Jason Riley speaks truth to power.....as usual.....
A Better Direction for Black Lives Matter
Rather than scapegoat police, why not focus on bad schools and job-killing regulations?
Marching in San Francisco’s Pride Parade, June 25. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
By
Jason L. Riley
June 27, 2017 7:04 p.m. ET
517 COMMENTS
Will Black Lives Matter soon suffer the fate of other separatist “black power” movements in the 1920s and 1960s, which captured America’s attention for a period but ultimately did little to help advance the black underclass?
The Black Lives Matter movement got its start after George Zimmerman’s 2013 acquittal for fatally shooting Trayvon Martin and found its footing a year later when Michael Brown was shot dead after attacking a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. By 2016, BLM activists were being hosted by President Obama and disrupting campaign events for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Today, major news organizations such as National Public Radio and the Washington Post turn to BLM representatives for comment on race-related stories.
An obituary for a movement that has become so prominent so fast seems premature, but a recent BuzzFeed article that included interviews with dozens of BLM-linked activists was pessimistic about the group’s future. Factions have formed, infighting is common and objectives are unclear. “Black Lives Matter is still here. Its groups are still organizing. But Black Lives Matter is on the verge of losing the traction and momentum that sparked a national shift on criminal justice policy,” wrote reporter Darren Sands. And “activists largely agreed that the identity of the movement, its existential purpose and aim, remains unresolved.”
Some BLM leaders want to integrate political institutions further. Others want the organization to expand its focus to immigrants’ rights. Still others want to create a society “free from pain being inflicted on it by police, racist structures, and capitalism.” Apparently, there are places in the world where blacks living in noncapitalist societies are thriving in comparison with their U.S. brethren.
On a certain level, the decision by BLM activists to single out policing as a major obstacle to black advancement has always defied comprehension. Police shootings have fallen dramatically in recent decades. In New York City, for example, cops shot 314 people in 1971, 93 of them fatally. In 2015, New York police shot 23 people, killing eight. Which means that police shootings and fatalities in the nation’s most populous city have declined by more than 90% over the past 4½ decades. A 2016 paper released by Harvard economist Roland Fryer examined the use of force by police since 2000 in some of the country’s largest urban areas and found that “blacks are 23.8 percent less likely to be shot at by police relative to whites.”
In theory, there is no reason these activists couldn’t play a more useful role in helping blacks overcome obstacles and take advantage of opportunities that were unavailable to previous generations. But that would mean abandoning nonsensical narratives that scapegoat law enforcement for high black crime rates and instead picking more substantive fights with fellow progressives.
Why not side with the hundreds of thousands of black children nationwide who linger on waiting lists for charter schools that have a proven record of narrowing the achievement gap? Why side with progressive politicians who stunt the growth of charters out of deference to powerful teachers unions that oppose school choice?
A University of Illinois at Chicago paper released earlier this month reports that 85% of black teenagers in Chicago are out of work, versus 73.4% of whites. Among 20- to 24-year-olds, the black jobless rate is 60%, or more than double the rate for comparable whites. In 2014, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel approved legislation that raises the minimum wage in increments by more than 57% by 2018. Studies have long shown that younger and less experienced workers are particularly sensitive to rises in the wage floor. And even minimum-wage hikes that don’t put people out of work can leave them worse off.
A new National Bureau of Economic Research report looked at the consequences of Seattle’s decision to raise its minimum wage to $13 last year from $9.47 in 2015. The researchers concluded that the increase “reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3 percent. Consequently, total payroll fell for such jobs, implying that the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage employees’ earnings by an average of $125 per month in 2016.” When are BLM activists going to take the Democrats to task for promoting policies that harm minority workers disproportionately? When the unemployment rate for black teens reaches 100%?
Of course, improving educational and employment prospects for the black underclass would lower black crime rates and thus go a long way toward reducing encounters with police, the goal that is so near and dear to the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s a win-win, but first the activists have to decide whether the real goal is to help black people or to help themselves.
