Five and half years into the Obama Presidency, the problems plaguing black people (and their neighbors) haven't disappeared, and in fact appear to be about the same as they've been on average over the last 40 years or so.

This has created an ever greater demand for ever more detailed explanations for why this is all White People's Fault. Thus, Ta-Nehisi Coates has become the go-to guy for Glenn Beck-like deep dives into old books to explain why History demonstrates that white people are at fault for black people being poor.

The Case for Reparations Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole. Ta-Nehisi Coates

Please keep in mind, however, that acceptable History is extremely circumscribed. History began in 1619. Nothing about African people in Africa before the arrival of white people is admissible. A book like John Reader's illuminating Africa: A Biography of the Continent is simply not to be considered. Instead, Africans were a blank slate solely written upon by white people.

Also, you may have noticed that liberals, black and white, have dominated racial policy in the United States for the last half century or so. Well, that's not History, either.

For example, much of Coates' article is devoted to Chicago real estate, a topic about which I know a little. But Coates' history mostly peters out about the time liberals took charge of housing policy.

Alyssa Katz, an NYU journalism professor and contributor to Mother Jones, published a fascinating history, Our Lot, a half decade ago that explained, among much else, what liberalism did to Chicago's housing. From my 2009 review in VDARE: