Drawing the Wrong Lessons From Selma About America Today?

Jason L. Riley trots out the statistics to prove that minorities
really didn't have it so bad back in the 40's through the 60's. His
facts show Black Americans integrating and finding work at a much
faster pace than today, despite all the regulations by Liberal
Government.
So, I don't have a bunch of studies to point to. All I have are my
memories of those times. I was 20 in 1955 when I dropped out of
college for the first time. I remember the big fight at the
University of Washington over allowing a couple of Negroes on the
varsity team. Both were superb athletes, but their color caused
criticism, even though after the coach insisted they play, they became
the backbone of the team.
I saw virtually no Black students among the some 30 thousand students
attending the U. in 1955. In down town Seattle, I was startled when I
saw the first Black person walking along the sidewalk in front of the
Bon Marche department store. I recall about the same time when I
almost fell back off the steps of the city bus because I found myself
looking into the Black face of the driver. The first Black bus driver
in the city. Along the same time I was stopped in my tracks when I
saw a White woman walking arm in arm with a Black man. Everybody on
that street turned and glared at the couple. Looking back I have to
admire their guts.
When my first wife and I went house hunting in 1962, Red Lining was a
common practice. Black families were never shown houses in certain
areas. In fact, that was most areas outside the Central Area. I had
no Black school teachers or professors. No Black doctors or nurses
during my several stays in hospitals, while undergoing eye surgery.
No Black mail carriers until well into the 70's. No Black janitors in
any of the schools I attended. No Persons of Color in any of the
several churches I attended. Around 1963, a young couple, both Junior
High School teachers, moved themselves and their two sweet little
daughters into our neighborhood. What an uproar! "Just you watch",
my father-in-law told me, "property prices are going to go down the
toilet and those Negroes will take over the neighborhood". By the
way, this couple kept the neatest yard on the block. One day I looked
out the window and saw the two girls walking, hand in hand, up the
road to the Evangelical Church, the same church my wife and I
attended. Our Christian brothers and sisters turned a solid cold
shoulder to those two little girls. They came another couple of
Sundays, and then stopped.
Another time I was scolded for befriending a Mexican fellow who came
and sat in the back pew. He was given the entire pew. It was
Thanksgiving, so my wife and I invited him to join us for dinner. He
did. And in return he insisted on doing our yard work without pay.
We insisted, but he said to give it to the poor. When he did not
attend again, I told my wife I was no longer a member of that church.
The pastor and I had several long discussions, and he was a good,
caring man, but he was unable to bring himself to challenge the Board
of Trustees.
And I almost forgot Al. Al was a talented Black musician, a transfer
to Ballard high school in 1953. He had a band, and played several of
the local nightspots. No one ever checked Al to see if he was old
enough to play in those taverns. Al was Ballard's only Black student.
We also had one Asian girl, one Mexican girl and one Native Alaskan
Indian boy. Everyone else was pure European descent. Mostly sons and
daughters of Norwegian and Swede fishermen and mill workers.
So my elder sister invited Al to our Halloween Party in 1953. About
two days later my best friend in high school came to the house and
asked if he could speak to me in private. He told me that he was
speaking for "the group", and they wanted me to know that next time we
planned to have Al at a party, they would appreciate knowing in
advance, so they could refuse to attend.
As I said, I have no statistics to trot out, but that's the world I
grew up in. There was blatant discrimination. Not only toward
Persons of Color, but toward women, too. Why would Jason L. Riley and
others try to sell us a different, Make Believe World? We were, and
we are a very prejudiced people. And we will not change easily.
Especially if we continue to deny it. Let's quit pretending that by
changing names, and situations that things are better.
And by the way, calling the Obama administration Liberal, is one more
big, fat old Fairy Tale.

