Day: June 9, 2025

History will harshly judge the United States’ prolonged vacillation over whether to honor the Fourteenth Amendment’s command of color-blindness by government actors in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, with the Supreme Court earning much of the blame. Brown vindicated Justice Harlan’s lonely dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which proclaimed that “our Constitution is color-blind.” Yet, it took the Justices 45 years, from Bakke in 1978 to SFFA v. Harvard in 2023, to reject the erroneous notion that racial discrimination in pursuit of “diversity” is acceptable under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and federal civil rights laws. Granting “preferences” to favored racial groups is invidious discrimination—and therefore unconstitutional.

The hand-wringing and indecision reflected in Bakke, Grutter, Fisher I, and Fisher II are an embarrassment to the High Court, which finally reached the right result in the Harvard case. The Supreme Court’s earlier endorsement of the dubious “disparate impact” theory (concocted out of whole cloth by the EEOC in a clear misreading of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971) remains uncorrected. Statistical imbalances are not the same as intentional discrimination, and it is ludicrous to suggest otherwise. Title VII explicitly declined to impose racial quotas. Section 703(j) of Title VII specifically states that employers are not required to grant preferential treatment to any individual to correct statistical imbalances in the workforce, and Democrat Hubert Humphrey, the Senate floor leader for Title VII, famously promised to eat the pages from the statute if Title VII were shown to authorize preferential treatment for any group. Like many promises made in Washington, DC, this one was never carried out.

Wall Street Journal columnist Jason L. Riley’s excellent new book, The Affirmative Action Myth, is a thorough and balanced post-mortem of the Court’s bungled jurisprudence. The Affirmative Action Myth is really two books in one, as evidenced by the subtitle Why Blacks Don’t Need Racial Preferences to Succeed, because Riley argues that “affirmative action” (which he correctly points out is “synonymous with racial favoritism”) and other progressive innovations created in the name of “civil rights” have actually harmed blacks more than helping them. Decades of black upward mobility were upended by quota-driven affirmative action and welfare programs since the 1970s.

Thus, racial preferences are both improper and unnecessary. “The main purpose of this book,” Riley states, “is to explain how affirmative action has failed.” Riley deftly weaves together an accessible account of the Court’s tortuous decision-making and the failure of racial preferences to improve the status of affirmative action’s intended beneficiaries. He even digresses briefly into the Court’s dreadful busing decisions, using Lino Graglia’s aptly-titled book Disaster by Decree as a guide. As Riley proves, liberal largesse has made things worse for the black community. The Court’s affirmative action jurisprudence was infected by the same ideological flaw that has hijacked the civil rights movement in America. He cogently explains that the continued advancement of the black community in America will be hampered until that error is recognized and rejected.

Like many aspects of the Great Society’s social engineering programs, and their successors, affirmative action was well-intended. Beneficent motives, however, do not assure good results; as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Affirmative action and other civil rights policies have been disastrous for blacks. The welfare state undermined the black middle class by encouraging fathers to abandon their families, incentivizing black women to have children out of wedlock, and resulting in the proliferation of single-parent households led by females. Family instability and, in particular, fatherless homes are strongly correlated with violent crime rates and other social pathologies.

As Riley demonstrates, all of this was a reversal of positive economic and educational trends experienced by black people between 1940 and 1960. Black Americans were making remarkable gains even under “peak Jim Crow.” Riley doesn’t claim that racism didn’t (or doesn’t) exist, only that the legacy of LBJ’s welfare programs and the advent of affirmative action has had detrimental effects on blacks that are often overlooked in lieu of continued reliance on tired canards such as “systemic racism” and the presumed debility among blacks caused by the institution of slavery (which ended 160 years ago).

As it is practiced today, “civil rights” is an industry in which many activists, scholars, bureaucrats, journalists, and organizations have a vested interest in perpetuating the myth of black victimization and helplessness. Riley argues (with extensive supporting footnotes) that “blacks have made faster progress when color blindness has been the policy objective.” Allowing equal treatment to be replaced by a regime of “oppression pedagogy” and identity politics, Riley suggests, is “one of our greatest tragedies.” Racial preferences “have been a hindrance rather than a boon for blacks,” he contends.

