Democrats, Republicans and Blacks
Thomas Sowell
No group votes more solidly
for the Democrats than blacks – and no group suffers more as a result than
blacks. Political spin makes Democrats the best friends of blacks, the party of
civil rights laws, the party of affirmative action and the party of social
programs to help the poor in general and blacks in particular. But spin and
facts are very different things. The fact is that a higher percentage of
Republicans than Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965. Despite all the media hype about the confederate
flag flying over the state capitol in
The Democrats' Senator Fritz Hollings, who was governor of
Democrats can claim credit – if that's the word – for all the government social
programs that have played such a role in the disintegration of families. These
programs have done little to reduce poverty. Blacks did more to reduce their
own poverty than the government ever has.
Between 1940 and 1960, the poverty rate among black families fell from 87
percent to 47 percent. Yet there was no major federal civil rights legislation
or welfare state programs created during that period. The continuing rise of
blacks out of poverty during the 1960s, when their poverty rate fell an
additional 17 points, cannot be arbitrarily attributed to the Great Society
programs, since this trend was already decades old before these programs were
created. As for the first decade of affirmative action – the 1970s – the
poverty rate among blacks fell by only one percentage point then.
Education had much to do with the rise of blacks. As of 1940, black adults
averaged just 5 years of schooling. By 1960 that was 8 years and by 1970 it was
10 years. Obviously, doubling your education within one generation tends to
increase your income, regardless of which party is in power or what policies
they follow.
In our own high-tech era, education is even more important. Nothing is more of
a handicap to blacks today than inadequate education. There are many reasons
for these inadequacies. How do the Democrats and Republicans compare, when it
comes to the education of black youngsters?
Democrats are too completely dependent on the teachers' unions to be able to
break the public school monopoly or to get rid of incompetent teachers or even
to insist on the teaching of the basics, instead of the dumbed-own education
and amateur social engineering that the education establishment likes.
Republicans have a golden opportunity to offer blacks something that the
Democrats cannot possibly offer – the right of parents to choose where their
own children go to school. Whatever political support there is for vouchers has
come almost exclusively from Republicans. Democrats are totally opposed – and
have to be, if they want to continue getting the millions of dollars
contributed by the teachers' unions.
Another factor in the decline of American education in general and education in
low-income minority communities in particular, is the difficulty of either
punishing or expelling disruptive and violent students who destroy the education
of the other students. Liberal judges have made it literally a federal case
when schools crack down on disruptive and violent students. Who appoints
liberal judges? Usually Democrats, though Republicans have slipped up and
appointed a few as well.
One of the other huge handicaps that black students face is the attitude that
trying to learn is "acting white." Self-destructive as this notion
may be, it is a logical corollary of the social vision that says whitey is out
to get you and it doesn't matter how much you know or how hard you try. Which
party panders to this victimhood vision? Which party
cuddles up with race hustlers like Al Sharpton, who
promote this paranoid tribalism? The Democrats in general and
Al Gore and Hillary Clinton in particular.
These are the facts. But how much weight do facts carry on Election Day.