Tuesday, September 09, 2014
Please Stop Helping Us - Walter E. Williams
At Townhall.com, Walter E. Williams writes about some of Jason Riley's new book:
"While reading the first chapter of Jason Riley's new book, 'Please Stop Helping Us,' I thought about Will Rogers' Prohibition-era observation that 'Oklahomans vote dry as long as they can stagger to the polls.' Demonstrative of similar dedication, one member of Congress told Vanderbilt University political scientist Carol Swain that 'one of the advantages and disadvantages of representing blacks is their shameless loyalty. ... You can almost get away with raping babies and be forgiven. You don't have any vigilance about your performance.' In my opinion, there appear to be no standards of performance low enough for blacks to lose their loyalty to their black political representatives.
Riley says that between 1970 and 2001, the number of black elected officials skyrocketed from fewer than 1,500 to more than 9,000, but black poverty has remained roughly the same. Between 1940 and 1960, when black political power was virtually nonexistent, the black poverty rate fell from 87 percent to 47 percent."
