The title of this post is shamelessly cribbed from the title of an article by Coleman Hughes, of the Manhattan Institute (and contributor to Quillette.com). Among his concerns is “mass incarceration,” and the way black students are alleged to be in a so-called “school to prison pipeline.” The size of America’s prison population, where blacks are over-represented, is of great concern for Hughes. When countering reparations propagandist Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hughes complained to a House of Representatives panel that the talk of slavery reparations ignored the more pressing problem of the high number of blacks in prison. Despite his concerns, Hughes is eager to point out the good news on the issue. In The Case for Black Optimism, published a few months later, he writes:

To put the speed and size of the trend in perspective, between my first day of Kindergarten in 2001 and my first legal drink in 2017, the incarceration rate for black men aged 25–29, 20–24, and 18–19 declined, respectively, by 56 percent, 60 percent, and 72 percent.