By Walter E. Williams | Townhall.com
Source: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
I was a teenager, growing up in the Richard Allen housing
project of North Philadelphia, when Emmett Till was lynched in Money,
Mississippi, on Aug. 28, 1955, and his brutalized, unrecognizable body later
recovered from the Tallahatchie River. From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred
in the United States. Roughly 73%, or 3,446, were black people, and 27%, or
1,297, were white people. Many whites were lynched because they were
Republicans who supported their fellow black citizens and opposed the lawless
act of lynching. Tuskegee University has the best documentation of
lynching. It records an 1892 high of 69 whites and 161 blacks lynched. By
the 1940s, occurrences of lynching fell to single digits or disappeared
altogether.
At the time of my youth, today's opportunities for
socioeconomic advancement were nonexistent for black people. For all but a few,
college attendance was out of the question because of finances and racial
discrimination. If you were not admitted to the black colleges of Lincoln
University or Cheyney State College, forget about college. I do not know of any
student of my 1954 class at Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin High School who
attended college. Though the quality of education at Benjamin Franklin is a
mere shadow of its past, today roughly 17% of its graduating class has been
admitted to college. The true hope for a youngster graduating from high
school during the 1950s was a well-paying and steady job. My first
well-paying job was as a taxi driver for Yellow Cab Company.
Younger black people today have no idea of and have not
experienced the poverty and discrimination of earlier generations. Also, the
problems today's black people face have little or nothing to do with poverty
and discrimination. Political hustlers like to blame poverty and racism while
ignoring the fact that poverty and racism were much greater yesteryear but
there was not nearly the same amount of chaos.
The out-of-wedlock birth rate among blacks in
1940 was about 11%; today, it is 75%. Black female-headed
households were just 18% of households in 1950, as opposed to about
68% today. In fact, from 1890 to 1940, the black marriage rate was slightly
higher than that of whites. Even during slavery, when marriage was forbidden,
most black children lived in biological two-parent families. In New York
City, in 1925, 85% of black households were two-parent households. A study of
1880 family structure in Philadelphia shows that three-quarters of black
families were two-parent households.
There's little protest against the horrible and dangerous
conditions under which many poor and law-abiding black people must live. It is
not uncommon for 50 black people to be shot over a weekend in Chicago -- not
by policemen but by other black people. About 7,300 black people are
murdered each year, and not by white people or racist cops, but mostly by other
black people. These numbers almost make our history of victimization by
racist lynching look like child's play.
The solutions to the many problems that black Americans
face must come from within our black communities. They will not come
from the political arena. Blacks hold high offices and dominate the politics in
cities such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and
New Orleans. Yet, these are the very cities with the nation's
worst-performing schools, highest crime rates, high illegitimacy rates, weak
family structure and other forms of social pathology.
I am not saying that blacks having political power is the
cause of these problems. What I am saying is that the solution to most of the
major problems that confront black people will not be found in the political
arena or by electing more blacks to high office.
One important step is for black Americans to stop
being "useful tools" for the leftist, hate-America agenda. Many
black problems are exacerbated by guilt-ridden white people. Often, they
accept behavior and standards from black people that they would not begin to
accept from white people. In that sense, white liberal guilt is a form of
disrespect in their relationships with black Americans. By the same token,
black people should stop exploiting the guilt of whites. Let us all keep in
mind that history is one of those immutable facts of life.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of
economics at George Mason University.
_____________
Should Blacks Support Destruction of Charter
Schools?
By Walter E. Williams | Townhall.com
Source: AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli
The academic achievement gap between black and white
students has proven resistant to most educational policy changes. Some say that
educational expenditures explain the gap, but is that true? Look at educational
per pupil expenditures: Baltimore city ranks fifth in the U.S. for per pupil
spending at $15,793. The Detroit Public Schools Community District spends more
per student than all but eight of the nation's 100 largest school districts, or
$14,259. New York City spends $26,588 per pupil, and Washington, D.C., spends
$21,974. There appears to be little relationship between educational
expenditures and academic achievement.
The Nation's Report Card for 2017 showed the following
reading scores for fourth-graders in New York state's public schools:
Thirty-two percent scored below basic, with 32% scoring basic, 27% scoring
proficient and 9% scoring advanced. When it came to black fourth-graders in the
state, 19% scored proficient, and 3% scored advanced.
But what about the performance of students in
charter schools? In his recent book, "Charter Schools and
Their Enemies," Dr. Thomas Sowell compared 2016-17 scores on the New
York state ELA test. Thirty percent of Brooklyn's William Floyd public
elementary school third-graders scored well below proficient in English and
language arts, but at a Success Academy charter school in the same building,
only one did. At William Floyd, 36% of students were below proficient, with
24% being proficient and none being above proficient.
By contrast, at Success Academy, only 17% of
third-graders were below proficient, with 70% being proficient and 11% being
above proficient. Among Success Academy's fourth-graders, 51%
and 43%, respectively, scored proficient and above proficient, while their
William Floyd counterparts scored 23% and 6%, respectively. It's worthwhile
stressing that William Floyd and this Success Academy location have the same
address.
Similar high performance can be found in the Manhattan
charter school KIPP Infinity Middle School among its sixth-, seventh- and
eighth-graders when compared with that of students at New Design Middle School,
a public school at the same location. Liberals believe integration is a
necessary condition for black academic excellence. Public charter schools such
as those mentioned above belie that vision. Sowell points out that only 39% of
students in all New York state schools who were recently tested scored at the
"proficient" level in math, but 100% of the students at the Crown
Heights Success Academy tested proficient. Blacks and Hispanics constitute
90% of the students in that Success Academy.
In April 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported that 57%
of black and 54% of Hispanic charter school students passed the statewide ELA
compared to 52% of white students statewide. On the state math test, 59% of
black students and 57% of Hispanics at city charter schools passed as opposed
to 54% of white students statewide.
There's little question that many charter schools provide
superior educational opportunities for black youngsters. Here is my
question: Why do black people, as a group, accept the attack on charter
schools?
John Liu, a Democratic state senator from Queens, said
New York City should "get rid of" large charter school networks.
State Sen. Julia Salazar, D-Brooklyn, said, "I'm not interested in
privatizing our public schools." New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio
explicitly campaigned against charter schools saying: "I am angry about
the privatizers. I am sick and tired of these efforts to privatize a precious
thing we need -- public education. The New York Times article went on to
say, "Over 100,000 students in hundreds of the city's charter schools
are doing well on state tests, and tens of thousands of children are on waiting
lists for spots."
One would think that black politicians and civil rights
organizations would support charter schools. The success of many charter
schools is unwelcome news to traditional public school officials and teachers'
unions. To the contrary, they want to saddle charter schools with the same
procedures that make so many public schools a failure. For example, the NAACP
demands that charter schools "cease expelling students that public schools
have a duty to educate." It wants charter schools to "cease to
perpetuate de facto segregation of the highest performing children from those
whose aspirations may be high but whose talents are not yet as obvious." Most
importantly, it wants charter schools to come under the control of teachers'
unions.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of
economics at George Mason University.
