By Harold Pease Ph. D

Ferguson, Detroit, Baltimore and now the willful unloading by an angry black man of 15 bullets into a Texas Sherriff who was innocently fueling his automobile.  Each seemingly has one thing in common—pent up anger directed first at their own race and now at law enforcement.  “Black lives matter” some chant but most black homicides are by black perpetrators, not white.  Blacks, we are told, now do half of all murders in the United States.  It seems that the black communities are on fire and it seems driven mostly by young angry black men.

The problem has deeper roots than this.  Well-meaning progressive policies of the last fifty years, most notably those encouraging dependency, have done much to return the blacks to a very real form of slavery.  What is said in this article applies also to other races taking the route of dependency for problem solving, but they are not the focus of the choice of violence as in the above instances.  They have not yet turned on themselves and then upon law enforcement.

Today unemployment for blacks is nearly twice that of whites and for black youth in the inner cities it has been known to soar to as high as 60 percent.  Moreover, the U. S. Census Bureau listed the overall poverty rate in 2011 at 15 percent, but for blacks it was 27.6 percent.  Overall household income was $50,054, but for blacks it was $32,229.  The Heritage Foundation found that “only 56 percent of blacks graduate from high school.”  The average black man has little to hope for in a world where seemingly all other races appear to have much more.

It did not used to be this way.  According to black economist, Walter Williams, prior to the progressive socialist policies of the last 50 years, “black unemployment was lower and blacks were more active in the labor market than they are today.”  In 1910, for example, “71 percent of blacks over nine years of age were employed, compared to 51 percent for whites.”   This trend stayed strong through the 1960’s, “black male labor force participation in every age group was equal to or greater than that of whites,” he says.  Although black schools, prior to the 1960s, were characteristically modest in funding and supplies, they “often produced student bodies with high average IQs and graduated scholars of note.”

Black economist Thomas Sowell, in his book “Education: Assumptions Versus History,” agreed, “In short, no stringent ‘elitism’ is necessary to achieve high-quality education.  It is only necessary to … exclude the tiny fraction (of students) who are troublemakers.”  Black poverty was steadily and noticeable declining.

What destroyed all this?  It was destroyed by the socialist notion that the government will take from those who have and give to those who have less.   The War on Poverty is the philosophy that largely led a race into the same type of dependency that they had worked a hundred years to escape after the Civil War and had made notable advancement.  A trillion dollars a year now feeds this monster—15 trillion since the program was begun by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964; but unfortunately, with no measurable end to poverty as promised.  Statistics show poverty to be proportionally about the same as when the program was begun.

Kurt Williamsen in a article, “Do Progressive Policies Hurt Black Americans?” described how this played out.  Welfare “spending contributed to overall black poverty by encouraging single-parent, female-headed households….  Young black women often had children out of wedlock, beginning a cycle of enduring poverty and welfare, wherein they relied on welfare as a main source of income, as did their children.  Welfare provided more money for young women with fatherless children, on average, than the same young women could have made if they were employed.”  It also destroyed families.  If she got married she would lose the benefits.  Today, ”73 percent of black babies are born to unwed mothers” and well over a third of the race is on welfare.  Unfortunately, “welfare provided an incentive for young black women to raise fatherless children and collect welfare, leading to the epidemic problems with black crime, black schooling, black unemployment and black poverty.”  She may be a fantastic mom but odds of productivity in all these areas is more often improved in a full family setting.

So we return to the angry black young man tempted to use violence against his own race, then against authority to obtain what he wants.   With the media on sight, almost encouraging this activity, he is rewarded in his violence and performs on cue.  And the major point of this column is overlooked.  Have we, in effect, returned our black brother to slavery by setting him up for a dependency that is as real as the slavery of his forefathers?  I think so.

Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.