Some Thoughts on the President’s Emoting | Center for Equal Opportunity

Here are a few thoughts on the President’s impromptu remarks on Friday, in which he helpfully (?) offered his thoughts on African Americans’ response to the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial.

1. You can’t claim to be having a serious discussion about race, crime, and African American young men without mentioning — not one word — that 72 percent of African Americans now are born out of wedlock. That’s where the “soul searching” he calls for is most needed, not on introspection about “bias.” Growing up in a home without a father ties in with any social pathology you care to name, and that includes crime.

2. This was a decidedly unpresidential talk. How could he have thought it would be “useful for me to expand” in this way? The remarks made no pretense of uniting rather than dividing, being a lecture to white folks on how black folks think; and they added nothing to what is already being said. It is being praised for being so personal, for being about what people are “feeling” — but this is a weakness, not a strength.

3. It would have been better to begin with restating his earlier call that the jury’s verdict be respected, than with expressing sympathy for the Martin family. There was more need for the former last weekend, with all the scheduled protests; there is no shortage of the latter.

4. His policy action items are either misguided (racial-profiling legislation) or irrelevant (repealing stand-your-ground laws). Come to think of it, each of those is both.

5. Two good things, though: (a) acknowledging that any “national conversation on race” led by politicians is useless (but, physician, heal thyself); and (b) the end of the talk, when he acknowledges that we all really do need to keep things in perspective, and bear in mind that race relations are getting better and better, generation by generation — that we are becoming a “more perfect Union.”

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Also, while the president correctly noted that a “national conversation on race” maybe isn’t so imperative, I have good news for the many civil-rights leaders who are demanding one: I found it! Here it is, it’s quite short, and now we don’t need to say anything more, thank goodness:

A. It’s a bad thing that this country had slavery and Jim Crow, and that there is still racism.

B. That’s true, but there’s certainly a lot less of it now.

A. That’s true, too! And I have to admit that there are other problems now bigger than racism facing African Americans, like out-of-wedlock births, black-on-black crime, and believing that working and studying hard is “acting white.”

B. You’re right! Of course, we have to admit that no group has a monopoly on bad behavior. You know, I think we should try to judge all people as individuals.

A. Right! And we should also all take responsibility for our own lives and take advantage of the amazing opportunities that this country offers all of us.

B. Agreed! Well, you have a nice day!

A. You, too! See you at work tomorrow!

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The Senate and House are each held hearings last week to consider this question: “What is to be done in light of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down the coverage formula for Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act?” The correct answer is simple: “Nothing.”

There is no state in 2013 whose practices are so racist – so much like Mississippi’s in 1965 – that it can be entrusted to run its own elections only if Eric Holder is supervising them. And the rest of the Voting Rights Act is alive and well and available to address any discrimination that needs to be addressed. There is, in sum, simply no need for additional legislation to address actual disparate treatment on the basis of race — as opposed to a failure to gerrymander racially segregated districts for this or that racial or ethnic minority (the principal use to which Section 5 was put before being struck down), or a mere disproportionate racial effect from, for example, an anti-fraud voter-identification law (which seems to be the principal Democratic complaint these days).

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Last year, I wrote about an ordinance in Milwaukee that enacted racial and gender preferences in the awarding of municipal contracts. One of the groups this law discriminated against — and this is by no means unprecedented, by the way — was Hispanics, and so they were among those challenging the law. Both the city and the company that did the “disparity study” supposedly justifying the preferences — which the plaintiffs alleged to be invalid — were sued. And the anti-preferences side has won! Under the settlement agreement, the preferences will be repealed and the plaintiffs will receive $115,000 in legal costs. A good result, and here’s hoping that other cities will learn from Milwaukee’s experience.

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