49 Quotes by Jason L. Riley

Today Asian Americans are the nation’s best-educated and highest-earning racial group. A 2013 Pew study reported that 49 percent of Asians age 25 and older hold bachelor’s degrees, versus 31 percent of whites and 18 percent of blacks. The median household income for Asians is $66,000, which is $12,000 more than white households and double that of black households. Yet Asians have little political clout in the United States.

Instead, as a consequence of racial gerrymandering, “elections nationwide have become more or less permanently structured to discourage politically adventuresome African American candidates who aspire to win political office in majority-white settings.

Yet between 1972 and 2011 – that is, after major civil rights gains, as well as the implementation of Great Society programs – it barely declined, from 32 percent to 28 percent, and remained three times the white rate, which is about what it was in 1972.20.

Even allowing for the existence of discrimination in the criminal justice system, the higher rates of crime among black Americans cannot be denied,” wrote James Q. Wilson and Richard Herrnstein in their classic 1985 study, Crime and Human Nature. “Every study of crime using official data shows blacks to be overrepresented among persons arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for street crimes.” This was true decades before the authors put it to paper, and it remains the case decades later.

So while multiculturalists are busy complaining about teaching methods and civil rights leaders are busy complaining about standardized tests, the Asian kids are busy studying.

Whatever else the election of Barack Obama represented – some have called it redemption, others have called it the triumph of style over substance – it was the ultimate victory for people who believe that black political gains are of utmost importance to black progress in America.

But any candid debate on race and criminality in the United States must begin with the fact that blacks are responsible for an astoundingly disproportionate number of crimes, which has been the case for at least the past half a century.

One reason that returns on black political investment have been so meager is that black politicians often act in ways that benefit themselves but don’t represent the concerns of most blacks.

By 2013 Mississippi had more black elected officials than any other state, but it also continues to have one of the highest black poverty rates in the nation.