldmith in Indianapolis. But
18:53those still tend to be exceptions.
18:56By and large, serious black outreach
18:59does not occur
19:00among Republican candidates. And I don't
19:03ascribe that to racial animist, Nick. I
19:05think they're being very pragmatic.
19:07They feel they don't need this vote to
19:09win.
19:10And they feel time spent courting a a
19:12constituency they're not likely to get a
19:13big return on is time not spent courting
19:16someone else. Um, and I don't think
19:18that's really going to change until the
19:21Republican party feels they need the
19:23black vote to win. You were speaking
19:25about immigration earlier. Right now,
19:26there's a huge debate in the GOP about
19:29the Latino vote and whether they can
19:31continue to win elections going forward
19:32without more of this voting block. There
19:34is no such discussion about blacks,
19:36right,
19:37among the GOP right now. And I don't
19:38think you're going to get one until they
19:40feel they need this group to to to win
19:42elections. I wish they would do more
19:44black outreach. And the black outreach
19:46that they do is pretty much laughable.
19:49Going to the NAACP every four years to
19:51give a speech is not black outreach.
19:53Those folks are probably lost to the
19:54GOP. I like what Rand Paul is doing and
19:57going into black colleges trying to get
19:59at that younger generation. But that's
20:01what you need to do. You need to go into
20:02the barber shops. You need to go into
20:04the community centers, the churches,
20:06introduce yourself.
20:07The the the habit among Republican
20:10candidates these days is really to just
20:11concede that vote.
20:13Make symbolic thing uh statements. So, I
20:15I support school choice and maybe
20:17that'll win me a few votes. You've got
20:19to do more than that.
20:20Thanks. We'll leave it there. Uh we've
20:22been talking with Jason Riley. He is the
20:24author most recently of Please Stop
20:26Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder
20:28for Blacks to Succeed. For Reason TV,
20:30I'm Nick Gillespie.
20:35[Music]

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