Jason Riley’s Latest Challenge to Conventional Wisdom

Posted by Tina

Jason Riley’s latest book, ‘False Black Power’ is featured at ABC News today. The book challenges conventional wisdom about success and failure for blacks in America following the civil war up until today. Riley uses history to make his point:

The progress of blacks after leaving slavery and prior to the civil rights legislation of the 1960s doesn’t receive a lot of attention because it undermines a prevailing and politically useful narrative on the left. That narrative, which is seldom challenged, insists that black underachievement is primarily a function of white racism, that blacks need special favors like affirmative action to improve their lot, and that black integration of political institutions is essential to black advancement. These arguments serve the interest of the people making them, whether those people are racial and ethnic leaders trying to remain influential or political leaders trying to win votes. Still, black history itself offers a compelling counternarrative that ideally would inform our post-Obama racial inequality debates.

The black community, in fact our nation as a whole, would benefit greatly from any shift that might flow from this informative thoughtful book. Consider:

As far back as the late 1800, “American cities typically had thriving black business districts reproducing white America down to the last detail, including excellent schools—Bronzeville, Chicago; the Auburn Avenue district in Atlanta; the Shaw district in Washington, DC; even Harlem before the 1940s.”

In 1865, black entrepreneurs were engaged in just twelve different types of commercial enterprises, which included hairdressing, sailmaking, shopkeeping, shoe repair, and catering. By 1917, blacks would own and operate some two hundred different kinds of businesses as they quit the rural South and headed for nearby cities or urban centers in the North and West.

According to a business directory, there were already around two hundred black businesses operating in twenty-seven different fields in Chicago alone by 1885. A history of the city’s black Bronzeville neighborhood notes that the “rapid growth of the Negro community between 1915 and 1929 was accompanied by expansion in all types of Negro-owned businesses,” from beauty salons and groceries to banks and insurance companies. “In 1938, Negroes in Bronzeville owned and operated some 2,600 business enterprises,” most of which were small retail and service outfits catering to people in less desirable communities.

Do read the excerpt in full, better yet, read the book! Riley, journalist, commentator, author of three books and member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board is also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

The notion that government, set up as a substitute provider in a system that remains in place indefinitely over decades, has been an adequate substitute for an intact family should now be thoroughly debunked. We were warned in 1965 by Daniel Patrick Moynahan (Dem) that the policies of Johnson’s Great Society would be destructive and would lead to dire consequences particularly in the black communities for which it was intended. Unfortunately, politics took precedence over humanity and decency…over family and individual achievement. As my Mom would have said it took precedence over good old common sense!

It’s unconscionable that we have allowed this to continue unchallenged for over fifty years. The social construct that made all of America a powerhouse in terms of human rights, human achievement, and human dignity is the family unit with power vested in the people and their local communities. The black population has been done a great disservice. We must now strive to overcome on a renewed cultural and social front. It will require letting go of old ideas and attitudes to make room for new ones. Mr. Riley may well be one of the strong new voices that will make sure it happens.