Source: AP Photo/Noah Berger) Aug 07, 2020 -
AP
In matters of race and other social phenomena, there is a
tendency to believe that what is seen today has always been. For black people,
the socioeconomic progress achieved during my lifetime, which started in 1936,
exceeded anyone's wildest dreams. In 1936, most black people lived in gross
material poverty and racial discrimination. Such poverty and discrimination is
all but nonexistent today.
Government data, assembled by Robert Rector of the
Heritage Foundation, shows that "the average American family ...
identified as poor by the Census Bureau, lives in an air-conditioned, centrally
heated house or apartment ... They have a car or truck. (Indeed, 43 percent of
poor families own two or more cars.)" The household "has at least one
widescreen TV connected to cable, satellite, or a streaming service, a computer
or tablet with internet connection, and a smartphone. (Some 82 percent of poor
families have one or more smartphones."
On top of this, blacks today have
the same constitutional guarantees as everyone else, which is not to say that
every vestige of racial discrimination has been eliminated.
The poverty we have today is spiritual poverty. Spiritual
poverty is an absence of what traditionally has been known as various human
virtues. Much of that spiritual poverty is a result of public and private
policy that rewards inferiority and irresponsibility.
Chief among the policies
that reward inferiority and irresponsibility is the welfare state. When some
people know they can have children out of wedlock, drop out of school and
refuse employment and suffer little consequence and social sanction, one should
not be surprised to see the growth of such behavior.
Today's out-of-wedlock
births among blacks is over 70 percent, but in the 1930s, it was 11 percent.
During the same period, out-of-wedlock births among whites was 3 percent;
today, it is over 30 percent. It is fashionable and politically correct to
blame today's 21 percent black poverty on racial discrimination. That is
nonsense. Why?
The poverty rate among black husband-and-wife families has been
in the single digits for more than two decades. Can anyone produce evidence
that racists discriminate against black female-headed families but not black
husband-and-wife families?
For most people, education is one of the steppingstones
out of poverty, and it has been a steppingstone for many black people. Today,
decent education is just about impossible at many big-city public schools where
violence, disorder, disrespect and assaults on teachers are routine. The kind
of disrespectful and violent behavior observed in many predominantly black
schools is entirely new.
Some have suggested that such disorder is part of
black culture, but that is an insulting lie. Black people can be thankful that
double standards, and public and private policies rewarding inferiority and
irresponsibility, were not broadly accepted during the 1920s, '30s, '40s and
'50s. There would not have been the kind of intellectual excellence and
spiritual courage that created the world's most successful civil rights
movement.
Many whites are ashamed, saddened and guilt-ridden by our
history of slavery, Jim Crow and gross racial discrimination. They see that
justice and compensation for that ugly history is to hold their fellow black
Americans accountable to the kind of standards and conduct they would never
accept from whites. That behavior and conduct is relatively new.
Meet with
black people in their 70s or older, even liberal politicians such as Charles
Rangel (age 90), and Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson (85), Alcee Hastings (83) and
Maxine Waters (82). Ask them whether their parents would have tolerated their
assaulting and cursing of teachers or any other adult. I bet you the rent money
their parents and other parents of that era would not have accepted the grossly
disrespectful behavior seen today among many black youngsters who use foul
language and racial epithets at one another.
These older blacks will tell you
that, had they behaved that way, they would have felt serious pain in their
hind parts. If blacks of yesteryear would not accept such self-destructive
behavior, why should today's blacks accept it?
Black people have made tremendous gains over the years
that came as a result of hard work, sacrifice and a no-nonsense approach to
life. Recovering those virtues can provide solutions to many of today's
problems.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of
economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams
and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit
the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
