This seemingly baffling history is the subject of The State of Black Progress, edited by Star Parker. Parker, president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and a syndicated columnist, brings together 12 essays by writers who argue that Black Americans would be better off if not for a host of government interventions that have short-circuited their incentives and agency.
Wardship / Leading off the book is a hard-hitting essay by William B. Allen, “Counter-Reconstruction: A Lingering Injustice.” Allen, an emeritus professor of political philosophy at Michigan State University, argues that Blacks (and indeed the nation as a whole) continue to suffer from the derailing of the hoped-for Reconstruction after the Civil War.
The post-war amendments were supposed to ensure that Black citizens would enjoy equal rights, but that goal was overridden by “a deliberate attempt to construct a wardship relation of blacks to the non-black majority, to be superintended at first by secessionists and eventually by the entire national political architecture.” The despicable idea behind the “Counter-Reconstruction” was that Blacks should be excluded from the freedom enjoyed by the rest of society and instead be treated like children, an idea that Allen argues continues in our supposedly enlightened time.
Instead of receiving their freedom, Blacks were turned into governmental wards with “de facto status equivalent to the legally defined status of American Indians as dependent sovereigns.” For the latter part of the 19th century and well into the 20th, the restrictions on Black freedom benefited powerful interest groups: first the racists who were determined to keep Blacks “in their place” by depriving them of the educational tools for self-advancement and legal access to many occupations, and later by the progressives who thought that the path for Black improvement must be laid by government programs on their behalf. In the former case, Blacks were despised as inferiors; in the latter, they were regarded as a pitiable group incapable of making progress on their own.
Allen points out that Blacks were making steady gains despite the earlier obstacles, especially in education. Even with segregated schools in many states, they fared remarkably well, especially with the aid of Sears, Roebuck chairman Julius Rosenwald, who provided the funding for hundreds of schools for Black children, schools with high academic standards and in which the families took pride. Many of the graduates went on to college. But after the Supreme Court’s desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, those schools closed or were absorbed into the government school systems where they lost their edge.
The current mania for “equity” also draws Allen’s fire. It won’t help Blacks for government to use its coercive powers to mandate that they and other groups be assured of appropriate “representation” in fields to match their percentages in the population. This, he states, will mean “permanent wardship” for Blacks.
The courts / Allen’s essay is followed by one by former federal judge Janice Rogers Brown, who explains how numerous Supreme Court decisions undermined the rights of Blacks. The best-known of these is the Supreme Court’s 1873 decision in The Slaughterhouse Cases where, she writes, “the Court proceeded to nullify most of the benefit the Civil War Amendments had intended to confer on the freedmen and, with the end of Reconstruction, did more than any other federal institution to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”
Brown discusses several other cases that were equally destructive. One is People v. Cruikshank, involving an armed mob that broke up a Black political gathering in Louisiana. Brown writes of the decision: “The case provided the perfect opportunity to apply the Enforcement Act. Incredibly, the Court decided the right to peaceably assemble was not a right granted by the Constitution.” She also discusses the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson, where the Supreme Court put its stamp of approval on the “separate but equal” regime, and the astounding Berea College case where the Court held that states could prohibit peaceful interracial association. The courts were deeply complicit in the Counter-Reconstruction.
Healthcare / In healthcare, the government has similarly obstructed Black advancement. In her essay, Galen Institute president Grace-Marie Turner contrasts the efficacy of private versus public health insurance. A significantly higher percentage of Blacks than Whites are saddled with government health insurance, where they receive worse care and suffer longer wait times. She also explains how government policies create hurdles for medical improvements in such procedures as kidney dialysis, where innovations would benefit many poorer people. Again, being wards of the government is not beneficial for Black people.
Also writing about how government intervention worsens medical care for Blacks is Sally Pipes, a doctor and president of the Pacific Research Institute. She argues that the racial health divide is largely due to government policies that trap poorer people in deficient programs such as Medicaid. She also counters the belief that the difference in average life expectancy between Blacks and other groups is due to “institutional racism,” arguing that personal choices like overeating and smoking account for the difference.
The unintended consequences of government policies are also damaging to Blacks. Pipes observes that the 2010 Affordable Care Act funneled many poorer people out of private insurance and into Medicaid with its notorious wait times. Moreover, once people get on Medicaid, they face a severe disincentive to earn enough money to escape from it because of the high marginal tax rate: As beneficiaries’ income increases, their benefits decrease. They’re caught in the welfare trap, amplifying Allen’s point about the way welfare policies turn Black Americans into wards of the state.
AEI essays / Ian Rowe of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) writes about the need for better educational opportunities for Blacks. Many Black parents know that their children make little progress in public schools, despite high per-pupil expenditures. Rowe cites the case of Decatur, IL, where “single digit percentages of black students are reading at grade level, but 97.3 percent of teachers were rated as ‘excellent’ or ‘proficient’ in 2017.” Yet, the public education establishment does all it can to block families from exiting its schools.
Government housing policies have also been highly detrimental for Blacks, and two essays explain how. Howard Husock, a senior fellow at AEI, begins with a sharp analysis of the failure of governmental housing projects that were meant to improve the lives of poor inner-city residents. He writes:
The “projects,” far from replacing slums, instead required the demolition of important, self-reliant black communities across the United States—replete with homeowners; small black-owned businesses; churches; and mutual aid groups. Viewed from the outside, they were slums; experienced from the inside, they were communities.
Soon after the housing projects went up, crime soared and the properties began to deteriorate. Husock focuses particularly on a project in Detroit where the federal wrecking ball demolished a dynamic urban community where Blacks were accumulating wealth. Their steady economic progress was thwarted by government planners who were certain they knew how to improve people’s lives.
In his essay, Edward Pinto, director of the Housing Center at AEI, focuses on the harm done to Blacks by zoning laws. Federal officials had never had anything to do with land use patterns until 1921, when secretary of commerce Herbert Hoover assembled an Advisory Committee on Zoning. The following year, the Commerce Department published a report stating, “For several years, there had been developing a feeling that some agency of the federal government should involve itself in building and housing.” Though the Constitution gives no such authority to the federal government, Hoover was undeterred. His Commerce Department was captivated by “experts” who said that excessive residential density was a serious problem that zoning laws could remedy. This initiative had an overtly racist cast, reflecting the views of an influential lawyer, Frank Williams, that “the invasion of the inferior races produces more or less discomfort and disorder, and has a distinct tendency to lower property values.” In short, zoning should be used to keep Blacks out of “good” areas.
After Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in 1932, the federal government waded further into the housing market with the Federal Housing Administration. This agency was supposed to expand access to mortgage credit, but it mainly served White Americans.
Pinto then looks at federal housing policy in recent years, observing that while it is no longer anti-Black, its attempts to help Blacks (and other lower-income groups) backfired with the housing crash of 2007. Blacks who had been lured into “affordable” housing with the government’s relaxed lending standards were especially hard hit and lost a great deal of wealth. The tales of woe in housing again amplify Allen’s point about the harm of treating Blacks as dependents who need government help.
Conclusion / The book closes with essays arguing that Social Security is a bad deal for all Americans, but especially for Blacks, and that poverty is boosted by governmental policies that prevent people from using their talents and ambition.
The State of Black Progress is an important “emperor wears no clothes” book that points out a crucial truth: Black Americans have been made poorer and less well educated by government policies. When Frederick Douglass was asked what should be done with Blacks, he replied, “Do nothing with us.” A century and a half of “doing” has proven his wisdom.
