Thursday, September 27, 2012
Not a Normal Curve
Is it not at least a little curious that, at the very same time that African-Americans were making their greatest strides economically AND politically, all of the wheels pertaining to family structure and criminality also started coming apart? I mean, think about it. The Civil Rights Act passed in 1964. The Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. And in 1968, the black unemployment rate in Detroit Michigan was 3.4% (as Thomas Sowell has pointed out, the exodus of businesses from the inner-city happened AFTER the riots and not before them). Yes, I understand that Martin Luther King was assassinated also in '68 but you cannot tell me that that alone was justification enough for the riots that followed it....................................................................................................Look, I'm not saying in any sort of declarative manner that the Great Society and welfare state single-handedly caused the disintegration of the black family and an increase in black incarceration. I couldn't, folks, even if I wanted to (the limitations of correlational research, etc.). But to somehow go from that to saying that it's sacrilege to simply ask the liberals to do a modicum of soul-searching themselves, I'm sorry but no.
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17 comments:
Facts speak for themselves Will... Some simply. wear rose colored glasses
Don't ask me why my prior comment posted 7 times. It is either my smart phone or Google. Take your pick.
Les, I think that back in the early '30s, the black unemployment rate was actually lower than the white one. Something definitely went majorly awry in the '60s, I think (maybe the sexual revolution or something).
More likely the Great Society engineered by LBJ.
"...back in the early '30s, the black unemployment rate was actually lower than the white one."
From this source.
"The nation's most devastating economic downturn, the Great Depression, affected blacks more adversely than any other group of Americans. Throughout this economic crisis unemployment rates were considerably higher for blacks than for whites. For example, among male workers in thirteen large cities in 1931 the rate was 31.7 percent for whites and 52 percent for blacks. And in spring 1933 while the general unemployment rate was 25 percent, for blacks it was 50 percent."
Historically black unemployment has been, and continues to be, approximately twice white unemployment.
Prior to the depression really kicking in (maybe I should have said, late '20s), I believe that the black unemployment rate was actually slightly lower.
From HERE.
For the nation as a whole, black and white unemployment rates were about equal as late as 1930. This equality was to a great extent the result of lower rates of unemployment for everyone in the rural South relative to the urban North. Farm owners and sharecroppers tended not to lose their work entirely during weak markets, whereas manufacturing employees might be laid off or fired during downturns. Still, while unemployment was greater for everyone in the urban North, it was disproportionately greater for black workers. Their unemployment rates in Northern cities were much higher than white unemployment rates in the same cities. One result of black migration, then, was a dramatic increase in the ratio of black unemployment to white unemployment. The black/white unemployment ratio rose from about 1 in 1930 (indicating equal unemployment rates for blacks and whites) to about 2 by 1960. The ratio remained at this high level through the end of the twentieth century.
And black unemployment soars to new heights in places like Detroit thanks to unions like the UAW forcing the auto plants to close, move to the Southern states, or flee the country.
According to Amity Shlaes's book, "The Forgotten Man", black unemployment (from the 1930 census) nationally stood at slightly below that of white unemployment. Yeah, I'm sure that you could find some regional differences there but the national rate is the most important one.............And according to Thomas Sowell (his source the U.S. Bureau of the Census, "Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1957" - Washington, D.C. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960 - p. 72), blacks had a slightly higher rate of labor force participation than whites in every census from 1890 to 1950. Yes, these folks made less money than whites and that can be attributed to a number of factors (discrimination probably being one of them), but the fact of the matter is that they worked at the same rate as whites and that something happened in the latter half of the 20th Century to alter that.
Yes, prior to 1930 black and white unemployment were about the same. See the reason why in the first half of my second quote above. Essentially, they were not competing for the same jobs.
And according to the source that Sowell cites, they remained the same for the 1940 and 1950 censuses, too. That, and I also refer you to the 3.4% black unemployment rate in Detroit (clearly, a northern industrial city) in 1968 (a rate that was lower than the nation-wide rate for whites).
Sorry, Will, I don't fully understand your comment. What remained the same for the 1940 and 1950 census. And what was the white unemployment in Detroit in 1968?
The fact that the white and black unemployment rates remained the same.......As for the white unemployment rate in Detroit in 1968, if it was under 3.4%, then that was a pretty damn good economy.
In 1968 when we started tracking unemployment rates in detail, the black unemployment rate was about twice the white unemployment rate..."
So, nationwide, unemployment was twice as bad for blacks as for whites in 1968. As far as Detroit goes, all you have produced is numbers for blacks. What was the overall unemployment in Detroit, or what was the white unemployment in Detroit? The black unemployment number by itself while low by ours standards today, needs some context in which to evaluate it relative to Detroit.
Jerry, full employment is considered 4%. So even if the white unemployment rate was 2.8% in Detroit, both of the numbers would have been extremely solid.............And 1968 is considered post the Great Society, fully within my thesis that the liberal programs and permissiveness of the '60s quite possibly created these social problems. The poverty rate for blacks in 1940 was 87% and the illegitimacy rate was 19%. By 2007, those numbers had basically inverted; a 27% poverty rate and a 72% illegitimacy rate (prima facia evidence that the "Spirit Level's" thesis that inequality causes these ills is bogus). Is it too much to ask that maybe we need to re-examine some of these programs and create a different type of incentive structure?
I think you will see a much higher illegitimacy for all groups when comparing 2007 with 1940. Are you suggesting that the drop in poverty rate from 1940 to 2007 was not due in part to these programs?
The black poverty rate fell from 87% in 1940 to 47% in 1960 (a 46% decrease), well before the federal dogoodery started kicking in. Now, am I saying that the Great Society was uniformly destructive and that it didn't help certain people? No (and white people were the largest "benefactors" of the Great Society and so, no, it isn't any great surprise that their illegitimacy rate went up, too), of course not. But incentives are important and all policies have unintended consequences. Maybe the welfare state needs to be overhauled just like everything needs to be every 50 years or so.
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