Fifty years of data show that Democrat policies harm American blacks. All the promises of the post-Civil Rights era have failed. Worse, America’s Democrat leadership, especially its black Democrat leadership, no longer makes even a pretense of serving the needs of the American Black community.

Democrat elites, both white and black, are just like the European Union’s elites: serving themselves — their values and their bank accounts — without no regard for the people they ostensibly represent. Both the Democrats and the EU leadership ride roughshod over ordinary people’s values and ignore their needs. It’s high time, therefore, for American Blacks to have their own Brexit moment — call it a “Blexit” if you will — and turn their backs on the Democrat Party that has served them so badly.

In 1964, you had to give the Democrats credit for adaptability: After spending the late 1950s and early 1960s fighting desperately against the Civil Rights Movement, once it was a done deal they surveyed the landscape and realized that they could use the movement to their advantage. By attaching African Americans firmly to the government teat, Democrats figured that they could rely on a pacified black voting bloc to achieve perpetual political power. Indeed, LBJ is alleged to have made the politically incorrect boast that the Civil Rights act ensured that “I’ll have those n*****s voting Democrat for two-hundred years.”

Sadly, the Great Society legislation that LBJ and his Democrats instituted, while it has ensured those reliable black votes, has continued an American pattern: Every bad thing that has happened to blacks in America has been the result of government forces. Slavery lasted because the Southern legal system brutally supported it. Likewise, the Jim Crow era lasted as long and as virulently as it did because, again, the Southern legal system brutally supported it.

It’s almost certain that, without rigorously enforced laws separating facilities, criminalizing “miscegenation,” and foreclosing education and work opportunities, the free market would have improved black lives in the South. As Milton Friedman explained, in Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition , the free flow of wealth, without legislation and regulation impeding non-violent, non-fraudulent conduct, is the single best and fastest way to end just about any type of discrimination:

It is a striking historical fact that the development of capitalism has been accompanied by a major reduction in the extent to which particular religious, racial, or social groups have operated under special handicaps in respect of their economic activities; have, as the saying goes, been discriminated against. [snip] We have already seen how a free market separates economic efficiency from irrelevant characteristics. As noted in chapter i, the purchaser of bread does not know whether it was made from wheat grown by a white man or a Negro, by a Christian or a Jew. In consequence, the producer of wheat is in a position to use resources as effectively as he can, regardless of what the attitudes of the community may be toward the color, the religion, or other characteristics of the people he hires. (108-109)

Indeed, as Friedman cogently explains, discrimination is economically harmful conduct. In a free society, those pursuing their self-interest will inevitably realize that they must abandon it in order to profit:

The man who exercises discrimination pays a price for doing so. He is, as it were, “buying” what he regards as a “product.” It is hard to see that discrimination can have any meaning other than a “taste” of others that one does not share. We do not regard it as “discrimination” — or at least not in the same invidious sense — if an individual is willing to pay a higher price to listen to one singer than to another, although we do if he is willing to pay a higher price to have services rendered to him by a person of one color than by a person of another. The difference between the two cases is that in the one case we share the taste, and in the other we do not. (110)

Without the Southern government’s institutionalizing discrimination, it’s likely that ordinary people in the South would in a reasonable time have dropped segregation and discrimination in favor of free market profit. No wonder that Frederick Douglass, in the wake of the Civil War, pleaded desperately for blacks to be left alone, free from any government intrusion, whether blatantly harmful or ostensibly helpful:

“What shall we do with the Negro?” I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature’s plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!

The logical thing when the federal government finally destroyed Jim Crow laws would have been to leave blacks alone so that they could freely pursue their economic and personal self-interests.

