A letter Friday purports to address the failure of 'liberalism' toward 'Black America.' It's short on specifics but it does have two bold statements which I take to be its main points. First, "Black people in America have dug a hole they may never get out of by allowing liberalism to rule their lives." If a hole was dug out of which 'Black people in America' may never get out, it was dug by slavery. Yes, slavery in America ended 150 years ago, but its legacies live on. Current wealth disparities between the 'races' can be directly traced to the fact that at the time America was expanding to its current geographic configuration and the real estate was being distributed, African-Americans weren't allowed to participate. Add on 100 years of Jim Crow laws and de facto discriminatory policies in the northern states, when African-Americans were kept out of the 'good' neighborhoods and many of the best paying jobs and we come about to where the letter's second bold statement begins.
"The liberal Democratic Party has had its foot on the chest of black people for 60 years with promises that aren't kept." What began sixty years ago? Is this a reference to Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled that racial discrimination in public education was unconstitutional? Or the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was also resolved in federal court, with a ruling that racial discrimination in public facilities was also unconstitutional? There were some promises made there, starting with equal access. Those promises have been kept. Or did the letter writer do the math wrong and he really meant 50 years, with the passage of The Civil Rights Act and The Voting Rights Act? Two more kept promises.
Inquiring minds want to know.
