Category Archives: blacks

Poor Education Is a Large Barrier to Black Progress

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My last post, “Racism and Black Progress,” pointed out that, despite all of the racial tension in our society, especially bad at the present time, blacks have made much social and economic progress over the past half century.  All Americans of good will want this progress to continue.
I live in Omaha NE and am personally involved in a very promising public initiative to improve educational outcomes in inner city schools.  It is called the Learning Community and is an Omaha metro-wide effort to close the academic achievement gap between children from low-income families and those from the middle class.
Capture6The above chart shows clearly what the problem is.  Already in third grade FRL (free and reduced priced lunch) kids are behind on the NeSA (Nebraska State Assessment) reading test.  The gap persists into middle school and then gets much worse in high school.
Capture23A recent article in the Omaha World Herald reports that while black students make up 25% of Omaha Public Schools enrollment, they are responsible for 55% of disciplinary incidents.  Obviously, disruptive students are not learning what they need to know to succeed in school and in life.
A promising solution to this very difficult problem of improving educational outcomes for inner city students is early childhood education to prepare these kids to succeed in Kindergarten and then stay in school until graduation.  This is in fact the approach being taken by Omaha’s Learning Community.  But it is clearly a long range program which will take many years to show success.
Conclusion. A solid basic education is essential for success in today’s highly complex society.  Blacks will never reach full social and economic equality with whites until they achieve better educational outcomes.  Early childhood education has much promise in closing the academic achievement gap but will take many years to show significant progress.

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Racism and Black Progress

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At this time of heightened racial tensions in the U.S. it is worthwhile to step back and take a broader view of the economic and social status of blacks in America. The Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson has done just this in a recent column. As pointed out by Mr. Samuelson blacks have made much progress since the 1960s:

  • Poverty. Black poverty has dropped from 39.3% in 1967 to 26.2% in 2014, which was still double the white rate of 12.7%
  • Education. In 1950 only 13.7% of adult blacks had completed high school. By 2014 this had jumped to 86.7%. Over the same period the percentage of black adults with a four year college degree jumped from 2.2% to 22.8%. The corresponding percentage for whites in 2014 is 36%.
  • Upward Mobility. The black upper middle class (with incomes of $100,000 or more, inflation adjusted) has grown form 2.8% of households in 1967 to 13% in 2014. For the U.S. population as a whole it is now 31%.
  • Politics. In 1965, when the voting rights act was passed, there were five blacks in Congress, now there 46. Over the same time period, the number of black state legislators grew from 200 to 700.
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  • Life Expectancy. The life expectancy gap between blacks and whites shrank from 8 years in 1970 to 5 years in 2010.

Conclusion. Most people understand that life for blacks in America is more difficult than it is for whites. On the whole American society is trying to help blacks lift themselves up to be able to enjoy a more prosperous and satisfying life.  Much progress has been made in this respect in the last half-century but there is clearly still a long way to go in achieving full equality with white America. In my next post I will discuss one of the biggest barriers which remain in achieving equality between races.

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Black Lives Matter

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I describe myself as a fiscal conservative with a social conscience. Most of the time I discuss issues like slow economic growth and excessive national debt.  But occasionally, like today, I deal with related issues such as social inequality.
Capture11Last fall I had a post entitled, “Why Racism Exists in America” in which I made the case that it’s not just our different skin color which divides blacks and whites, but also the large degree of social inequality between the two races, such as disparities in family structure and education levels as well as for income levels.
Capture10Today I am pleased to refer to an article in yesterday’s New York Times, “Black Americans See Gains in Life Expectancy.”  In fact, the black-white life expectancy gap has dropped from 7 years in 1990 to 3.4 years today.  This is for a multitude of reasons:

  • The suicide rate for black men has declined from 1999 to 2014, the only racial group to show such a drop.
  • Births to black teenage mothers, who tend to have higher infant mortality rates, have dropped by 64% since 1995, faster than for whites.
  • The rate of deaths by homicide for blacks decreased by 40% from 1995 to 2013, compared with a 28% drop for whites.
  • The death rate from cancer fell by 29% for blacks over the same period, compared with 20% for whites.
  • Smoking has declined faster for blacks than whites and, in fact, blacks now have lower smoking rates than whites.
  • The decline in black deaths from AIDS accounts for a fifth of the narrowing of the mortality gap with whites from 1995 to 2013.

One way that black lives matter is that blacks are living longer! This offers hope that blacks can and will make progress on other fronts as well.

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Are Economics and Social Progress Related to Each Other?