After all, by the early 1960s, and despite the pernicious effects of discriminatory legislation, the combination of a booming national economy and the stability of the black family meant that American blacks were slowly but steadily ascending the economic ladder:

The black poverty rate had been cut nearly in half between 1940 and 1960. In various skilled trades during the period of 1936-59, the incomes of blacks relative to whites had more than doubled. Further, the representation of blacks in professional and other high-level occupations grew more quickly during the five years preceding the launch of the War on Poverty than during the five years thereafter. [snip] In the mid-1960s, the out-of-wedlock birth rate was scarcely 3% for whites, 7.7% for Americans overall, and 24.5% among blacks. [snip] Throughout the epoch of slavery and into the early decades of the twentieth century, most black children grew up in two-parent households.â€¨ Post-Civil War studies revealed that most black couples in their forties had been together for at least twenty years. In southern urban areas around 1880, nearly three-fourths of black households were husband-or father-present; in southern rural settings, the figure approached 86%. As of 1940, the illegitimacy rate among blacks nationwide was approximately 15%—scarcely one-fifth of the current figure.â€¨ As late as 1950, black women were more likely to be married than white women, and only 9% of black families with children were headed by a single parent.

In sum, blacks were less well-situated than whites in the early 1960s, but their economic prospects were improving and their family situations were stable. This last point was especially important because we know with certainty that a two-parent family, meaning a married man and woman, is the best indicator of a child’s success, with single mothers being a remarkably reliable road to child poverty. Black lives in the early 1960s were by no means as good as they should have been, but they showed every sign of getting better.

With that positive trajectory, it’s likely that American blacks, if left alone would have followed every other demographic group in America toachieve some level of economic success, as well as integration into the greater society. The federal government’s only job should have been as a policeman to ensure that institutions were not systematically discriminating against blacks. The Democrats, however, under LBJ’s guidance went the opposite way, inserting the government into every aspect of black lives. The result is that, in the last 50 years, Democrats have once again subjected blacks to laws and regulations that eat away at their freedom, economic security, safety, and very lives.

In his eye-opening Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America , John McWhorter vividly describes one of the first results of the Great Society legislation: Hordes of idealistic young Democrats (aka, useful idiots) fanned out in black slums and earnestly assured employed black fathers that they should stop working and let the government provide welfare, all as a sort of quid pro quo for forced black labor that ended more than 100 years before. This policy was the stake driven into the heart of black America. It destroyed

This policy was the stake driven into the heart of black America. It destroyed the surest route to economic success — first education, then marriage, and finally children. Suddenly, black dads were extraneous, with Uncle Sam and his welfare check taking their place. Too many black men concluded that the only ways left to prove their worth were to father as many children as possible with as many women as possible, all while violently flexing their muscles in the greater community.

The other major sin Democrats committed against blacks was affirmative action. Affirmative action sounds like such a nice idea on paper: After decades of forcibly holding blacks to the back of the line (and the bus and the classroom), the government could undo that damage by using its coercive force to give blacks a head start in academia and the office place.

It’s possible that affirmative action would have worked if limited to a decade or so. Fifty years later, though, affirmative action has led to two ugly outcomes: academic mismatch, meaning that ambitious black students find themselves incapable of finishing college; and a deep, abiding suspicion in the workplace that any black person in a position of prominence didn’t achieve that position on his or her own merits, a belief that creates a toxic racial atmosphere. This workplace hostility isn’t helped by the fact that employers, fearing discrimination charges, are afraid to fire blacks , a dynamic that gives rational black employees license to slack off. The result, thanks to government mandates, is an increase in black failure rates and anti-black stereotypes in both schools and businesses.

With those damaging trends in mind, let’s visit where are blacks now, 50 years after the Democrats took charge of managing black lives. And do keep in mind that, even during Republican administrations, the Democrat Party has called the shots about directing government programs and funding towards American blacks.

When it comes to marriage, that insulator against poverty, especially child poverty, the news isn’t good:

African Americans age 35 and older were more likely to be married than White Americans from 1890 until sometime around the 1960s. Not only did they swap places during the 60s but in 1980 the number of NEVER married African Americans began a staggering climb from about 10% to more than 25% by 2010 while the percentage for White women remained under 10% and just over 10% for White men.