Riley makes a persuasive case. He reprises the work done by scholars such as Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Robert Woodson, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter, and Wilfred Reilly; as he notes, much of the research on this topic by center-right figures tends to be done by black academics, possibly due to white scholars’ well-founded fear of repercussions. (If you doubt this, recall the pariah treatment accorded Charles Murray, Amy Wax, Ilya Shapiro, and others who refused to genuflect to the prevailing orthodoxy.) Riley also draws upon the work of Stephan and Abigal Thernstrom, Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr., and many others. Readers may be familiar with some of this work, but Riley usefully summarizes it and supplements it with census data, lesser-known academic studies, and historical and biographical profiles such as Hidden Figures, the book and movie about pioneering black mathematicians who helped NASA’s space program in the 1960s. 

Riley devotes a compelling chapter to debunking the efficacy of affirmative action, but his critique is not limited to the harmful consequences of racial preferences in higher education—in the form of the “mismatch” phenomenon and otherwise. Riley contends, “One tragic legacy of the affirmative action era is that the number of black college graduates is almost certainly lower today than it would have been without racial preferences that mismatch students with schools for diversity purposes.” Riley nimbly tackles the whole array of liberal shibboleths on race: critical race theory (and its leading proponents), reparations, the false narrative of the 1619 Project, “mass incarceration,” DEI, redlining, and more.

What these topics have in common is that they share the premise—one that Riley debunks as a myth—that blacks are helpless victims of an oppressively racist system and cannot improve their status without special preferences and favored treatment. A more descriptive (but less catchy) title for the book would be “The Racial Victimization Myth,” because Riley explores the many facets of the false race narrative peddled by the Left.

The patronizing paternalism of the prevailing narrative harms blacks, Riley argues, because it instills a mentality of victimhood that fuels grievance and undermines effort and personal responsibility on the part of blacks. If the game is rigged due to “white supremacy,” and if “systemic racism” determines one’s fate, why bother to work hard, exercise self-restraint, adopt good habits (in the form of so-called “bourgeois values”), and so forth? This theme resonates powerfully throughout the book. History teaches that the path to upward mobility for minorities is assimilation into the mainstream culture, and the rigors and discipline of competition—the bedrock of meritocracy—foster a culture of striving instead of excuses, resentment, and despair. Treating black people as helpless victims discourages them from devoting themselves to achieving success through self-improvement.

One of Riley’s most effective rhetorical devices is the juxtaposition of attitudes about black self-reliance and personal responsibility from earlier eras and the contrived ideology of “anti-racism,” as exemplified by the writings of Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Robin DiAngelo. Proponents of critical race theory (which Riley says “amounts to little more than a fancy justification for racial favoritism”) embrace what Riley calls “racial essentialism”: the notion that “anti-black bias in America is systemic … and must be eliminated root and branch before any significant narrowing of racial disparities can take place.” Not only is this premise contradicted by the well-documented progress blacks made in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, even under Jim Crow, it is also contrary to the sentiments expressed by early civil rights leaders such as Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., and even Malcolm X, all of whom emphasized the importance of self-reliance, hard work, and individual responsibility as indispensable to upward mobility. Riley notes that “Coates is waiting on white people to rescue black people. [Frederick] Douglass understood that black people must save themselves.”

Advocates of this concept, once dubbed the “politics of respectability,” called upon black Americans to adopt constructive manners, morals, and attitudes to achieve social and economic advancement, even in the face of discrimination. Other minority ethnic and racial groups, including Irish, Chinese, Japanese, and Jewish immigrants, overcame prejudice in America by adopting productive cultural habits—assimilation, in other words. Riley points out that this approach is anathema to modern-day civil rights activists, who scorn respectability politics as “ineffective and a waste of time. Studious black youngsters and other black people who adopt middle-class speech, dress, and behavior are accused of racial betrayal, or ‘acting white.’”

Critical race theory holds that “racism is mainly if not entirely to blame for black-white gaps in everything from income to incarceration to standardized test scores.” Riley strongly disagrees. Absolving blacks of any responsibility for improving their status in American society conveniently blames “white supremacy” for every aspect of dysfunctional black culture and encourages blacks to be dependent on favors bestowed by the welfare state. Riley states that affirmative action creates the “impression that black people are charity cases dependent on government programs.” Opponents of affirmative action and statist policies sometimes compare the retrogression of black advancement since the Great Society to a “return to the plantation.”

Even mild suggestions for black self-improvement by sympathetic figures such as Barack Obama are rebuked by ideologues as “blaming the victim” and “talking down to black people.” Riley laments that “discouraging acculturation and assimilation in the name of racial solidarity is self-defeating.” The rejection of individual responsibility and the tendency to blame “whiteness” for all racial disparities have sabotaged the upward mobility and progress that blacks enjoyed before the civil rights era. Liberals understandably don’t want to acknowledge the body of data that Riley convincingly marshals. Hard work, thrift, sobriety, respect for authority, the nuclear family, recognizing the importance of education, and deferring gratification are not manifestations of white supremacy, but essential ingredients for success.