Appeared in the June 28, 2017, print edition.
A Better Direction for Black Lives Matter
Rather than scapegoat police, why not focus on bad schools and job-killing regulations?
Marching in San Francisco’s Pride Parade, June 25. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
By
Jason L. Riley
June 27, 2017 7:04 p.m. ET
517 COMMENTS
Will Black Lives Matter soon suffer the fate of other separatist “black power” movements in the 1920s and 1960s, which captured America’s attention for a period but ultimately did little to help advance the black underclass?
The Black Lives Matter movement got its start after George Zimmerman’s 2013 acquittal for fatally shooting Trayvon Martin and found its footing a year later when Michael Brown was shot dead after attacking a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. By 2016, BLM activists were being hosted by President Obama and disrupting campaign events for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Today, major news organizations such as National Public Radio and the Washington Post turn to BLM representatives for comment on race-related stories.
An obituary for a movement that has become so prominent so fast seems premature, but a recent BuzzFeed article that included interviews with dozens of BLM-linked activists was pessimistic about the group’s future. Factions have formed, infighting is common and objectives are unclear. “Black Lives Matter is still here. Its groups are still organizing. But Black Lives Matter is on the verge of losing the traction and momentum that sparked a national shift on criminal justice policy,” wrote reporter Darren Sands. And “activists largely agreed that the identity of the movement, its existential purpose and aim, remains unresolved.”
Some BLM leaders want to integrate political institutions further. Others want the organization to expand its focus to immigrants’ rights. Still others want to create a society “free from pain being inflicted on it by police, racist structures, and capitalism.” Apparently, there are places in the world where blacks living in noncapitalist societies are thriving in comparison with their U.S. brethren.
On a certain level, the decision by BLM activists to single out policing as a major obstacle to black advancement has always defied comprehension. Police shootings have fallen dramatically in recent decades. In New York City, for example, cops shot 314 people in 1971, 93 of them fatally. In 2015, New York police shot 23 people, killing eight. Which means that police shootings and fatalities in the nation’s most populous city have declined by more than 90% over the past 4½ decades. A 2016 paper released by Harvard economist Roland Fryer examined the use of force by police since 2000 in some of the country’s largest urban areas and found that “blacks are 23.8 percent less likely to be shot at by police relative to whites.”
In theory, there is no reason these activists couldn’t play a more useful role in helping blacks overcome obstacles and take advantage of opportunities that were unavailable to previous generations. But that would mean abandoning nonsensical narratives that scapegoat law enforcement for high black crime rates and instead picking more substantive fights with fellow progressives.
Why not side with the hundreds of thousands of black children nationwide who linger on waiting lists for charter schools that have a proven record of narrowing the achievement gap? Why side with progressive politicians who stunt the growth of charters out of deference to powerful teachers unions that oppose school choice?
A University of Illinois at Chicago paper released earlier this month reports that 85% of black teenagers in Chicago are out of work, versus 73.4% of whites. Among 20- to 24-year-olds, the black jobless rate is 60%, or more than double the rate for comparable whites. In 2014, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel approved legislation that raises the minimum wage in increments by more than 57% by 2018. Studies have long shown that younger and less experienced workers are particularly sensitive to rises in the wage floor. And even minimum-wage hikes that don’t put people out of work can leave them worse off.
A new National Bureau of Economic Research report looked at the consequences of Seattle’s decision to raise its minimum wage to $13 last year from $9.47 in 2015. The researchers concluded that the increase “reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3 percent. Consequently, total payroll fell for such jobs, implying that the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage employees’ earnings by an average of $125 per month in 2016.” When are BLM activists going to take the Democrats to task for promoting policies that harm minority workers disproportionately? When the unemployment rate for black teens reaches 100%?
Of course, improving educational and employment prospects for the black underclass would lower black crime rates and thus go a long way toward reducing encounters with police, the goal that is so near and dear to the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s a win-win, but first the activists have to decide whether the real goal is to help black people or to help themselves.
Appeared in the June 28, 2017, print edition.
