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Dreams Over Despair
Before I begin citing the problems facing those born into Black America, let’s begin before birth. If you are potentially Black in America, but still have yet to take your first breath, you have about a 27% chance that you will never be born (according to a study by the American Journal of Public Health.) Other studies suggest that this statistic could be much higher, especially in NYC and other large cities. If you are lucky enough to take your first breath, you have about a 69% chance that you were born to an unwed mother. Other statistics suggest that you have a 33% chance that you will grow up in poverty. Even if you are not impoverished, you have a 46% chance you will be poor, that is your family’s annual resources comprise less than 2X the poverty rate. Note that 27% of low income Black families have no visible means of support at all, that is no one in the family is employed. If you live in a single parent household, you are almost certain to be impoverished.
There is some reasonably good news; if you are Black, you still have about a 79% chance that you will graduate from high school. However, the quality of your high school education may not prepare you for work or college. If you go to college, there is a 58% possibility that you will drop out before graduation. Though African Americans (self-identified in census data) make up just 12.6% of the US population, FBI arrest statistics indicate that Black Americans commit over 50% of the murders and robberies committed in the US. The victims of those crimes are nearly always Black as well. The incarceration rate for Black American males is over 4%, so babies unlucky enough to be born both Black and male face a 4% chance of becoming a prison inmate. Once in the system, you will likely remain there; 86% of Black prisoners are rearrested and sent back to prison (80% for Whites, alas.)
If you are Black and of working age, you are more than 2X as likely to be unemployed as a White person. This statistic is likely to be much higher in large urban areas (like 6.5X in Washington, DC.) These figures move with economic conditions though the ratios remain stable. The numbers are quite a bit worse for younger working-age Black Americans.
So what is at play here in America? Why is it so difficult to be successful in America if you are Black? Who stole Black America’s dreams and left them wallowing in despair? Is this evidence of White Privilege and Systemic Racism, or is something else at work here?
What is at work here is racial politics that encourage poor choices and bad outcomes. In pandering for the Black vote, politicians have allowed communities to be overrun with crime, drugs, and despair. Instead of encouraging good choices and pursuit of dreams, politicians have provided a desperate existence of state dependency, public or subsidized housing and unwed motherhood. Schools have been allowed to decline, achievement has been denigrated, and expectations have been serially lowered. Success is measured in how easily and readily one can game the system and score free benefits or hide under the table earnings. Property has no value to those who have none. Lives have no value to those who see no future. Politics and politicians become the means to continued subsidy. And worst of all, wanting more, wanting out, working to better oneself, is seen as despicable, as an affront, as disloyal. If you obviously try to seek a better life, you are a pariah. Despair, you see, must triumph over dreams.
So how to address these issues.
First and foremost, there is the problem of unwed mothers and unplanned pregnancies. This problem is not exclusively a Black American problem. The Hispanic and White illegitimacy rates have been rising for decades as well. And with illegitimacy comes poverty and state dependency. Two-parent and earner families have more stability and flexibility, can pursue opportunities where ever they arise, and are much less likely to remain mired in poverty. In better circumstances, children are more likely to thrive and achieve. Expectations are higher all around. So from a policy perspective, whatever we can do to encourage intact family formation and marriage, then the horrific outcomes that are unfortunately the rule in single-family households mired in poverty, can be averted. These initiatives should be entirely colorless but will impact the Black community most because illegitimacy disproportionately affects that community.
No doubt, education must also play a role here. We must improve schools in predominately black and other impoverished communities; this is obviously not just a funding problem. Some of the worst-performing schools in the nation (NYC, Boston, Baltimore) spend more than 2X the national average per student on education, and yet the schools in poor and declining neighborhoods are failing. Support for charter schools and voucher programs has proven to be an efficient and effective way to force public schools to perform and compete for students. A major effort must be made to encourage education and allow both parents and children to see educational achievement as a means to a better life. Everyone must understand that opportunities are unlimited if they strive for better, acquire skills, and achieve in the classroom.
Lastly, Black communities must be purged of all crime, drugs, and gangs. These corrosive influences destroy communities, place them under siege while leaving the neediest and impoverished, those who cannot leave, to be easy victims, stuck in a horrific situation. Drugs and dependency are always the wrong choices. Children who grow up in such a desperate environment, who cannot see any kind of better future for themselves, are recruited into lives of crime and drugs, of poverty and dependency.
Once crime is controlled, incentives can be used to bring back commerce, to renovate property and to rebuild communities.
In the meantime amid this horrific collective tantrum some call protests, we have to get the message out. We care about these communities. We want every American to achieve and make something better for themselves. We have no reason to wish anyone anything but contentment and success. And most of all, we want nothing but success and achievement for Black Americans, but it’s not something that they can take. Like every other American, they have to work for it, overcome obstacles, persevere, and achieve.
Published in General
William Easterly is a good source on this dynamic, albeit through the lens of foreign aid.