Carl Jarvis



On 3/12/15, R. E. Driscoll Sr <llocsirdsr@att.net> wrote:
> All:
> I found this to be interesting. Some new thoughts to me and perhaps to
> others. Certainly is not what I have been seeing and reading in local
> sources of news or over the national TV news.
>
> http://www.wsj.com/articles/jason-l-riley-drawing-the-wrong-lessons-from-selma-about-america-today-1426028297?mod=rss_opinion_main
>
>
> Drawing the Wrong Lessons From Selma About America Today
>
>
> Ferguson, Mo., in 2015 is not Alabama in 1965. But liberals have
> reasons to pretend otherwise.
>
> By
> Jason L. Riley
> March 10, 2015 6:58 p.m. ET
> 155 COMMENTS
> <http://www.wsj.com/articles/jason-l-riley-drawing-the-wrong-lessons-from-selma-about-america-today-1426028297?mod=rss_opinion_main#livefyre-comment>
>
>
>
> When National Public Radio on Sunday asked Selma's mayor how--not
> whether, but how--"what happened in Selma 50 years ago fits into the
> current conversation about race relations in this country," he rejected
> the query's premise.
>
> "I'm not so sure how it fits," said George Evans, the Alabama city's
> second black mayor. "We have a lot more crime going on in 2015 all over
> this country than we had in 1965. Segregation existed, but we didn't
> have the crime. So now, even though we've gained so much through voting
> rights and Bloody Sunday, we've stepped backwards when it comes to crime
> and drugs and the jail system--things like that."
>
> The interviewer pressed him. "What is life like for the average citizen
> in Selma," which is 80% black, she asked. "I mean, your city does have
> challenges. You've got chronic unemployment rates. What are the biggest
> problems from your vantage point?"
>
> Selma Mayor George Evans in January Photo: Getty Images
>
> Still, Mr. Evans wouldn't give her the answer she was fishing for. He
> wouldn't play the race card. "Well, from the standpoint of jobs, we have
> a lot of jobs. It's just that there are a lot of people who do not have
> the skill level to man these jobs. And that's the biggest problem we
> have. There are industries and businesses here that are searching for
> people to come to work. But many times they're not able to get the jobs
> because they're not going back to pick up that trade or that technical
> skill that's needed in order to take that job."
>
> The mayor's comments are noteworthy because so many others have used the
> anniversary of the historic march to score political points and draw
> tortured parallels between the challenges facing blacks a half-century
> ago and those facing blacks today. In remarks last weekend at the foot
> of the bridge in Selma where police billy-clubbed and tear-gassed
> peaceful protesters on March 7, 1965, President Obama decried
> "overcrowded prisons" and "unfair sentencing" without ever mentioning
> black crime rates. He repeatedly invoked Ferguson and called
> photo-identification laws "voter suppression." Maybe someone should send
> Mr. Obama a link to the NPR interview with Mayor Evans.
>
> Ferguson, Mo., in 2015 is not Selma, Ala., in 1965. Black people in
> America today are much more likely to experience racial preferences than
> racial slights. The violent crime that is driving the black
> incarceration rate spiked after the civil-rights victories of the 1960s,
> not before. And if voter-ID laws threaten the black franchise, no one
> seems to have told the black electorate. According to the Census Bureau,
> the black voter-turnout rate in 2012 exceeded the white turnout rate,
> even in states with the strictest voter-ID requirements.
>
>
> Opinion Journal Video
>
> Manhattan Institute Fellow Jason Riley on why the parallel between 1965
> Alabama and present-day Ferguson is bunk. Photo credit: Associated Press.
>
> The socioeconomic problems that blacks face today have nothing to do
> with civil-rights barriers and nearly everything to do with a black
> subculture that rejects certain attitudes and behaviors that are
> conducive to upward mobility. Yet Mr. Obama has a political interest--and
> the civil-rights industry has a vested interest--in pretending that the
> opposite is true.
>
> "Liberalism in the twenty-first century is, for the most part, a moral
> manipulation that exaggerates inequity and unfairness in American life
> in order to justify overreaching public policies and programs," writes
> the Hoover Institution's Shelby Steele in "Shame," his timely new book
> on political polarization and race relations in the U.S. This
> liberalism, he adds, is "not much interested in addressing
> discrimination case by case; rather, it assumes that all minorities and
> women are systematically discriminated against so that only
> government-enforced preferential policies for these groups--across the
> entire society--can bring us close to equity."
>
> Liberalism, moreover, tends to ignore or play down the black advancement
> that took place prior to the major civil-rights triumphs of the 1960s
> and instead credits government interventions that at best continued
> trends already in place. Black poverty fell 40 percentage points between
> 1940 and 1960--a drop that no Great Society antipoverty program has ever
> come close to matching. Blacks were also increasing their years of
> schooling and entering the white-collar workforce at a faster rate prior
> to the affirmative-action schemes of the 1970s than they were after
> those programs were put in place to help them.
>
> The civil-rights battles of the 1960s have been fought and won, thanks
> in part to the thousands of brave souls who marched 50 years ago from
> the Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Selma to the
> Montgomery Statehouse. The racial disparity that persists today is not
> evidence that too many blacks face the same challenges they did in 1965,
> that "the march is not yet finished," as Mr. Obama asserted. Rather, it
> is evidence that too few blacks--as Selma's mayor told NPR--have taken
> advantage of the opportunities now available to them.
>
> /Mr. Riley, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and Journal contributor,
> is the author of "Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder
> for Blacks to Succeed" (Encounter Books, 2014)./
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---
> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
> http://www.avast.com
>