Racist rants by federal lands moocher Cliven Bundy and vile comments attributed to Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling have put old-school racism back in the news.
But let's get real. However contemptible, Bundy and Sterling aren't what's holding down blacks and other minorities in today's America.
Here are three policies that, whatever their original intentions, systematically screw over poor blacks and other minorities.
They include:
1. Barriers to work.
Whether it's absurd licensing laws for at-home hair braiders, day care operators, and other small-time entrepreneurs or minimum wage laws that price young, unskilled black kids out of their first jobs, barriers to the labor market take their biggest toll on those with the least education, skills, and professional connections.
2. The Drug War
Created amidst fears of cocaine-snorting negroes, opium-smoking Chinese, and pot-puffing Mexicans, the drug war not only locks up black and minorities in vastly unfair and unjustifiable numbers, it also concentrates black-market violence in poor urban neighborhoods. Blacks don't use drugs more than whites—they just pay a much steeper price.
3. The Education Monopoly
Despite more than doubling real per-pupil expenditures since the early 1970s, America's graduating high school seniors have shown no meaningul improvements in math, reading, and science. It's black and Hispanic kids in inner cities whose parents lack any real choice in schools that suffer the most. And yet politicans, teachers, and parents who can afford to exercise choice for their own kids do everything they can to keep poor kids trapped in failing schools.
At a combined 140 years old, Bundy and Sterling are survivors from an older, uglier America that died well before the election of Barack Obama.
They can (and should) go fuck themselves, but if the rest of us actually want to address the sort of racism that is screwing over today's minorities, we'd do well to bust down barriers to work, end the drug war, and tear apart the school monopoly.
About 2 minutes. Written and hosted by Nick Gillespie and produced by Meredith Bragg.
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