The fact that blacks aren’t getting married doesn’t mean they’re not having children. They are — children who don’t know their fathers and who may have innumerable siblings, each with a different father. Since 2013, the number being bandied about for black children born out-of-wedlock has been 72% — meaning a staggering 72% of black children are likely to grow up in poverty-stricken single mother households, often with dangerous boyfriends rotating through, leaving the children at grave risk of physical and psychological injury.

Things may be even worse than that 72% number indicates, though. According to a study available on the Social Science Research Network, “Examining the Birth Trends, Family Structure, Economic Standing, Paternal Relationships, and Emotional Stability of Biracial Children with African American Fathers,” the author, Tiffany Calloway, claims that 92% of biracial children with African American fathers are born out-of-wedlock, with 82% of those children ending up on some form of welfare.

Blacks are not faring well when it comes to employment either — especially after 8 years of Barack Obama’s hyper-Progressive, uber-Democrat Party economic policies. Even as the economy has had a sluggish improvement over the last 8 years, blacks lag significantly behind their white counterparts. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ seasonally adjusted numbers for July 2016, the black unemployment rate is double the white unemployment rate, and that’s true for all demographics — men, women, and teens:

% Unemployed Whites 4.3 Men 4.1 Women 3.7 Teens 14.2 Blacks 8.4 Men 8.2 Women 7.3 Teens 25.7

Given the poor job market for blacks, the breakdown of the family, and the incredible number of children without a father in their lives, it’s no surprise, I guess, that too many black Americans are deeply mired in poverty:

According to the 2014 U.S. Census Bureau ACS study (see charts below) 27% of all African American men, women and children live below the poverty level compared to just 11% of all Americans. An even higher percentage (38%) of Black children live in poverty compared to 22% of all children in America. The poverty rate for working-age Black women (26%) which consists of women ages 18 to 64 is higher than that of working-age Black men (21%). Poverty rates for Black families vary based on the family type. While 23% of all Black families live below the poverty level only 8% of Black married couple families live in poverty which is considerably lower than the 37% of Black families headed by single women who live below the poverty line. The highest poverty rates (46%) are for Black families with children which are headed by single Black women. This is significant considering more than half (55%) of all Black families with children are headed by single women.

Those numbers are disgraceful 50 years into the Democrats so-called “Great Society.”

Another factor unique to modern American blacks is something that I call “auto-genocide.” Taking over where race haters such as the KKK and Margaret Sanger left off, American blacks are dispatching themselves and each other with tragic vigor. In certain areas of America, it’s grotesquely true that the most dangerous place for a black child is in its mother’s womb:

In 2012, there were more black babies killed by abortion (31,328) in New York City than were born there (24,758), and the black children killed comprised 42.4% of the total number of abortions in the Big Apple, according to a report by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Given that black abortions accounted for 42.4% of all New York City abortions, it’s worthwhile noting that blacks make up only one-quarter of greater New York City’s population.

This same black auto-genocide plays out on a national scale:

In 2010 the Census report showed African Americans as 12.6% of the population, yet in 2009 the CDC reported African American women accounted for over 35% of all abortions. That’s over 1/3. [snip] In 2009 a total of 286,623 born African Americans died in this country. But that same year there were 1.2 million abortions in this country. If 35% of those were African Americans, that means 420,000 African American unborn children were killed that year by abortion. [snip] If African Americans do not value African American life in the womb, nobody else will do it for us.

When it comes to crime, especially violent crime, the statistics aren’t any better for American blacks. Last November, Breitbart.com compiled some of the statistics showing that black communities are aggressively preying on each other and, sadly, that they also account for a disproportionate number of America’s predators overall:

The reality of gun crime in America is that if one removes blacks from the equation, America’s gun crime falls squarely into the European realm — or at least, the European realm before Mama Merkel’s Muslim experiment. A logical, although politically incorrect question, is whether these numbers mean that blacks are inherently violent. I don’t think so. While it is possible that blacks have a genetic profile that leaves them more inclined to violence than old, inbred, white European cultures (see Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History ),* the endemic crime in American black communities can more easily be explained by Democrat policies.

The set-up for black violence in America is Democrat-run urban enclaves that have doubled-down on policies that ensure (a) fatherless families; (b) no work (e.g., high minimum wage laws); (c) absentee police; and (d) the inability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves. (Regarding that last point, statistical data shows that the single best way to reduce crime is to allow law-abiding citizens to have guns. It turns out that predators prefer hunting prey when that prey cannot protect itself. Predators are mean, but they’re neither stupid nor suicidal.)

Democrat leadership (both white and black) has recently embarked upon a movement that has worsened the crime levels black communities face. I speak, of course, of the Black Lives Matter (“BLM”) movement. Despite compelling data showing that police, given similar circumstances, are less likely, not more likely to shoot blacks than they are to shoot whites, and that police are at greater risk from black men than black men are at risk from police, BLM has used hysterical lies to as a way to infest America’s most troubled inner cities.

Thanks to BLM, beleaguered police are withdrawing from crime-ridden communities and are avoiding policing both small crimes (which the Broken Window theory says need to be policed to prevent escalation) and big, lethal crimes. The results are predictable — increased violence. Back in July, Heather MacDonald addressed the Ferguson Effect in America’s black communities:

Violence in Chicago is reaching epidemic proportions. In the first five months of 2016, someone was shot every 2¹/₂ hours and someone murdered every 14 hours, for a total of nearly 1,400 nonfatal shooting victims and 240 fatalities. Over Memorial Day weekend, 69 people were shot, nearly one per hour, dwarfing the previous year’s tally of 53 shootings over the same period. The violence is spilling over from the city’s gang-infested South and West sides into the downtown business district; even Lake Shore Drive has seen drive-by shootings and robberies. [snip] Through the end of May, shooting incidents in Chicago were up 53 percent over the same period in 2015, which already had seen a significant increase over 2014. Compared with the first five months of 2014, shooting incidents in 2016 were up 86 percent. Shootings in May citywide averaged nearly 13 a day, a worrisome portent for summer.

Since MacDonald wrote the above, Chicago’s gun crime rate has reached staggering proportions not seen since the 1990s, when America’s crime rate was slowly leveling off from peak violence:

Tavon was among more than 400 people shot in Chicago this month. There have been at least 78 homicides, marking August as the most violent month in the city in almost 20 years, according to data provided by the Chicago Police Department. And there are two more days to go. The city hasn’t seen a deadlier month since October of 1997, when there were 79 homicides. For the whole year, the count was 761, according to department numbers. Chicago has recorded 487 homicides and more than 2,800 people shot so far this year, compared to 491 homicides and 2,988 people shot all of last year, according to Tribune data. Chicago has a lower homicide rate than many other U.S. cities that are smaller in population. But this year, the city has recorded more homicides and shooting victims than New York City and Los Angeles combined, even though the two cities are larger than Chicago’s population of roughly 2.6 million. New York, with more than three times the population of Chicago, has recorded 760 shooting victims and logged 222 homicides, according to NYPD crime statistics through Aug. 21. In Los Angeles, a city of about 4 million, 176 people have been slain and 729 people shot, according to LAPD crime data through Aug. 20.

Other black communities across America have also seen a Ferguson effect. BLM has provided ample proof that, despite some really bad apples, the majority of American police are not predators. Instead, they are on the front lines making sure that black lives actually do matter. Notwithstanding this overwhelming empirical evidence, Democrat leadership, both black and white, continues to harass police even as ordinary black citizens, the ones who aren’t showing up at White House gatherings, are dying on the streets and pleading desperately for a stronger police presence in their communities.

Despite the harm they’ve inflicted for decades against blacks, Democrats, both black and white, have a political lock on the poorest cities in America and the most dangerous cities in America. Take, for example, Cleveland.