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“Your (last post) is one of the most active and positive that I have read of yours. You do put your time to where your values are. Those of us who see you as too economically focused and ourselves as more humanely concerned need to act as well. Thanks for your focus and attention.”
from a reader of my blog

I am a fiscal conservative and a social moderate. The primary reason I write this blog is because I am so concerned about the fiscal recklessness of our national leaders. Our national debt is much too large and still growing too fast. We need to either cut spending or raise taxes (or do both).
But I am also a social progressive. I voted in favor of Nebraska raising its minimum wage last fall. I support gay marriage as a civil right. I support having Nebraska expand Medicaid in order to cover more low-income people (where Medicaid needs to be fixed is at the federal level).
CaptureThere is in fact a very close connection between having a sound economy and social progress. As the above chart shows, the U.S. ranks very high in both GDP per person and social progress. All of the countries which are most socially progressive also have sound economies. This is not a coincidence.
My last post talks about what society can do to help blacks improve their socio-economic status. This includes improving educational opportunity in the inner city. But improved educational opportunity needs to be closely directed toward improved economic opportunity. This means, for example, having good jobs available for new high school and community college graduates. But this, in turn, means having strong economic growth with intelligent tax and regulatory policies to encourage entrepreneurship and business expansion.
In short, a sound economy is essential for social progress.

Can Omaha Avoid Having Its Own “Ferguson”?

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As racial tensions begin to ease in Ferguson MO, it is natural to inquire about the root causes of this turmoil and how to avoid future recurrences.  Of course, police brutality and public distrust were the triggering events and need to be thoroughly investigated by the proper authorities.
CaptureBut the problem goes deeper than this.  The above chart from Think Progress  demonstrates the very high unemployment rate among black teenagers.  Is it surprising that idle teenagers get into trouble?
Omaha NE, where I live, is not immune to these problems.  In 2011 Nebraska had the worst black homicide rate in the nation at 34.4 per 100,000 population, just ahead of Missouri with a rate of 33.4.  Black unemployment in Omaha is estimated to be 20% compared with Omaha’s overall unemployment rate of 3.8%.
The problem goes still deeper yet.  To be employable, black youths need to become educated, i.e. to stay in school and remain on track to graduate.  This, in turn, means that they need to succeed in school from the very beginning, for example, by being proficient in reading at the end of third grade.
My last post, “Responsibility Goes Along With the “Good Life,” describes steps that are now getting under way in Omaha to turn around this whole vicious downward spiral of destructive black teenage behavior.  The Buffett Early Childhood Institute has put together a long range plan to work with children in poverty from birth to age eight to make sure that they are prepared to succeed in school. It is funded by an annual property tax levy of $5 per $100,000 of assessed valuation throughout the two county metropolitan Omaha area.  With such a local funding source, the program will inevitably receive much public attention.
Nebraska is aware that not all of its residents share in the “Good Life” and is making a conscious effort to find its own solution for a very serious national problem.

The Best Way to Spread the Wealth

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In today’s Wall Street Journal, Stephen Moore discusses how “Obama’s Economy Hits His Voters Hardest.”  A  report by Sentier Research shows that the average American household income has fallen from $54,478 in June 2009 (when the recession ended) to $52,098 in June 2013, amounting to a decline of 4.4%.
Mr. Moore notes that in the 2012 election, won by Barack Obama with 51% of the vote, the President received 60% of the youth vote, 67% of single women, 93% of black, 73% of Hispanics, and 64% of those without a high school diploma.
But, according to Sentier Research, it is precisely these groups for which income has fallen the most during the last four years.  Those under age 25 experienced an income decline of 9.6%, single women’s income dropped 7%, black heads of household’s incomes dropped 10.9%, Hispanic’s by 4.5%, and those without a high school diploma by 6.9%.
On the other hand, during the period 1981 – 2008, often referred to as the Great Moderation, income for black women was up by 81%, followed by white women up 67%, black men up 31% and, finally, white men up only 8%.  In other words, income inequality shrunk dramatically during the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush years and has increased significantly during the Obama years.
The lesson is that in order to spread the wealth it is first necessary to create more wealth.  If more people were working today, and the economy was growing faster, then the people at the bottom of the income scale would be doing much better and gaining on everyone else.  There are tried and true methods to get this done!  It’s exasperating that we aren’t using them!

What Is the Best Way to Advance Martin Luther King’s Dream?

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In Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal John McWhorter, an African-American professor at Columbia University, describes “A Better Way to Honor Dr. King’s Dream”. Mr. McWhorter writes that a new conversation about race, “one in which whites submit to a lesson from blacks about so-called institutional racism” is not what America needs.  “Today’s struggle should focus on three priorities.  First, the war on drugs, a policy that unnecessarily tears apart black families and neighborhoods.  Second, community colleges and vocational education, which are invaluable in helping black Americans get ahead.  And third, the AIDS and obesity epidemics, which are ravaging black communities.”
Such sentiments represent a huge dose of common sense.  The African-American community needs help and cooperation from the wider society to address fundamental issues like juvenile delinquency, poor educational outcomes and unhealthy environments.  But these things, as much as they’re needed, are not enough by themselves for further progress towards racial equality.
The route out of poverty for all low income people, including blacks, is to raise themselves up by their bootstraps through educational attainment and hard work.  Society can and should make sure that the appropriate institutions, such as community colleges, are readily available to provide training for jobs which are out there in the private sector.
But most of all we need a vibrant economy to give lower income Americans more opportunities to work their way up the economic ladder.  We have not yet recovered in a satisfactory manner from the Great Recession which ended in June 2009.  This makes it all the more important for our national leaders to focus on the pro-growth policies which will get our economy humming again.