It's not just
the Baltimore riots; that city is only the latest in the USA to see rioting that is so obviously anti-white, charges of police brutality are just a peg on which to hang the real spirit of the riots. And the presence of white agitators among the black mobs only underscores the racialist nature of the political agenda that draws those agitators.
In an effort to save the DNC's skin Obama will inflict another of his Teachable Moments on the American populace. And CNN and other of his media sycophants will try to shift all the blame for Baltimore onto Al Sharpton and other black demagogues. But Obama has done everything to encourage race-baiters and he's done it well.
All the race baiting in the world can't cover up the fact that many moons ago black American leaders, in league with white Democratic Party bosses, made a horrifically bad strategic mistake. Not for themselves, of course. They cleaned up, although they were the only ones who did among their target audience. They sold American blacks on the idea that before they could climb the economic ladder, first they had to gain political power in the USA.
In 2012 Jason Riley, at the time a member of the Wall Street Editorial Board -- and a black American, I might add -- put paid to the myth. So this is a good time to pull the editorial from the WSJ archive and feature it here, in full. I hope the DNC chokes on it.
But before turning over the floor to Riley I have one criticism of his editorial. I was going to write him at the time of its publication to alert him that he missed a group of black Americans, perhaps because the history of the Nation of Islam has been so greatly distorted and he would be too young to have personally observed the group at the time I did.
I don't know how it was with the Chicago branch of the sect but I saw with my own eyes what NOI members in New York City were like in the early 1970s. I'm sorry to offend the Christian crusaders among my readers but those Muslims were Norman Rockwell's America in blackface. They embodied the small town values that are the backbone of this country
But they took one listen to the New York Democratic Party bosses and reminded each other, 'Never believe a word the white man tells you and especially never believe what a Yankee says.'
So instead of buying into the rap that politics was the route, they looked at how the Jewish immigrants did it. Then they taught themselves the rudiments of business and started small businesses. I can still remember Shabazz bean pies; they were delicious.
There were a lot of business failures; it was a steep learning curve for people who'd come from farms. But they kept at it and again, did what the Jews did; they pooled their money and supported each other. They also refused welfare.
In that way they pulled themselves up out of grinding poverty.
Moreover, you couldn't find better neighbors, no matter what your color. They kept to themselves but they were unfailingly polite. And there was no such thing as a NOI teen on drugs, getting pregnant out of wedlock, or commiting a crime. Or failing in school.
That also meant the NOI children were saved from the drug plague that swept New York City. It was downright Biblical.
But the DNC doesn't like to talk about that history. Neither does the RNC, by the way. When it came to dealing with the Black Problem, Republican politicians preferred to get along and go along with the Democratic machine in New York. And of course neither party liked Muslims in those days.
For Blacks, the Pyrrhic Victory of the Obama Era
Minorities do better to focus on economic gains, not political success.
By JASON L. RILEY
November 4, 2012 - 6:43 p.m. EST
The Wall Street Journal
There has been much dispute in recent weeks about the accuracy of the presidential polls, but you don't need a political scientist to tell you that Barack Obama can count on strong black support come Nov. 6.
Four years ago, 95% of black voters went for
Mr. Obama, and he is likely to win something approaching that percentage in his re-election bid, notwithstanding economic data showing that blacks have lost ground on his watch.
When the president assumed office, unemployment was 12.7% for blacks and 7.1% for whites. Today it is 14.3% for blacks and 7% for whites, which means that the black-white employment gap has not merely persisted under Mr. Obama but widened.
No matter. The president's approval rating among African-Americans is pushing 90%, and a Washington Post/ABC News tracking poll last week found that 97% of blacks plan to double down on him in this election. Racial pride surely plays some part in these attitudes, as does traditional black support of Democratic presidential candidates over the past four decades.
But another factor is the abiding belief among civil-rights leaders that political activity is essential for black upward mobility.
Long after the passage of landmark civil-rights legislation, black leaders have continued to focus on integrating political institutions to redress social and economic problems. Demands for black access to the ballot have morphed into demands for "safe" black seats in Congress and "proportionate" representation among elected officials. Mr. Obama's victory in 2008 was the ultimate realization of this thinking.
The Rev. C.T. Vivian, a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr., told Obama biographer David Remnick that King was a "prophet," and the "politician of our age, who comes along to follow that prophet, is Barack Obama. Martin laid the moral and spiritual base for the political reality to follow."
But the historical reality for other racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. is that political success has not been necessary for economic advancement. Germans were a third of the population in colonial Pennsylvania yet studiously avoided public office. Only after Germans had risen economically did they begin to distinguish themselves in politics. The impoverished Eastern European Jews who began arriving here in large numbers in the 1880s made little impact politically until well after they had established themselves economically.
Conversely, the Irish enjoyed tremendous political success in the latter part of the 19th century, yet they experienced a slower rise from poverty than Germans, Jews, Italians and other groups. "The Irish were fiercely loyal to each other," notes economist Thomas Sowell, who has spent decades tracing the history of racial and ethnic populations.
"This had little effect on the average Irish-American, who began to reach economic prosperity in the 20th century at about the same time when the Irish political machines began to decline."
Today, Asian-Americans are the nation's best-educated and highest-earning racial group. According to a Pew study released earlier this year, 49% of Asians age 25 and older hold bachelor's degrees, compared with 31% of whites and 18% of blacks. The median household income for Asians is $66,000, which is $12,000 more than white households and double that of black households.
As with other groups, political clout has not been a precondition of Asian socioeconomic advancement.
There are a handful of prominent Asian-American politicians today, including Govs. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Nikki Haley of South Carolina, but Asians have tended to avoid politics compared with other groups. Between 1990 and 2000, for example, the number of elected officials grew by 23% for blacks but only by 4% for Asians. In 2008, Asians were significantly less likely than both blacks and whites to have voted.
The election of Barack Obama four years ago gave blacks bragging rights, but bragging rights can't close the black-white achievement gap in education or increase black labor-force participation or reduce black incarceration rates. A civil-rights leadership that encourages blacks to look to politicians to solve these problems is doing a disservice to the people they claim to represent.
Asians, for their part, can point to an out-of-wedlock birthrate of just 16%, the lowest of any major group and a significant factor in Asian success. The black illegitimacy rate last year was 72%. Might it be that having a black man in the Oval Office is less important for black advancement than having one in the home?
The political scientists tell us that Mr. Obama will almost certainly need every black vote he can muster on Election Day. Less certain is whether blacks need him.
[END OP-ED]
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