Black America Needs a FairTax, Not a Repeal of 'Stand Your Ground' Laws

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To Conservatives, the response of so-called "black leaders" to the tragic death of Trayvon Martin has been bewildering. Such "leaders," exemplified by Al Sharpton, have been trying to organize angry mass demonstrations against "white racism."

These leaders' major policy objectives seem to be to repeal or override "Stand Your Ground" laws, which remove an armed citizen's obligation to retreat in the face of a criminal attack, to enact new gun control laws, and to end "racial profiling," which is allegedly part of New York City's "Stop, Question, and Frisk" program.

However, when conservatives look at the facts and statistics on the black community, it seems to them that "white racism," "Stand Your Ground" laws, and "racial profiling" should be near the bottom of the list of the concerns of black leaders today.

Conservatives note the following:

• If assassination-type killings of blacks by whites were very common, it would not have been necessary to make a cause célèbre out of an incident where a part-black Hispanic man shot a black 17-year-old in self-defense.

• Black people commit 93% of all murders of black people.

• A black male is 40 times as likely to assault a white person as the reverse (based upon 2007 crime statistics).

• The percentage of black people "stopped and frisked" in New York City is actually less than the percentage of violent crimes committed by blacks.

• Today, 73% of black children are born out of wedlock. In 1950, this number was about 16%.

• If America were a racist nation, Barack Obama could not have been twice elected president of it.

For the benefit of bewildered conservatives, Unconventional Logic will explain why the focus of black leaders on things like white racism and "stand your ground" laws actually makes sense.

Consider that a so-called "race" is a type of extended family. Members of a given race assume that they share more genes with other individuals belonging to that race than they do with people of other races. And, we are shaped by evolution to be motivated to try to protect and propagate the genes that we carry.

The first evolutionary imperative of a family is to try to keep its members alive so that they will have an opportunity to reproduce and raise their offspring. The second is to maximize the economic resources available to the family. This is because, in our evolutionary past, food was the resource that limited the number of people (and therefore the number of copies of our genes).

OK, but white people have the same genetic imperatives as black people. Why are black leaders focusing on seemingly irrelevant issues today?

The answer to this question could be described as "despair." Black leaders have given up on a large portion of their extended racial family.

Unlike Dr. Martin Luther King 50 years ago, the black leaders of today do not believe that equality under the law and the opportunity to compete economically on a level playing field would be sufficient to assure the survival and success of black people. And, given our stagnant economy and the debilitating impact of 50 years of progressive/liberal policies on the black family and on black communities, the despair gripping black leaders is understandable.

Conservatives look at the Trayvon Martin case and wonder, "Why don't black parents just tell their kids, "Look. Don't commit crimes, don't hang around with people that commit crimes, dress like the upper-middle-class kids that you see on TV, and it is very unlikely that you will get hassled by either white people or the police."

The answer is that black parents don't because they can't. When most of the families in a community are headed by single mothers, the parents lose control of their adolescent boys. A "street gang/honor culture" develops. Teenage boys dress and behave in order to survive in their environment, while their mothers look on helplessly.

Behaviors that are extremely maladaptive in mainstream American society, such as starting fights over minor expressions of disrespect, actually make sense in an inner city honor culture environment. It also becomes important not to stand out from your violence-prone group by "acting white" in terms of dress or educational attainment.

What black leaders decry as "racial profiling" would be much more accurately termed "fashion profiling." More than 20 years ago, a black man was quoted as saying, "New York City cab drivers are racists. They won't stop and pick me up unless I'm wearing a suit."

So, if they don't want to be "profiled" by the NYPD and "stopped and frisked," why don't young black males in the Bronx just wear three-piece suits and wingtips? One reason is that they are (justly) much more afraid of being "profiled" by gang members in their own neighborhoods than by the police.

Once underclass parents give up on trying to keep their children from joining gangs, it makes sense for them to view ending "stand your ground" and "concealed carry" laws as matters of life and death. For one thing, a young underclass male is far more likely to rob a store than he is to own a store.

