Transcripts For CSPAN3 African Americans Discrimination Disparities 20180119

I think roowere ready to ge started. I want to thank everyone for joining us today, my name is wi riley is titled prospects for black america. Before we get started, i want to thank a few people starting with larry moan from the man at that time has been institute who signed off on this event and i want to thank dea n, tanisha and debby who contacted the hard panelists and securing the venue cht i want to thank them as the well. Id this is our third annual symposium and the idea is to omf bringfe other people with different points of view about addressing racial problems in hn america. Youll beg hearing from some democrats, republicans, liberals, conservatives but moso importantly youll be hearing from people who given serious thought to these issues and dont dismiss out of hand people who think differently from that. Everyone here is here to engage. Youll be hearing from people who rrnt afraid to touch some third rails. Thats what the Manhattan Institute specializes in. Rails touching third rails. Not shying away from the more difficult and uncomfortable Public Policy questions like e those surrounding race. And its not because we want to provoke for the sake of being provocative, its because you cant really begin to address many of these difficult and complicated issue ifs you shy away from asking the difficult and complicated questions. Last month some reporters approached the actor Denzel Washington at the screening of his new film he plays a defensen attorney. He was asked if it is possible for blackss to improve their circumstances in the current is political environment . Washington responded by saying e well, it starts in the home. If the father is not in the home, the boy will find a father in the streets. Env i sawir it in my generation andd everyo one before me and every one since. If the streets judge yraise youk the judge becomes your more and the prison becomes your home. E. I hen reiterated what he said before, it starts with how you raise your children. If a young man doesnt have a father figure, he will find one. You cant blame the system. Itsit is unfortunate that we m easy work for them. Washington took heat for those remarks but i think they were on target by in large. Wash so many discussions about racial inequality quickly turn into h discussions about Racial Discrimination and sometimes that makes sense. Doubt r i have no doubt that racism still exists in America Today a and plays a role in the Racial Disparities we see today. I also believe that other ole. Factors play a role and the question for me is to what ent extent racismm explains these outcomes today and to what extent Something Else explains these outcomes . We have racial gaps in income, employment, schooling, poverty and other areas. S due how much of it is due to discrimination and how much is it due to other factors we dont spend enough time discussing . It is not simply an academic question, the answers can impaco where we focus our time and resources both of which are limited. Some are so dispa eager to attr it to current racism or to the legacy of slavery and jim crow and they neglect and play down other plausible explanations. I think thats a mistake. Eaving prior to the civil rights legislation of the 1960s doesnt receive a lot of attention. Of it will today. Because i think it is constructive in considering racism impact on racial inequality. On the late 18 hundreds. Blacke incomes grew a the muchfe faster rate than white incomes during this period. The black poverty right fell by 40 taj points between 1940 and 1970. Blacks the number of blacks and middle class professions quadrupled other this period. Steady progress was being made. Black homicide rate for men for example, fell by 20 or nearly 20 in the 1940s and by a larger amount in the 19 r550s. These trends have slowed, is it blame for the black outcomes today. Tremendous progress againry sachl still exists. Exi i dont think theres doubt about that. But citing it is a explanation it problematic. Previous generations faced more significant racial barriers and everything from income from homeownership to education. Racism didnt stop them. Bl i hope we can delve into what can or may not be hampering black prospectss today. Were going to start with a arti couple of panelth discussions followed followed by some q and a, and then honored to have dr. Ben carson, the secretary of housing and urban development to have remarks and take questions. We will start with the first panel which focuses on. Education, and education reform in particular. I will sit down with our panelists. Can everyone still hear me . Okay. Ecutiv so to my immediate sleft derrell bradford, and he is the the o Vice President nt of the organization 50 can, and a re longtime education reform advocate. That is how we first mett over the years discussing issues like vouchers andls and. So forth. He frequently contributes to educationba debatestes an and p digital and tv immediamedia and on several boards dedicated to put the needs of students and Families First and including the success Charter Academy here in new york. Wh to theit derrells left is Mark Whitaker whose file i have here somewhere. Ong mark is the author of omemoir, my long trip home and slow town which he will tell us about. Mark is a journalist like yours truly, and former managing editor of cnn where he was previously with the Washington Bureau for nbc news and reporter and editor at newsweek where he rose to become the first africanamerican leader of a National News weekly. So, i think that we can all plac agree that Race Relations are in a pretty bad place right now in america. At. We can also agree that the Current Administration did inherit a bad situation that dit not start with him. And even if he has not improvedl matters or r made them worse, looking at the polling out of the last administration, they were looking at things in the bad place, and probably the worst since the rodney king riots in the early 1990s. Do i wonder if any of you have any thoughts on how we got here, and then how we might turn things around. Well, the first thing that i would say is that i think that h there iser a vast difference vt the state of urban black america, blacks who live in what were once, you know, thriving sort of urban industrial cities and this is the subject of my book which is the black s community in pittsburgh from the 20s to the late 50s and early 60s whenmall c cpi this small by comparison with harlem and chicago and so forthth produced the largest black newspaper in l america, and system of the greatest black baseball teams, a Sports Writer who led the fight to integrate the major leagues and led the fight to introduce Jackie Robinson and to jazz musicians and those actors who came out of this pretty small c Industrial Town in pittsburgh. A there weret in other black re. Communities like that inn detroit, in baltimore, chicago, cleveland, st. Louis, et cetera, et cetera. At the moment, i wont get into all of the reason, obviously, that those cities in addition tn theeigh communities declined, b those neighborhoods now are vastly worse offp than they were 50 or 60 years ago which is really quite extraordinary whena you think of all of the progress that we have made in america generally in terms of economically in terms of the standard of living and so forth. So i think that you have to make a class distinction and sort of a location distinction between black folks who are still living in those communities where the situations are truly dire and the issues that confront the middleclass blacks although there is still racism in who hollywood, and still issues on the campus, and still, you know, problems sort of in professional workplaces, but it is very hardo to argue seriously that the black middleclass in terms of the opportunityt at least is worse off than it was in terms of opportunity. A lot of the discussion sort of oaround race seems to sort of suggest that the plight of black america is the same across all f regional and class boundaries and i just dont buy it. I think that there is a terrible, terrible crisis in poor urban black america, and i think that there areere somears that can be discussed in sort i of, you know, the black middleclass, but it is two very, very different situationss you agree, dar rerell, that we are talking about the poor black communities that are having communities . I first of all, i would likeo thank the Manhattan Institute andtitute f jason riley for invt here to dday, and if we are talking about the third rails, i would expect Nicole Galanos to be here to talk about transportation policy, but i think that there are like a million questions to answer in what mark said and what you thi opened with, but i want to say these two things. The first one is that i do think that the situation for low income black folks in cities that were once great like baltimore, where i am from, or newark where i used to work is whollyy other, and the economic andnd the social conditions are ones that have progressed tha progress in the way that may be unique to any place that ist not a post industrial rust belt town with a lot of people who are not interestingthed, soed. Synergy between the two that nobody talks much about it. But the middleclass thing is interest interesting, too, because there is a professor from emory whose name escapes me who did a study on, on housing value, right. Because the value of houses for black Property Owners is going to go up slower than white Property Owners and so what she found is that you want to move to a place that has some black people, but not too many, because there is like the threshold above which the speed at which your property accrues is drastically reduced compared to just below that, right . And certainly, there are lots of policies,le schooling, redlining, and other things that are going to to be going into creating that, but i would say that if you are looking at that, and ascribe it to a factor of like race, and that is what the study is about, you do see it that maybe uniquely if not exclusive willy, like the middlf income black folks are by suffer ing from the legacies of the prior policies driven by race in the ways that other folks aret not either, so this is a problem that goes from top to bottom. It is filled with Different Levels of intensity based on who you are and who your parents were and how much money you make, but it is not that one group of black folks feels it and another doesnt. So you are saying that one of the best ways to improve racial relations is more black economic prosperi prosperity, and that in itself is going to go a long ways of repairing the damage here, more job, and higher ecomonic . Yes sh, and i dont know if is repairing, but whateverquiva sinn fein and us and us alone, and we have to figure out what that is. Because i have become deep ly o the policymake ers ability of leveraging black america writ o large out of the mire that it is in economically right now. What i do see are, you nknow, particularly in the education stuff are, you know, the schools and instances are where, like,i small groups of people are going to be getting an opportunity to become their highest and best selves and those people are changing the getworld, right . They are certainly changing their own worlds, right . Ed that is at the expense of everyone else, and not to the betterment of others, like zero, abo getting so you ar often. But, if you aree g talking at black business, black sort of the selfhelp and not waiting for the government to solve all of to problems, you have to go back to talk about the fact that you have talked about in your introductory remark, and in pittsburgh, you had a community that black folks, en t entrepreneurial blacked folk, a thele talented tenth as the voice would say, they had no choice but to stay in those b worlds and become leaders and lot of othem h opened businesses, and a lot of them pushed for better schools and so forth. One of the sort of the perhaps d perverse and c slightly unintend consequences of these antics of the Civil Rights Movement is also affirmative action is that you have a whole generation, and this is my fathers generation, born in pittsburgh and my able funeral home, but, you know, he was tibl leave pittsburgh and go to college, and become a professor and he never came back. And he is one ofan manyd people that generation for whom that is true. And so they had opportunities that hu ththey had not had in t still preodominantly white world and it is a good thing, but not communities that were left without leadership. And so you are talk about what is happening under a legall jason segregation and a forced segregation at a time when i ld guess thatde the government in many ways, the necessity describedeskrib described is indifferent towards black ifll not hostile towards e black. We still hear talks about segregation today, and the selfsegregation, and this is getting tointo the best educati reformers out there run schools that are largely black and hispanic. Ands the fact that they are achieving the academic success that is off of the charts doesnt stop the critics from r saying that they are segregated. That is a bad andthing, and ths reason enough to rethink some of the educational reforms. E intee what should trump want here . Are we more interested in the child learning or the child sitting next to a white kid in class . How to a do you respond to tho criticisms . Darrell, in your work of the ho charter sector, you have come to this. And how do i respond to it . The sans vociferously, and so it is complicated. You know, like, i grew up in the plight of the scene also known as the the 80s and all black kid in allwhite k12le school, and i went to college on a scholarship which is the most important thing that happened to me, but it was a hard. And that said, i would not trade it for anything. Because there is a currency of how to the deal with the rulinga order that you acquire when youo are like in situations with people who are nott like you, in right. So that said, like, if you are, if you are going to the Success Academy school, and i recommend that you do it or go to uncommon or Something Like that, you will see the kids when they talk to you, it is like the sun coming c up. Right . It is clear that there is Something Like amazing going on, and inside of them,n and this i go. Ing to happen regardless of who the kids sit next to. And this is being attacked, right . That the people were not assigned to the schools, and whole bunch of people who happy to be black or t hispanic and decided to pick a school that mirrored the values, and the school is actually nonosegreg m less segregated than the Neighborhood School next to it. So in that, and when that excellence has come into existence, that is under attack, and black xil lens is under attack, and you have the lower performance schools where nobody is learning anything,chool we y to kipt opeep it open, because s about community and democratic values, so to me, what continues to advance itself and the whole process of the integration thing, and i happy to support t integration, but it is held up as the new poverty, and so until we cani integrate all of the schools, until everybody is making a living wherewage, you integrate everybody. So it is a dangerous place where we have built a policy framework where it is okay to attack black excellence that is chosen versus supporting that. We valorize schools that are destroy ing and killing people in an attempt to decay or temper. I think that things are bad enough that we just have to show what is best for the kids, and it is going to vary from kid to kid and school to school, and there are definitely kids who benefit from being anwhere e se emotionally black environment where they feel with a sense o identification with thee teache s and the classmates and they dont feel the anxiety in a black wenvironment, and the otr people like darrell, that you can know in sometimes grade school or sometimes later in high school or college into a i mixed environment, and they can thrive. I d dont think that black kidsk are, you know, at some point, they have to learn that, we are still, you know, a a largely whe society. Totally agree. But you are not being prepared for adult life if you dont have contact with white folks at some point. I a totally ingagree. And the point at which you are thrown into the deep end var ris on the kid. And looking to higher education, and you are talking about, that you want to sort ta keep it real with the kids in college today. We are worried that they are living in the bubbles, and the spaces and warnings and you have groups with these groups that are making their way like black lives matter on the way to campus, and talking about the state of the racial relations that have shown up on College Campuses across the country. What do you make of the campus activism and what you areblac sg happen i happening, and thete fact that lot of these black leaders are p leading the efforts to tear dow statues on campus, and so forth, and this helpful . Aopment . Positive development . Or do you see the negative repercussions down the road here . Well, on the one hand, i think that college in particular is a time for experimentation with ideas and identifies, and you know, i think that they aref probably a lot of us who were much more activist minded in one way or another on different sides of the political spectrum and different issues when we were that age that perhaps, people like derrell are still on the front lines, but not t line everybodys. Is, so ill say tha first as a caveat. On the other hand, when one of , the advantages that we are at the harvard club and ki actually talk about having gone to the institution as an undergraduate without feeling like a jerk [ laughter ]unde but i was there in college and my first beat was covering the Admissions Office, and that was just a first generation, and i was part of the first generation where there was enough black students at the campus that they could selfseg regraregate, ande that, it was possible to have a black table or the house where, courier house where black folks before the lottery, you could ie choose to go up there. So, you know, a lot of my friends kind of lived that existence. Tence and i understood what they did, but what i also knew is having,t because i was covering the Admissions Office and had some good sources there is that most of them came from pretty much the same environment that the white kids did. They had gone to one of probably 30 or 40 really top prep schools in the country, private schools. And chances are that if they had gone to public school, you coul identify, you know, a half dozen, maybe 20 Public Schools in different states where they were likely to have come. And 70 of all sch of the stude across all races came from that collection offal schools. So they had already dealt with the environment, but for some reason, and i understand some of the reasons but they wanted once i got the harvard to feel like they just would spend most of the time with each other, and my feeling about it was, at least in terms of my experience was, that they were miss iing out, because what i thought was great about college was the wou ld opportunity to meet people who i had never met and never would have met, you know in the environment, that i came from. T in terms of background, in erm g terms of ideas, and the College Newspaper was a great place to do that. But, so, i think it is a littleu sad. You can get all kind of righteous about itnding and ta t about either defending it or attacking it, and so forth, but you know, college is only, it is our years in the life that you dont get back. So to not take full advantage of being exposed to the as many different kinds of people, and as many ideas during that period whether you are black or white, i think it is a shame. I would say the same thing about white kids who go andbout joi a fraternity or the sorority and never meet a black kid or the hispanic kid, and so anyway that is my perspective. Yeah, i would say, that i am deeply disappointed in the cu culture of the campus protests and not because people should be protesting, and not because i in think it is bad that kids want to lead on the issues that are important, but it looks more like the death of discussion which is the essential of not b flouring anything. So what we are seeing is an inability or the unwillingness of people toe actually be in spaces with folks who disagree with them. Make that ises essential to the heay democracy. So the fun dadamental o the adversarial issue that makes it go, with the idea that you cant be around the ideas that you rk dont like, we wont get to thev society that we want or the one that we are supposed to be working towards. And quickly, obviouslyi ke w live in a heated political moment right now, but i keep thinking about where this is all leading. Where are we going to be 10 years from now, and 20 years from now, and the one thing that is absolutely certain is that, e you know, a lot of us are going to be hopefully still around, e. But not on the stage, off the ice floe, and so a new generation is going to be take over in positions of Political Leadership and so forth and so ifee we all agree right now to e fact that we all live in bubbles is a big part of the problem that we have in the country right now, if there is going to be a solution to that, the solution has to come from the next generation. Ge ont think that there ise soa time enough left for our solv generation to solve that problem. So how do you prepare to lead aa society where everybody is not b living in aub bubble, if not to not live in a bubble when you have, you know, the sort of the formative educational experience of your young life . You have a background in the media and journalism and both t print andca cable news. What role do you think of the media perceptions play . It is a show of education al performance. T perception of black education in general, and we can loop things on facebook or youtube. Cadnd videos. Or the police shooting, and someti sometimes the News Coverage of something increases the coverage gets mistaken for the certain trends that may not betain tr u but it is just that we are covering them more. Can you critique the Current Media in that regard . Well, i have talked about polarization, and there is no question that the tone of a lot of the political coverage particularly on television increases ses ththat, but it is know, but i wont get deep in the weeds here, but it is economical. And it is easier to have people arguing with each other than it is to send people out reporting, and this is a problem for a and while. There is another issue with straddling the media and social media, and the point is that everybody is performing now. If you are not performing for the camera, you are kind of cebo ta personagram that you are presenting on facebook or instagram or whatever, and i worry that in addition to so it polarization thing that everybody is so busy sort of posing that it is sort of hard to have a conversation. So i think thatton on educationd particul particular, and on a lot of other issues what is required is a conversation, and it is hard to have a conversation when, you know, there is a p camera over tlsh, there and you are kind of preening for the camera, and so that is a real problem right now. And derrell, and i want to leave some time for question, but i am not sure how much time i have left. Should we we start with how muc time do we have for the segment . 25, okay. I will ask one more question then. Okay. You talk a lot about or you havn thought at lot about education reform, and opportunity increasing, and opportunities foro p families to improve the educational situation. But can you talk a little bit ve about black attitudes towards education. Is that an underlying problem i some communities that you can hs have the best school right down the street, but if you dont value education, you wont take advantage of it. And to what extent do you think that plays a role in some of these achievement gaps that you are seeing with the antiintellectual strain and so the subculture that we find in to get tho geho gehe ghetto com . Thank you for the softball question. So right off of the top, it is not the blackeducat communitieso that have a problem with education, but it is the american community. You can see the similar attitudes in lots of different racial subgroups, and, you know, there are some very high performing subgroups and some that are not. There are some immigrants, and black subgroups that are like knocking it out of the way, and really knocking it out of the park, and some that dont, so i want to, you know, raise thehe a issue that i think that as a country, we have a narrative around what education is supposed to mean and lots of kids dont believe it now. So it is like you work hard and you move up in the world and go to college and get a good job and your life or it is great, a of the kids dont believe the narrative, because in a lot of place, it is not true or accessible in a way that would affirm the value, and i wanted to highlight that out there. But doi think about this question for a lot, and but i do think about this question a lot of. And sometimes from the other places than the harvard club. Because i wish i had a playbook, and that would havepanelist here with me at the Charter School talking about sequencing, and there are a few things that you want to do and your parents want to do before you get here, and then a few things that you should want to do that if you put them together they dont guarantee that the things are going to go well, but they mean that things could very likely go better. I did not have that sequencing,e of i sort fell off of it, to d ando so one thing that changes attitudes is a path to being g successful, and so for at lot of black kids growing up in the worst places in america, there is no one who helps to put the steps in front of you or very few people who do in a way that ma makes it seem accessible, and it has the effect. I want to throw that out there. And another thing that i think that is also really interesting in having this discussion and going full circle on it, in thee Charter School instance that shows somegs us, andf. Relief is that there are folks in the communities of color who demonstrably want better, and there is a a strong sense of lk from a to z of what it should look like, and that is not exclusively the immigrant communities who are also people of color, and also lots of homegrown black folks who believe it, too, but that is what we are seeing the most, and those attitudes are attacked very often. So if a you are a black striver and you want the school that is best for your kid, and people are like, no, no, you cant do that. For you to do that is going to undermine the republic, and you have to throw yourself into this other thing. So i think that, again, we started this talking about how the differences of the attitude that might present themselves i. Class or Public Policy, and they also present themselves in perception, and likewith in t n instance where education is concerned, i think that you will see like a little bit of the double standard ofbe discu how fo folks want to be successful. And so this is where the family is key. At and what you are describing in general terms is something that exists and unfortunate and so it is not and has not been the case. Early so i wanted too ask you20 i e study of the early 20th centuryk do you detect a shift in the attitudes on these matters from that well, look, one of the reasons, again, that the the th community that ico studied had much accomplishment was absolutely about education. And there were educational u opportunities in pittsburgh thah were unusual for the time, and now the university of pittsburgh which is called the western ennl university of pennsylvania at the time,va and supposed to be e western Student Branch of penn to admit black students under a scholarship funded by a white abolitionistst named avery in t late 19th century, and that is why the guy who ended up turning the pittsburgh currier into what it was, robert alvan made his wayay from his own steam al of the way from North Carolina so he could study are there. Because of all of the gilded age money, the Carnegie Mellon and frik money at the turn of the sep century in pittsburgh, h there were two public high schools, and they did not have this term magnate schools, but that is what it was, and at the time, they were the most erica. Expensive public high schools ever built in america. Admitte they both admitted not huge numb numbers, but maybe 10 of the class black students from the very beginning of the 1910s andi 1920s. It was a huge value. Literacy and musical literacy and that is how they produced sr billy jay and so many jazz musicians, because there was a cultural Music Appreciation and competition in f pittsburgh. Ws and so, our friend up at harvard says that we used to be the what people of the book, and he means not only just like the bible, sh butin also and what happened . And so, i think that is something did happen. However, i still see, and i see it, and we all see it here in new york, even in the poorest communities, if you have parentt s or a grandparent or an aunt or uncle who really cares about you having an education is on your butt to get one, those kids canh still break through. But, but, conversely, if you dont have that, even in the most affluent communities and. The White Communities and so forth, if you have parents who dont really care about their kids, you can see the kids who have all of the advantages in the world who go nowhere academically. Okay. We are going toha open it up fol questions if there are any out there. I see a hand in the back. I dont seeesti aon f face. Good morning. N this question is for mark in particular. Given your status of somebody who is editorinchief at newsweek and im interested to get your perspective of the perspective of black journalist, and that is an industry that is overwhelmingly white, and a lot of the prominent promi n to africanamericans that we have in journalism tend to be called on withan the race and ethnicit and so i am curious the to get your takee on that . Well, i think it is true. The thing about journalism always has been, and even more so now when you are starting out, there is no one path, and my advice for all young journalists over the years is that when you have been starting out, go to the places that will give you the opportunity, right . So, in the old days, it was like dont necessarily go straight to nos New York Times but go to the small regional newspaper, because you will have more opportunities at a young age. If yougo to a want to be in te, go to the small market where you are just going to get a lot more air time, and lot more stories and so forth,ay up and then sor work your way up to the bigger markets. Now with the decline of traditional media and the rise of all of the other forms, it is more true. In terms of having to make your own choices, but also, you know, the variety of the places that you can work. Choic what i would say specifiy on that issue, i think that for black and it other minority report reporters, women, or anybody who is concerned about the being pigeon holed and particularly e early on in the career when you dont have financial responsibilities or a family that you may have later, that you make those choices based on where you can have the opportunities that you want. Right . So if you dont wantunity to be. Pigeon holed just doing the e to b black story, look around. There are a lot of media, you know, organizations that are actually still hiring and where you can get hired at the kind of entry level and choose that. And now, some people want to be doing the race story, and in that case, there are other places that they can go to find that. So i could kind of get on the high horse to talk about the responsibility of the media organizations but to do more hi and more promotion and so forth and i believe it, but it is a little hard give n the state of the industry right now, but i think that from the practical point of view for young take of journalists, you have to take your own innish tiff tof stor s what do i want . What kind of stories do i want to do . And then you need to find the institution to give you those opportunity, and then sell yourself. And make it clear that you want to badly work for that place. Right here. Ot want yes, im michael myers, the executive director of the civil rightsis the coalition, and my question is directed to the larger culture attitude to what youthere call selfsegregation. Are there any instances or example or studies that you can tell us about where whites are e turned away from tables where black students are sitting, and any studies in that regard in respect to black housing or the socalled black dorms and how will minors get black dorms without the participation of the college of the are the colleges steering black students to black dorms or rejecting the whites who want to live in the black dorm, and so my question is a larger culture, andchool d editor of the schools who are rejecting integration, and who are rejecting the blacks on campus . E yes. I am trying to dig the negative of the question out there. And i am not saying this to be tongue and cheek. So, like every dorm at penn is the white dorm except for the black excone, right . I mean, the country that we livo in is segregated, so, like,rk n york city which per capita should have the most integrated schools in the galaxy has the most segregated schools, because there are other factors at play. So i just want to i totally dont want to answer the question. What i do want to do is just offer that there are other factors at playy around like tribalism and saying that you can assign a benevolent word to it ora a malicious one that is going to create environments that where people are going to be like, why do the black students need a dorm, and it is because, the white students already have one, and it is called every other dorm. Okay. Over here. Mr. Riley, in the beginning, you spoke about showing great progress for blacks at a whole up to the 1960s, and tauing about the progress in the 1940s and the 1950s and what would you attribute to the turnaround in the direction of the black communities in america . Well, in the what i was really talking about is the economic progress in that wartime economy, and the post world war economy, and so you had a lifting of all boats. You had migration out of the south, and people able tothere advantage of the higher Living Standards of the north. Even if you did the same job in mobile, alabama, versus detroit, you will make much more money in detroit doing that job, and you had millions of blacks moving into the northern cities, and so that the standard of living increased. It is increasing at a pafaster rate than men and it did for wh terms of earnings for men and women and Educational Attainment in this period, and entering skilled profession, and so you had a tremendous amount of progress. Then when you are looking at what starts to happen in the late 1960s and the 70s and so forth, you will start to see a slowing of the trends. I attribute it to a large degree to the Great Society intervention of the expansion of the welfare state. And the well intentioned efforts to help, i think put in sense a family formation in particular that i think played a role in the slowing of the trends and the stalling of those trends in some places the reversal of those trends. One tof the things that i agree with some of that, but one of thee impo things that i thin is important that is important to realize, jason, is that now there ism cq÷ a lot of literatud discussion that now discusses and paints a lot of, you know, the Government Programs as kind of plots against, you know, black america, but you know, most of them did actually start as sort of, kind of the liberal new deal kind of idealistic programs. Another one that i would mention is that overnight changed the trajectory of black pittsburgh was urban renull, all right. So, in which in pittsburgh, but in most other cities when it started in the post war period t was considered something that was going to benefit black folks. So when in the name of that, and also what they called the slum clearance money was made available, you know, by washington, so, if you kind of a could make the case that you had a sort of black community in geo terms of the housing and so forth, that, you know, it was substandard and so forth,ederal could get a lot of federal dollars to tear it allit dow do build a new Housing Project that is supposed to improve the lot of black america. And well, what happened is two things. One in pittsburgh and elsewhere, it was going to be that effort that destroys, you know, the heart of those traditional black neighborhoods. What were supposed to be the kind of modern and more humane Housing Projects became prison, and even worse prisons for the black community then. And if you are looking at city after city after city, and all of the way from the north to miami and ifif you saw moonligh you know, it is less of a highrise, but the community that, you know, Barry Jenkins the director and the o playwrig grew up in as they portray in that movie, is sort of a, you know, it is a florida version of the Housing Project. Disastrous turn in terms of the conditions for blacks across the country. We are going to have to stop there. Ng t but thank o you, mark. Thank you, derrell. We will keep it going, and not take a break, because i will turn it over to my colleague Howard Husock who is going to introduce the next panel on culture and family. [ applause ] good morning, again. Good morning again. S we will continue with the program. The panel cul is called culturee family, but i this they we will use ate as point of departure, because cultured family can be considered one answer to the ovy problems of a africanamerican. Poverty and the persistence, andwant to i want to ask the panel to reflect broadly on that with some focus on culture and family but not exclusive on that. Youpanel. Distinguished on my far left is gene dattel who is author of ricketing faith who has been surrounded by poverty his whole life and perplex perplexed about it, and way to talk about it. And Anthony Bradley from kings t college is auest i distinguishe faculty member there and the author of the director of the e centerf the for human flourishi theology and the author of black theology. And susan goodan is the professor of the virginia commonwealth university. Hat and susan has complete ed a fd fascinating new study which she is going be reporting be about fa falls directly into the context of what we are discussing here. I want to begin jea with gene, i did not bring up your book to disrespect the authors, the other authors books but to quote from it if i might, and we were talking in the end of the Previous Panel about programs and efforts and concentrated wh government directed etprograms, and whether they helped or hindered, and there was some skepticism about them, and there is a lot are of skepticism in the book. And trillions of dollars were oo spent, and massive programs were elusive at best, and it did not end poverty, and then you quote that the office of Economic Opportunity who wrote i cant think ofof a single idea or poly recommendation that emanated fr from the group that was of any lasting consequence. Pro well, that is very disspirite and what do you take away from s theso experience to uplift the black poor, and from the 1960s and what lessons should we learn . First of all the Marshall Plan is the favorite metaphor ie terms of the black leadership now, and a favorite met the ta for for a lot of other things, but one of the things that i take away from it is the large o programs that once you are dealing with the federal government, it has to go down to the local community, theend up community who administrates it. Y so you will end up with the same problems which are the bureaucracyf inefficiency and e lack of accountability in terms of the programs that are all fitting the same model there. Are a lot of small programs that work, and everybody has a favorite one. s think that the 60s in termn of the hope that occurred once the overt legal segregation was remove removed i think that it was a little bit of the illusion, and remember that in 1964 a few days after the civillusion. 