Michael Goldstein, whose wife, Dr. Beverly A. Goldstein, is running for Cleveland’s seat in Congress. He has compiled a snapshot of the horrible ills more than two decades of Democrat rule, both at the local and the federal level, have visited upon Cleveland (with blacks being most strongly affected):

Cleveland ranks Number 1 in the nation in child hunger [Greater Cleveland Food Bank] and Number 3 in the United States in overall hunger (WRAAA [Western Reserve Area Agency on Aging] website, 2016)

Of the 435 U.S. House Districts, only 14 districts are poorer than District-11 (reported on WTAM AM 1100, March 17, 2016)

Over 21,000 persons in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland area), and over 6,600 persons in Summit County (Akron area), are homeless (2013 Data, Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless website, 2016)

Project ACT of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District identified 4,048 homeless district children attending its schools (Help Line Statistics, August, 2015)

District-11 Median Household Income is $32,014, vs. $48,081 for Ohio as a whole (Ballotpedia website, 2016)

District-11 includes five of the top 20 most affluent communities in Cuyahoga County and three exceptionally affluent communities in Summit County

Unemployment in District-11 is 17.3% (Ballotpedia website, 2016). This includes the district’s most wealthy communities. If these are eliminated from the equation, unemployment in the remaining inner cities and the inner ring suburbs is estimated at about 40%

Cleveland has an extremely high infant mortality rate, 1st in the nation. The black infant mortality rate is 18.1 per 1,000 births, compared to a 4.8 White infant mortality rate (2012-2013 Community Health Status Assessment, Center for Community Solutions website, 2016)

Domestic Violence Incidents – 2013

Total Population of Cuyahoga and Summit Counties: 1,806,970

Total reported Domestic Violence cases: 6,850

Victims with reported injuries requiring hospital visit and/or hospitalization: 3,190 (Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless website, 2016)

As went Cleveland, so went the rest of America’s Democrat run violent and poverty-stricken cities.

There’s a pattern to everything I’ve written above: Consistently, for 50 years now, at both the federal and local levels, white and black Democrat politicians, “community organizers,” and media figures have advanced policies that harm the same black constituencies they claim to protect. Moreover, as the Black Lives Matter movement demonstrates, these white and black Democrat leaders are embracing these policies even though they manifestly harm black constituents.

Here’s exactly where we are now after 50 years of Democrat meddling in black lives:

The greatest protection against poverty is the family, yet Democrats, both white and black, relentlessly push policies that make fathers extraneous and, indeed, cost prohibitive. (A single mom gets more government cash than a woman married to a man with a low-paying job.)

The greatest protection against a child, especially a boy, turning to crime is a father and yet, as noted above, Democrat-sponsored welfare pushes fathers out of the picture. This creates a crime cycle that results in even more men vanish from the home as they end up in prison or the grave. (Per Wikipedia, “Approximately 12–13% of the American population is African-American, but they make up 35% of jail inmates, and 37% of prison inmates of the 2.2 million male inmates as of 2014.”)

One of the most effective ways to reduce violent crime in a community is to allow law-abiding citizens to arm themselves, yet Democrat-run cities have draconian policies denying guns to law-abiding citizens. Black inner cities are living examples of the NRA adage that, “when guns are outlawed, only outlaws have guns.”

One of the surest ways to destroy jobs is to mandate high minimum wages, which protect unions, but which harm workers at the lowest end of the economic scale. Too often, these low-end workers are black, but the Democrat elites, both white and black, push relentlessly for these job-destroying policies in communities in which blacks are already mired in poverty.

A sure way to destroy low-income jobs is to have unlimited immigration, drastically increasing pressure at the low end of the economic scale. This pressure is made worse by illegal aliens, who take payments under the table that are far below what employers can legally pay legal employees. Blacks are hurt most by the pressure of unlimited legal and illegal immigration, yet the Democrat party aggressively supports importing a new generation of slaves into America, just as, in the 19th century, it supported the old, black generation of slaves. Even as blacks unthinkingly give their complete allegiance to the Democrat party, that same party is already lining up their replacements.

Competition is a sure way to improve education, yet Democrats, both black and white (including President Obama), will always back the monopolistic teachers’ unions that are responsible for turning public schools — especially the schools that blacks attends — into dysfunctional institutions that routinely fail black children. These failures consign these same children to a lifetime of low-paying work and, again, to the dangerous but easy option of crime.