Yes, the parents may feel sorry for the storeowner that was robbed, but most store robberies don't involve the storeowner being killed, and attempting to rob an armed storeowner can easily result in the death of the perpetrator. If it's your child, you will want them to live, even if they commit a crime.

It is doubtful that many inner city Chicago parents want their sons to form flash mobs and attack people on Oak Street Beach. However, if parents don't have enough control over their kids to prevent this from happening, they sure don't want there to be guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens and "stand your ground" laws in effect.

As an aside, do liberals ever wonder why there are flash mob attacks in places like Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, but none in Houston or Dallas?

OK, so it makes sense that black leaders, representing the interests of a significant portion of their community, would be trying to get rid of "concealed carry" and "stand your ground" laws. But why all of the condemnation of so-called "white racism?" What has that got to do with the real problems of black people in America today?

Does having a storeowner eye someone suspiciously really hold them back in life? This happened to Barack Obama, and it didn't stop him from becoming President of the United States.

This brings us to our second evolutionary imperative: to maximize the economic resources available to those that you consider to be part of your family.

It is a simple fact that black people are far, far more economically dependent upon government than they were in 1960. As a result, while Dr. King's objective was to remove the barriers to black participation in the labor market, the imperative of today's black leaders is to keep the government money flowing (including to them, of course).

Government provides 20% of black employment. And, if we say that most government jobs are middle-class jobs (i.e., they pay more than $35,000/year), then more than half of all black middle class jobs are with the government. This is why the latest recession, which was the first one since WWII to produce a net reduction in government employment, was so devastating to the black middle class.

Real GDP growth has averaged only 1.6% under Obama. In June 2013, there were 4.4 million fewer full-time-equivalent jobs than there were in November 2007, despite a 12.0 million increase in the number of working age adults.

The urban underclass has no chance to become self-supporting in the Obama/Bernanke economy. Black leaders know this. They also know that a low-growth economy will eventually force the nation to choose between providing welfare for the underclass (TANF, SNAP, Section 8, WIC, Medicaid, etc.) and meeting its commitments to old people (Social Security and Medicare).

So, black leaders are doing the best they can with the situation. They are trying to maximize guilt, in the hope that this will help keep the government money flowing as America's fiscal crisis deepens.

It is not enough for conservatives to refuse to climb on the guilt train for which Al Sharpton wants to be the engineer. Conservatives must mount an effort to rescue the underclass from despair and government dependency.

The first imperative is fast economic growth. This means that we need the FairTax, which is the tax system that will maximize GDP growth, jobs, and wages. (It will also be necessary to stabilize the dollar and "return to normalcy" on monetary policy to support the kind of growth rates that the FairTax can deliver.)

The second imperative is to provide a social safety net that does not have the perverse incentives of our current welfare state programs, and helps people become self-sufficient, rather than trapping them in dependency.

This also means the FairTax, because the FairTax "Prebate" can be used to support lines of credit for every individual and family. These lines of credit ($50,000 for a citizen turning 18, and $100,000 for a young family of four) can and should replace all federal-level welfare programs. At the same time, the Prebate lines of credit can provide the capital required to start a small business, or to move to places where jobs are available.

Lastly, we need to increase the minimum size of an organization that falls under the purview of the EEOC from 15 employees to 1000. All net new jobs are created by startups, but fast-growing small companies are reluctant to hire people that they can't fire. This puts all members of "protected classes" at a disadvantage in today's labor market. Once an organization has 1000 employees, it can afford to fight with the zealots at the EEOC. A small company cannot.

The bizarre response of black leaders to the Trayvon Martin affair is being driven by despair. Conservatives need to hear it for what it is: a cry for help. Only conservative, supply-side economic policies, starting with the FairTax, can rescue America's underclass.

 

 

 

Louis Woodhill (louis@woodhill.com), an engineer and software entrepreneur, and a RealClearMarkets contributor.  

 

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