4 race ri passed which is public accommodations, you had race riots in major cities, new york, i philadelphia, and rochester, and also the towns in new jersey, and after the civil rights 65, you had watts that occurred. He so many morer issu issues and c the tis, but the framework complexities, but the overt issue of overcoming segregations is very different what we have today and the problems surfaced immediate immediately in the 1960s. Howa that is the start of it. Us and i also think that give us some specific is the lack of the accountability in the bureaucracy . Could something work if it were structured in a different way . Nn is there anything that you look back on and say, yeah, that helped . Wheth we should learn from that. Or well, certainly some people were helped as the Previous Panel indicated whether it is pittsburgh or other places that some people trickled through this, but we will always come back to the Building Blocks of society, and this is predates education which is the family, r theganiza community and the rel organization. They are seriously frayed within the black community. What i concentrate on the book, and what everybody would agree with me is how to move a mass of black america into the economicc mainstream. And we have several categories of black, and this is not just black america, one monolith. There is a black elite that hasc excelled in every aspect of american life, and one america, and from even the earliest 19th century is recognized that the white psyche had looked for black elite, and the lik middleclass, and one of the problems with the middleclass is that it has fragile asset base, and i would like to talk later about the private sector, because there needs to be a movement,rivate Major Movement terms of the private sector before the poverty, and the underclass that we know as well as the income and acid gap of the middleclass. Dle clas and the asset gap of the midd middleclass. So those are some things that we want to leave on the table, and the middleclass who has been undere intere d. Tremendous pressure, and so i will be interested in b how you expand on that. We want to turn to dr. Goodan e and this is going to be i think a little bit of the breath of fresh air considering the context that we have been involved in so far this morning. Susan has been looking at three admittedly small programs that harken back to some of the king programs that jason riley has been talking to in the early i 20th century, and i would love for you, susan to, tell us about the programs, and full disclosure, one of them remitted here and is going to be on display at the end of this program this morning. Tell us about the programs and what you found they were eness. You see san and how their effectiveness, and what do you trace it to . Well, thank you, howard. First, id like to thank the Manhattan Institute and it is a privilege to be a part of this e panel this morning. I want to make one slight introduction in the introduction of i i am the president , but aim the past president , and i want to make sure that if i get run e out, that jan nis, the new president does not get the hate mail. St so, as howard said, these were l fascinating parts of the or program. And weganiza looked at three nonprofit organizations led by afric africanamericans. One is the Mom Foundation of the arts in harlem and the other is the new jersey orators, and the director is here now, and the third is a reclaim of youth which is outside of chicago, illinois, in glennwood. Each of the programs had three different areas of focus. E was so for the mama foundation, wit was on the, are prez sentation vocal talent and on new jersey orator, it was speaking skills and performance and for theal ills. Reclaim of youth, it was College Preparation and life skills, and so we did in year one which is last, and it was the summer of 2015, the spring of the2015, w went out to all of the senior sf high schools in that area, and h weose th surveyed three groups students. We surveyed those who had participated in one tof the africanamerican led programs, and we surveyed the students who had not been in any of the programs, and then we surveyed students that had been in some sort of ensionafterschool progr not one of the three. A and so we looked at four dimensions academic and s deviant behavior, family and social support, re oe selfesteem and resiliency. The findings of this when compared across the three , we groups, and over 700 students n includedg in total, we found tht the first take away was that beingng noth involved was something afterschool or the extracurricular was certainly better than nothing at all. So, we think that there are twol things going on there, and one the positive impact of doing the afterschool program, whether it is basketball or the africanamerican led programs or the protection of perhaps doing the more negative things in thap time. Buthe we oth alsoer found was t africanamerican led programs outperformed the other programs, and these were a wide array of programs were a number of issues as well. In terms of the Overall Academic performance and this is grades and also in terms of the selfesteem and resiliency. So selfconfidence and the th confidence in the ability, a nd the resiliency and the ability to navigate conflicts and they outperform the other two groupsh and fast forward this past spring, the summer of 2017, and so the students that graduated and we did a followup or the year two study, and the question is where are they now . You think of the oprah winfrey,e and where are they now . So we wanted to know. So we did phone interviews with all of the students that had participated in the afric africanamerican led programs and as many as we could get and we got 79 of them attendi all. And we found that close to 88 of them are attending college on had attended college in the last year. Many of them in combination with work. That compares with the attendance rate of 40 overall, and 35 tonly much40 national thefo africanamerican students and so certainly much higher. We found that 3 4 of them or 72h of them rated the experience with africanamericanled te lifeffective, very ble to and they cite d that as very effective and being able to navigate life. Two i ith things that i think w associate with that is the y promotion of old school values, and we have hadrop th some disc of that. And so now i have to slow you down and you cant drop that phrase and explain en it. We have a panel called family and schools, and what is old school values . It is a term meaning respect for others, and respect for elders in the the community, and respect for self, and it are bi also represents beingng apull or pull the best of someone, and that the best of someone is notg predetermined by an s. A. T. Score ar the the grade point average to date, but the idea that with the desire to learn and desire to do well with the appropriate amount of support this student can excel. And so i think that the closest term, but it is not exactly that term is tough love. I dont think that it is still going to quite capture it, because there is a sense of compassion,of be throuut there is also a sense of expectations and responsibilities that go along with it. So you are saying that despite the hand wringing or notwithstanding the hand wringing of culture and family,e that there is some residue of this upward mobility culture ar that we werere hearing about as having been vang wished somehow by governments. Absolute ly, a i would say i is larger than residue. I think that you will find this, and one of the things that progt of all we saw throughout the program, that mentors in the program and lead thers program are leaders in the program ut are able to impart views of being black from someone who har experienced that firsthand. So that is a powerful thing thaf the programs are able to do, and the students who are receiving this information are getting it from very trusted sources, and i think that is also one of the features or the factors that makes it successful. While b b excel while being black is a powerful phrase. Yes, so, you know, essentially, and this is going to get th back to the some of the points in the earlier panel. There have beenafri successful africanamericans, and remain successful africanamerican, but what happens is that the narrative is dominated by thosee sus successful and byg. Those who are struggling. And i think that part of it is s that success in the Africanamerican Community becomes largely invisibilisibli so is what it does is to increase the africanamerican success and they are able to convey that to the youth being served. And visible for the students themselves . Yes, and i should say that the studentsents servet er serv programs are not all africanamerican, and they are certainly open to students of all races, but theymerican are a africanamerican led and predominantly they serve africanamerican youth. And to be clear, are these government supported in some ways . They are not government supported programs directly, and some of them, they have informau ties to the School Systems and that sort of thing, but these are Grass Roots Organization a tland nonprofit organizations and lots of times they are being supported by volunteers in the community, and people leadinm in the tra respect the individuals leading the programs and leading the training. Ve, we are seeing large numbers, close to 80 , enrolled in college. The not so great news is the amount of student debt that these students are reporting. Of course, we know that this is an issue that is a national issue. Over 52 have already taken out student a national issue, but over 52 had already taken out Student Loans exceeding 5,000 and 17. 4 had taken out loans just in their first year between 20 and 29,000. And thats what the data was saying about the nature of the africanamerican middle class and its limited asset base, one could say, but let me turn to dr. Bradley, and susan talked about the gospel for teens and reclaim the youth and at least two of those have links to the africanamerican church. I know new jersey started in the church basement, and the foundation up in harlem that put on great show, and i recommend that you hear them, the gospel for teens and it is clearly putting forward a religious tradition exclusively, and i suspect that the members of the reclaim the youth may know each other from church. That wouldnt surprise me. We have always heard about the black church as the vanguard of selfimprovement and upward mobility and community cohesion. Is it still that today . Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Im delighted to be on the panel. The black church historically has always provided people with two thing, namely. One is hope that in the midst of lives that are challenging and seemingly insurmountable, you can do it. Theres a lot of hope and a lot of encouragement and secondly, it is a community where there is accountability and expectation, and when you have hope and accountability, you often have success. The other contribution of black churches historically is the cultivation of the skills that make people successful in the marketplace. In church . Absolutely. So issues like respect, respecting your elders, respecting your employers, saying please, saying thank you, dressing well. I mean, i was born and raised in the black church and so when youre a child you see older men and you say i need to be like them and theyre successful. I need to do what they do. I need to model myself after them and you have the skills that are a real engine of progress within a marketplace. The other challenge, though, is there has to be some marked opportunity, right . So when you look at the reason there were riots in watts is because the Economic Opportunity started to decline and the jobs had started to disappear, right . And so with the skills and the great family and the church, you also have to have real Economic Opportunity where people can begin to see that they can make a difference in their community in terms of employment, that they can make things that the market needs and we forget that the basis of family is employment and jobs and ill give you a great example. In the church im currently serving in harlem right now we have a lot of exoffenders and this is what happens. When they come out and get a job, then they get married and then they want to take care of their children, and then they want to plug into the community because now they have employment. Theyre a part of the marketplace and they are a part of the community. So we have to have both of these things where you have to have the soft Skills Development and you also have to have economic and real Market Opportunities that are often undermined by all sorts of good and Wellness Programs that remove the lowskill labor market from the proximity where people need the job the most. Tell me a little bit more about that. The term called spatial mismatch. I first learned about this from wilson, back in 1996. You have the people that are lowskilled, but they live very far from the places that have those lowskilled job opportunity, right . So there is a mismatch spatially, and if you take the subway in the morning here, there is a big difference between who is on at 5 00 a. M. And who is on at 9 00 a. M. At 5 00 a. M. Its black and hispanic men and at 9 00 a. M. Its middleclass people like me. You have the black men from the bronx and queens coming way out into the city for lowskilled labor sorts of jobs. The professionals come in later. So theres this mismatch where the people that need the opportunity that live near where the entry points are. So if you look at a neighborhood in atlanta, and d. C. , where you will have the economic depression there arent a lot of job opportunity. I thought you would talk about minimum wage, too. We could, but theres not even jobs that allow them to have a minimumwage job. Has the minimum wage removed the jobs from their immediate neighborhoods . Well, i mean, you have the minimum wage. You have osha regulations. You have all sorts of various entry in terms of businesses, and a few years ago i wrote this piece called let the hustlers hustle. If you go into any community of color anywhere in the world you will find people who are naturally entrepreneur, and the question is why is it that that entrepreneurial spirit isnt given a place to cultivate and grow. Were not talking about criminal behavior. Right. They see opportunity and they want to meet thoer needs so there are lots of issues that undermine those Economic Opportunities for people and not have it happen, and also with the context of virtue and character formation. So we have an interesting issue on the table here implicitly. Do culture and family, soft skills, are they necessary to get jobs or is there something wrong with the economic marketplace which is not serving the poor and gene, you were the first one to raise the private sector as somehow problematic. Why dont you expand on that now . Lets start with the private sector and one of the studies thats very interesting now and were talking about a different segment of the population. Were talking about black College Students and what they major in. Georgetown study, 40 of the College Majors that are black College Students are Community Activists or social work. Very lowpaying jobs. The next category in terms of finance or engineering or s. T. E. M. Or computer work is clustered around 5 to 7 and these are College Graduates all of a sudden baking in an income gap. So you move down the scale in terms of where the pipeline is from high school to college, and almost 60 of black students do remedial work. When you talk about specialized skill, for example, the United Negro College fund and the a. C. T. Testing program essentially had four different category, reading, english, math and science, and they said okay, what category of black person was read ny in three of those fr categories and theyre only 10 . Hispanics were 24 and you get the right population at 50 . So youre losing down the line in terms of we know what the capabilities of in terms of new york city School Systems are in terms of math skills by the third to eighth grade and back into the family. What does the family mean in terms of simplistic terms, were talking about an extra income. Were talking about love, attention and discipline and what were doing now is dumping those kids with the statistic, between 65 and 70 of all black children under 18 are raised in singleparent homes and youre dumping the kids into the School System with the small programs and trying to supplement what is missing in the family. So the tough love part actually should be started much, much earlier. Let me just jump in here and say, okay, youre making two points. One is again, returning to the family for preparation and lets go to the major College Majors point. So when people say private sector, i suspect they think youll go somewhere, as follows. There needs to be more hiring. Silicon valley doesnt represent enough africanamericans. The media, as we heard from the question before doesnt do enough, a good enough job at reaching out to the Africanamerican Community. Youre saying Something Else. Youre saying that the job stills that are available in the marketplace are not being chosen. We have two africanamerican College Professors here so lets test that. Im going right to you. Its tough love. Well, first of all, i think it goes back to the point that you asked about earlier about what does it mean to excel and be black. Part of it is realizing and understanding that racism and Structural Racism is part of the reality in america, and i think there are lots of evidence to suggest that and so its that thats part of the status quo, so when we look at majors. Part of that is backtoback opportunity. So if you look at, for example, the offering of a. P. Courses. Students who get to the most selective universities and are able to major in s. T. E. M. Fields and the like, oftentimes have taken a. P. Courses as a part of that and as part of making them attractive to university x or y, but if we look at that and the offering of a. P. Courses and the disproportionately fewer that are offered in majority minority schools and particularly africanamerican schools. So when i look at the opportunity piece, i think thats why we need to look at it is the role of the individual responsibility and what is the role of structural opportunity that is afforded through the public sector, and even through the private sector. One of my favorite programs that i like to watch from time to time is this program called Undercover Boss on msnbc. One of the things that happens there is by the end of the show the ceo has established some sort of rapport oftentimes with the Frontline Worker and says ill give you 15,000 for the College Education of your child or to buy a home or whatever, so theres this recognition in that that theres some sort of recognition that just doing this job that youre able to do and that youre showing up for and doing day in and day out is not in and of itself getting you to where you need to be otherwise there wouldnt be this allocation of resources and what happens is empathy has taken part in that. One of the things thats missing in American Society today is we have lost that ability to empathize, and i think it came up on the preceding panel where mark talked about on the Cable News Network that people are talking at each other rather than having people go out to communities and learning about each other. I think once we can restore empathy, i think that goes a long way to fostering and wanting to have the best for human kind. Again, we see in your remark, the preparation for the marketplace with a sense of opportunity denied by the powers that be, if you will. What do you see with Kings College in new york, do you see that with majors and prospects as being the reflection of opportunity denied or bad choices . In my experience as a professor, neither of those things. It has more to do with exposure. Heres what i mean. I was just having a conversation with an africanamerican student last night after i gave an exam about her career. Shes a senior. What course was this . This was a course called christianity and society. Its a course on christian social thought in the west and we were simply talking about her future and what i was doing was giving her suggestion and expanding her imagination for what she could do. Her imagination was law school. Right. I said what about this and this and this and this and this, and she had never those sorts of opportunities what were some of the this and thats . Business, right . Be a job creator. Why dont you go and not simply work for a nonprofit. Start your own. Be entrepreneurial. She has fantastic gifts. This is a great contribution of the black church and this, to me, is the elephant in the room is that the black middle class left, and when the black middle class left urban america they took with them the moral and vocational imagination for what you could do, right . So, for example, in the black church you always have black doctors and engineers and scientists and things like that, but what happened when the black middle class left and its a slight that we dont talk much about, when all of the professionals left and moved to the suburb, which wasnt a bad thing, by the way. I was the beneficiary of that when my own parents moved from the inner city of atlanta out into the suburbs of atlanta. They had all of their professional values and those soft skills and those virtues with them and left in iner city atlanta were people for whom that frame of reference was limited. So in the black church you had this, you had black children who grow up to see a black doctor or lawyer and say one day i can do that and they had an entire community who would then invest in this child to make sure that he or she can get there. A lot of thats been lost and now we are now relied on some institution to try to provide a surrogate context for those sorts of thing, right . Weve created a lot of nonprofits to create an opportunity for some of those things and thats what the black church has always done is provided that, and i had a fantastic opportunity to mentor this man who was absolutely headed to prison. What did i do . I took him under my wing and i took him to my familys house in atlanta. We drove around atlanta and said africanamericans live here and his eyes popped out of his head and just him seeing something different, just changed his imagination. He didnt need a program. He didnt need a grant and it changed his own vision of how he wanted to live as a black man and those are the choices and opportunities we also need to infuse more imagination, right . Programming alone, in my opinion doesnt do that. It really takes that personal oneonone contact to infuse a sense of i believe in you or options and then to push people in some of those directions. Susan, you talked about excelling while being black and saw a link to what i suppose our programs and theres a lot of personal elements in the programs that you study. If we did think there was a spark in the kinds of programs that you study, that there seems to be there is because the results look pretty good, theyre just diny and there are a few hundred kids and we should be depressed about that because theyre so small. How should we think . If were talking about changing norms, which is the hardest thing to change. Its much easier to cut a check. The power to change norm, how do we get it and theres always talk about getting it to scale. How do we think about it . I think, first of all, i think we have to avoid setting up for a false dichotomy. I completely agree that it is we are going to leave this program to go to honolulu, hawaii, where lawmakers are holding a News Conference on the circumstances with the false alarm on january 13th. This is live on cspan3. How this huge error occurred, why it took so long for state officials to announce that this was a false alarm, why some cell