'Stop Whining'?
by Thomas Sowell
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'Hunger' Hoax
If there was
ever any doubt that the Democrats take the black vote for granted,
that doubt should have been put to rest when Barack Obama told the
Congressional Black Caucus, "Stop whining!"
Have you ever
before heard either a Democratic or a Republican leader tell his
party's strongest supporters, "Stop whining"?
Blacks have
a lot to complain about, not just about this Democratic administration
but about many other Democratic administrations, national and local,
over the years.
Unfortunately,
black voters, like many other voters, often judge by rhetoric, rather
than realities. When it comes to racial rhetoric, the Democrats
outdo the Republicans by miles.
Even Ronald
Reagan, the great communicator, had problems communicating with
black voters, as I pointed out years ago in my book A
Personal Odyssey (pages 274-278).
All this came
back to me during a recent cleanup of my office, which turned up
an old yellowed copy of the New York Times with the following
front-page headline: "White-Black Disparity in Income Narrowed in
80's, Census Shows" (July 24, 1992).
How many people
in the media have pointed out that the black-white income gap narrowed
during the Reagan administration, just as it has widened during
the Obama administration? For that matter, how many Republicans
have pointed it out?
The Reagan
administration did not have any special program to narrow the racial
gap in incomes. The point is that the kinds of policies followed
in the 1980s had that effect, just as the kinds of policies followed
by the Obama administration had opposite effects. But just listening
to rhetoric won't tell you that.
Over the years,
some of the most devastating policies, in terms of their actual
effects on black people, have come from liberal Democrats, from
the local to the national level.
As far back
as the Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression of the
1930s, liberal Democrats imposed policies that had counterproductive
effects on blacks. None cost blacks more jobs than minimum wage
laws.
In countries
around the world, minimum wage laws have a track record of increasing
unemployment, especially among the young, the less skilled and minorities.
It has done the same in America.
One of the
first acts of the Roosevelt administration was to pass the National
Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, which included establishing minimum
wages nationwide. It has been estimated that blacks lost 500,000
jobs as a result.
After that
Act was declared unconstitutional, the Fair Labor Standards Act
of 1938 set minimum wages. In the tobacco industry alone, two thousand
black workers were replaced by machines, just as blacks had been
replaced by machines in the textile industry after the previous
minimum wage law.
Fortunately,
the high inflation of the 1940s raised the wages of even unskilled
labor above the level prescribed by the minimum wage law. The net
result was that this law became virtually meaningless, until the
minimum wage rate was raised in 1950.
During the
late 1940s, when the minimum wage law had essentially been repealed
by inflation, 16- and 17-year-old blacks in 1948 had an unemployment
rate of 9.4 percent, slightly lower than that of whites the same
ages and a fraction of what it would be in even the boom years after
the minimum wage rate kept getting increased by liberal Democrats.
Urban
Renewal was another big Democratic liberal idea. It destroyed mostly
low-income minority neighborhoods and replaced them with upscale
housing that the former residents could not afford. People by the
hundreds of thousands were scattered to the winds, destroying community
ties between families, neighbors and local institutions from churches
to family doctors to businesses.
Even when liberal
Democrats try specifically to help blacks, the results often backfire.
The political crusade for "affordable housing" and minority home
ownership drew many blacks into homes they could not afford. The
net result was an especially high rate of foreclosure and, in the
end, black home ownership rates lower than they were before the
"affordable housing" crusade began.
Listening to
political rhetoric often leads to opposite conclusions from those
resulting from checking out hard facts – and not just for blacks.
October
6, 2011
Thomas
Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford
University. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.
To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other
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