THE WEIRS TIMES & THE COCHECO TIMES, Thursday, March 29, 2012
31
SOWELL from 9
translate into reality is that the ramifications of so many government policies produce results complete- ly different from what was claimed, or even believed, when these policies were imposed. The poverty rate among blacks was nearly cut in half in the 20 years prior to the 1960s, a record unmatched since then, despite the expansion of welfare state policies in the 1960s. Unemployment among
black 16 and 17-year-old males was 12 percent back in 1950. Yet unemploy- ment rates among black 16 and 17-year-old males has not been less than 30 percent for any year since 1970 -- and has been over 40 percent in some of those years. Not only was unemploy-
ment among blacks in gen- eral lower before the liberal welfare state policies ex- panded in the 1960s, rates of imprisonment of blacks were also lower then, and most black children were raised in two-parent fami- lies. At one time, a higher percentage of blacks than whites were married and working. None of these facts fits liberal social dogmas. While many politicians and “leaders” have claimed
credit for black progress, no one seems to be willing to take the blame for the retrogressions represented by higher unemployment rates, higher crime rates, and higher rates of im- prisonment today. Or for the disintegration of the black family, which sur- vived centuries of slavery and generations of govern- ment-imposed discrimina- tion in the Jim Crow era, but began coming apart in the wake of the expansion of the liberal welfare state and its accompanying so-
cial dogmas. The time is long overdue
to start looking beyond the prevailing political rhetoric to the hard realities.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institu- tion, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell. com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Cre- ators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators.com.
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