Please Stop Helping Us, by Jason L. Riley

I am interested to see the rise of conservative African Americans who are willing to buck the Democratic Party line.  Jason L. Riley has had enough of white liberals and left-wing politicians "helping" the black community.  In Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed, Riley bucks the standard positions of black leaders and calls on American to stop looking at race in creating public policy.

Writing during Obama's second term in the White House, Riley wonders how, with a black man in the highest office in the land, the overall progress of blacks in America stalled and even took steps backwards.  Typical liberal policies and talking points, like higher minimum wage laws, softening of crime enforcement, opposition to charter schools, and affirmative action in higher education, while intended to help blacks, end up harming them, on the whole.

With black kids disproportionately suffering through poor education in failing schools, it seems that giving black families more choices in selection of schools would be a no-brainer.  But liberal political leaders and teachers' union leaders, who tend to send their own children to private schools, consistently oppose public funding for charter schools, despite evidence of their success. 

On crime, liberals look at statistics that seem to show disparities in sentencing and enforcement, where blacks are stopped more often, arrested more often, and receive harsher sentences.  In response, liberals want to lessen penalties and enforcement, which ends up harming law-abiding blacks when their communities are not policed appropriately. 

Riley surely hasn't made many friends in the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, or the Democratic Party.  But that doesn't mean he's wrong.  He has facts and history on his side, and, for the sake of blacks in America, we should hope that more black leaders like him rise to prominence.