Systemic Racism, Police Brutality and All That - Part 2

Introduction – Outcomes and Causes.

If we can agree that systemic disparities exist in economically and socially desirable outcomes like income, wealth, schooling, housing, job satisfaction, career advancement, wholesome family structure, low crime, etc,, can we also agree on the causes of these disparities? It would appear not. In fact, it seems that it is about causes that all or most of the disagreement regarding racial disparities is about.

There are large and persistent racial differences in those desirable outcomes. Specifically black considered as a group exhibit the worst outcomes. But, often, the causes of these disparities are not investigated – the question is never asked. It is just assumed that the disparities are the result of racial discrimination (though that too is mostly left undefined and unexplained).

In the current divisive political environment where the issue of race has been dramatically harnessed to cultivated grievance and resentment, the disparities ae simply assumed to reflect bad attitudes, bad behaviors and perverse historical-system effects (there is a strong element of Marxist ideology running through it, coupling racial injustice with the injustice of capitalism itself). Reference is often made to the “legacy of slavery” – something that recently became insidiously present in the 1619 Project published by the New York Times and is quietly entering the popular consciousness and the high school curriculum in places.[1]

No, it is not the “legacy of slavery”.

Before proceeding, let me note some salient historical facts. The troubles commonly associated with black lives in America today did not begin with slavery, with emancipation or with Jim Crow. They began in the 1960’s, during the civil rights era. They are the legacy of the liberal policies enacted at that time and of the war of drugs begun a little earlier. These served to slow the dramatic progress that black Americans had been making from the abolition of slavery until that point in time. We see this in al of the relevant evidence about desirable outcomes like education, wealth, housing, and low crime. This can be easily verified by consulting the relevant statistics. To hear Thomas Sowell talk about it, listen to this excerpt from an interview here. So in an important way, these disparities are not the result of widespread racist intent, or even anticipation.[2]

In 1960 approximately 80 percent of black families were headed by two married parents. Today the number is approximately 20 percent, about 80 percent of black children are brought up in young single parent household. In particular fatherhood is rare. Families are dysfunctional and unstable, with predictable psychological effects on children. In examining black lives and how to make them better it is imperative to exam the causes of this.

The same is true of educational quality and achievement. Dating from the abolition of forced  school segregation until now, schooling for black children has continued to deteriorate and is now absolutely abysmal in the poorest districts. The abolition of forced segregation was morally and legally desirable, but its replacement with forced integration has been a total disaster, making black education significantly worse than it was before Brown v. Board of Education.

And the same is true of black crime. Until the escalation of crime from the 1960’s onwards, many the high-crime black neighborhoods of the country were not that different from their lower crime surroundings. Harlem was a place accessed by subway and frequented by many white people without fear – to go ballroom dancing, attend restaurants, etc.

The pattern is clear.,

Despite all this, racial justice warriors cling to the myth that slavery is to blame for a large portion of the racial disparities that exist. They embed it in the narrative of progressive, post-modern, anti-colonialist, Marxist inspired, jargon to suggest that prosperity in America has been achieved in large part on the backs of the slaves, and the quasi slaves that followed under the system of "oppressive capitalism." (see the 1619 Project).  

[1] The 1619 Project is a horribly distorted ideologically loaded work. See Magness here and here and 1776unites.

[2] There is some evidence that in enacting the ‘war of drugs’ the Nixon administration was aware of the effect it would have in marginalizing black Americans and considered that a feature if not the objective of policy. No president since Nixon has used the knowledge of this to even come close to suggesting decriminalizing drugs, probably for fear of widespread opposition, opposition which surely cannot be all about marginalizing and victimizing black Americans. It seems most Americans consider the drug war to have other “noble” objectives.