Police, more than any other group in America, are responsible for making sure that black lives really do matter because they guard the most dangerous neighborhoods, keeping predators away from law-abiding citizens and helpless children. Yet the Democrats, both black and white, have thrown all their weight behind the Black Lives Movement, without regard to the fact that the movement has resulted in spiraling crime in black communities.

A community that aborts more children than it allows to live is a death cult and a dying community. Yet the Democrats, both black and white, even as they endlessly mouth the piety that “black lives matter,” also work hard to ensure that abortion without limitation (or even protection for the woman having the procedure) continues to be available, especially in black communities.

The Democrats, both black and white, are utterly focused on the blame game. In town halls, state legislatures, Congress, and on television, the litany is endless: To the extent blacks in America suffer, Democrats claim that it’s the whites’ fault, it’s men’s fault, it’s this state’s or that state’s fault, it’s the Constitution’s fault, it’s George Bush’s fault, it’s the Iraq War’s fault, it’s the Republican’s fault, etc. All of this finger-pointing gives Democrats fame and money — but the reality is that blame doesn’t solve problems. Solving problems means analyzing the problem and embarking on a corrective course of conduct. Democrats can’t do this, of course, because they are the problem.

The situation for black Americans is uncannily similar to that of ordinary working class people in Europe. There, the European elite, acting through the European Union, have for decades pursued policies that are offensive or harmful to the people the elite purport to represent. As many commentators noted in the wake of Britain’s dramatic Brexit vote, the British were rejecting a transnational elite that operates under a borderless upper-echelon consensus that utterly fails to serve or protect the people at the mercy of this rarefied leadership. With the Brexit vote, the British finally got fed-up with being kicked around by people who assume that they know best, but whose dictates do nothing to benefit those affected by them and, instead, often hurt them very badly.

Britain was the first to leave the EU, but it won’t be the last. Across Europe, ordinary people in European nations, inspired by Brexit, are planning their own exit movements:

Given the revolutionary mood, with local communities fighting back against the transnational elite that governs them without regard for their needs or for the terrible results of this transnational governance, this is the right time for black Americans to have their own “Exit” moment. They need to tell the Democrat party some hard truths:

“For all your lip service and boasting, you’ve been nothing but harmful to our communities. Every one of your policies has broken up our families, demeaned our men, deprived our children of quality education, and exposed us to endless, poverty, crime, and humiliation. Frederick Douglass was right when he said that the best that Americans can do for the black community is nothing. The more you do, the more we suffer.

“It is time for us to take our destiny into our own hands. It is time for us to reject economic incentives that destroy our families. It is time for us to get educated, get married, and then have children, which is the surest road to economic security — and, ironically, which is the model that the Democrat elite who control our lives follow for themselves but still vigorously oppose for our black communities.

“It is time for us to be able to arm ourselves legally against the predators in our midst.

“It is time for us to stop thinking it’s okay for our women to kill more babies than are born.

“It’s time for us to stop looking outwards for someone or something to blame and to start looking inwards for behavioral changes our communities have to make by themselves if we are to survive and thrive.

“It is time for us to have a Blexit — a black exit from the Democrat party, which takes us for granted and treats us just as badly as the Democrat party did during the long, long years of slavery and Jim Crow.

“Blexit is our Declaration of Independence. We don’t need you, Democrats, and we don’t want you! Don’t count on our votes this November. You don’t deserve them and you won’t get them.

“And maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump — who once earned high praise from black Democrat leaders for giving blacks real jobs — is the answer to our problem. He’s neither a Democrat nor a Republican. He’s not a run-of-the-mill politician who sees government as the only answer. He’s an out-of-the-box thinker who has a reputation for cutting through the politically correct crap that obscures the root causes of real problems and for getting things done.”

_______________________

*It’s worth noting here that one of the most brilliant people I know is a black man and it was he who recommended that I read Wade’s book. It’s equally worth pointing out that this amazing man was raised in a military family and his himself a veteran.

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