Most accusations of racial inequality today point to issues of wealth inequality such as overall wealth, income, education level, unemployment, etc. Thus, the key part of the answer to racial equality is that Black people in our country need better jobs (and education).
Some argue that this is not happening enough because of an inherent racism that exists in the USA. A country, like people, are not inherently racist; it is a learned behavior and great work has been done in the past to effectively change attitudes and eliminate all major forms of institutional type racism in our country and others (residual effects excluded). One need only look at themself and around themself for proof of that (i.e. no slavery, no Jim Crow, etc.). The many white people today simply do not sit around looking for ways to make life harder for Black people.
So, why are Black people today still not doing as well as white people? The answer is much more likely due to where a person lives and the public policy of that area. Residual effects of racism play a role as well.
Many of our major cities and their suburbs still have large concentrations of Black people from earlier migrations. Over 38% of the US Black population lives in the top 20 most populated cities and their two largest surrounding counties alone today. Further, these regions are approximately 90% politically controlled by the Democratic Party.
The economic and social policies Democrats implement are destructive and the fact that they exercise political and economic control over such a large portion of the Black community means they command a strong negative influence over the economic welfare of Black people in our country. Residual effects of racism such as the economic “lag” or the lack of accrued wealth due to slavery and Jim Crow as well as redlining are at play here as well.
Democrats have favored short-term economic policies such as massive welfare programs with high taxes versus improving job creation in the private sector where economic growth is largely made. The long-term effects of this policy choice have been lower wealth and higher unemployment for Black people as the results show in our cities and surrounding suburbs. They’re in bad shape. Combine this with the Republicans who have aided in outsourcing many jobs from our cities (and country) and the results for Black people (and all Americans) have been bad.
Most relevant to today, higher rates of our urban/suburban Black citizens with low-paying jobs or unemployment makes more Black people vulnerable to crime. This is characteristic for any person in poverty and it attracts police attention. This is the reason why we see more negative incidents of Black people with police in our country and crime as a whole. This is not a racist plot as some assert but a predictable result of poverty.
Moving forward, our goal is to get more quality jobs (and education) to our Black citizens, especially in our major cities and suburbs. This can only be done when taxes are friendlier for businesses (particularly for our small and medium-sized businesses); the police must be permitted to remove the criminals from our streets; education must improve; and a retailoring of our international trade policy that requires our businesses to maintain more of their manufacturing and technical jobs in the USA as well.
With these changes, the issue of wealth inequality and many of the issues of poverty we now see; crime, unemployment, negative police encounters, etc., will also be significantly reduced. If the same doctrine of high taxes, exporting jobs, and blaming a racism that does not exist; our Black communities will needlessly continue to suffer.
Joseph Cesca writes from Westminster.
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