I think not. It is exactly the right thing to do. The Left is doing precisely the opposite – legalizing marijuana, pressing for decriminalization of other drugs, releasing convicts before their sentences are filled, pressing for the defunding of those who enforce our laws, etc. I will agree that our anti-drug campaigns have been largely ineffective, but we cannot deny the detrimental effects of narcotics on lives and communities. So our anti-drug efforts need new focus; sealing the border will help. We need to politically pressure Mexico, China, Thailand, Columbia etc.. Take away funding. Use tarriffs. Discourage vacation travel. The cartels need to be eliminated. Fines, rehab, testing and weekend jail time might be a better approach to small-time drug crimes. We could take an approach similartao the drunk-driving campaign. Make it really uncomfortable and costly to possess or take illegal drugs. Jail the traffickers forever.
We don’t need to help “Black” people, we need to lift up people who live in poverty. Drugs and crime are not just a problem in the inner city. There are many failing rural communities with equally appalling problems with illegitimacy, welfare dependency, crime and drugs. Appalachia and the reservation are examples of this. Certainly this is not caused by an unwillingness to help. These communities need hope, opportunity and dreams. They need to be revitalized. The people in them need skills, jobs and mobility. They need to join in the pursuit of independence and the American dream. It has not been denied them; they just stopped trying. Everyone should want something better. We have to find ways to respark optimism and a willingness to join the fray.
Historical perspective is important. If we point out how stable marriage and family were in the Black community was in 1960, even before the Civil Rights Act, then people can see that this current decline is a result of something more recent. We need people to ask what has changed; what has caused this curse of fatherless families? What has caused the decline in our cities? It takes a series of things and it is not so simple, but we can study it and take counter measures. For example, how have unions helped or hurt our inner city communities? How has economic and foreign policy helped or hurt our inner cities? Have police unions protected bad cops? Have teachers’ unions inhibited competition (vouchers and charters) and protected lousy educators? Have prevailing wage laws wasted municipal resources and inhibited competition from small, non-union contractors? Have open borders hurt American workers, especially in the high wage construction work, by driving down wages and benefits and by displacing American workers with cheaper foreign labor? Have bad trade deals driven jobs overseas, good paying, skilled labor jobs that used to pay good wages? The US has not stopped using steel, yet our steel industry has been in decline for decades. The US has not stopped needing pharmacuiticals, yet our perscription drugs come from China and Vietnam. Last time I looked, Americans still wear clothes and shoes, and yet we don’t make either anymore. Great US industries – furniture manufacturing, shipbuilding, appliance manufacturing, electronics manufacturing, etc. – have moved overseas because of US trade deals and economic policy. Couple that with the addition of 10-20 million unskilled, desperate illegal workers, and you have set the table for decline. If we reverse these trends, opportunities for Black Americans and all Americans will resurge.
Republicans and Democrats played parts in the decline in American opportunity, a decline that has hurt the inner city community and destroyed small cities around the country. Those without the means to move away from decline remain stuck in this growing nightmare; many of those are Black Americans.
Leftists offer more handouts and mythical reparations. But what is really needed is opportunity and that comes from a robust US economy and a focus on US workers. If blue states promote policies that do not promote opportunity, people should be encouraged to move with their feet to states where the American Dream is still available.
I agree on the particulars of the American Dream and the need for opportunity. But, how do you inspire people to want to develop skills and seek employment and opportunity?
My belief is only a restoration of Christianity will serve these aims. Why? Because the main life-lesson that comes from Christ is that great good comes from great sacrifice. And developing skills requires sacrifice (time and effort). Working a job requires sacrifice. Being chaste requires sacrifice. Being married requires sacrifice. Being a father to children requires sacrifice. . .
And the hope and optimism that comes with Christianity is realistic, because it is not of this world. Life is tragic. Happiness can only come from laying it down for your friends.
A resurgence of Christianity can never be a bad thing, but it is a stretch to equate the sacrifice of Christ with the development of a work ethic. Too often the Left uses Christianity to justify entitlements, government handouts and wealth distribution in a similar misread of Christian teaching. Charity is a personal thing, given freely. All else is a taking.
I’m afraid we have to rely on human nature to lead the way here, that is the innate desire that we all have to build a better existence for ourselves and our families, and to do this without taking from others. There will always be those who are lazy and will take what is not theirs. We have a society of laws to discourage them, but they will always be among us.
We’re just going to have to disagree.
Fallen human nature is exactly what has gotten us here. Government is only properly ordered if it recognizes fallen human nature, but it is human nature to want something for nothing, and it’s the false promises of the Left that cater to the worst of our human nature.
Christianity built the West and only Christianity can restore it. The self-sacrificial imitation of Christ is what inculcates virtue and acts of heroism that characterize the best of the West. Christianity calls for transcendence of our human nature. It’s way, way beyond a work ethic.