It is truly astounding to see how condescending leftist intellectuals deny black people any moral agency, and encourage them to wallow in grievance and victimhood. Riley observes that “black politicians and activists have a vested interest in a narrative that accentuates black suffering.” Victims require saviors, and those promising to deliver salvation are often rewarded with status, money, and influence.

The Supreme Court, left-wing scholars, and self-interested activists are not the only villains in The Affirmative Action Myth. Riley exposes the activist role of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in “turn[ing] Title VII on its head,” and points out that presidents from both political parties have muddied the waters by issuing executive orders mandating quotas (as Lyndon Johnson did with federal contractors in Executive Order 11246) or supporting the expansion of the Great Society welfare programs (as Richard Nixon did). There are few “heroes” in Riley’s account, although Justice Clarence Thomas—a longtime critic of affirmative action—comes close.

Riley does not deny the existence of racism in America, but he insists that it doesn’t explain the disparities within the black community (such as West Indian blacks versus African-American blacks) or the retrogression since the 1960s: “The elimination of white racism, however desirable then and now, is not a prerequisite for black socio-economic advancement.”

Riley’s sobering concluding chapter is chock-full of hard truths—and not for the faint of heart:

One reason antisocial behaviors [in black populations] became more common in the post-1960s era is because they became more tolerated and more lavishly subsidized by the government. … Low-income blacks began to adopt counterproductive attitudes and habits that previous generations had rejected and strived to eradicate. Even more tragically, academics began to intellectualize this degeneracy instead of calling it out for what it is.

Providing grisly details, Riley condemns the hip-hop culture and gangsta rap: “Too many young people have come to equate self-destructive behavior with black authenticity.” Put in economic terms, “government programs are no substitute for the development of human capital.”

Sadly, despite the proven failure of the victimization narrative, and its baleful consequences so readily apparent in our inner cities, the proponents of this model “have perhaps never been more celebrated in the academy and the media than they are today.” Affirmative action has never enjoyed popular support, and has now been declared unconstitutional and illegal. That it still carries sway in the influential spheres of academia and the media, Riley laments, “ought to be of deep concern to anyone who cares about the future of the black underclass.” Indeed.

The Affirmative Action Myth is a timely and well-written book that contains an abundance of common sense, solid arguments, and carefully researched historical data. One can only hope that it is widely read and provokes a long-overdue change in direction in the area of civil rights and race relations. Sixty years of failed policies are enough.

Can print newspapers be saved? The total estimated print circulation of US newspapers peaked in the early 1990s, and has been declining ever since. Circulation is now below what it was before World War II.

Many celebrate the demise of the newspaper industry, especially given that digitally-based news (including via social media) provides such a low-cost, diverse alternative to an industry whose reputation has been shattered by the almost comical narrowness of its longstanding liberal bias. Yet as much as I share that frustration with so-obviously partisan reporters claiming to be the disinterested guardians of American democracy, something integral to the health of our republic has been lost as print newspapers arriving daily on the doorstep become an endangered species. As Alexis de Tocqueville declared in Democracy in America about print media and the American people: “The newspaper brought them together, and the newspaper is still necessary to keep them united.” Without newspapers, will, as we’re warned, “democracy die in darkness”?

As a native Northern Virginian, I grew up reading the Washington Post in print—as its old (less savior-complex-sounding) slogan went: “If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.” My grade-school interest in the comics and sports sections—especially learning to decipher baseball box scores—in time matured into reading most of the newspaper every morning, a tradition I have maintained even while most other members of my millennial generation have dispensed with print media (and their expensive subscriptions). Though I am frustrated daily by the editorial decision-making of even the Post’s news desk, in fifteen minutes or less, I can gain a remarkably broad knowledge of the day’s international, national, and local news.

Much of the benefit is easier to perceive when compared to the digital media that has largely replaced print newspapers. In comparison to many of their digital brethren (though thankfully not this one), print stories and op-eds aren’t broken up every couple of paragraphs with distracting advertisements or eye candy. Moreover, whereas the newspaper is a single thing unto itself, one’s smartphone or laptop presents a constant, difficult-to-resist temptation towards the infinite scroll of social media or following countless Wikipedia threads or curious Google searches, which is the case even when reading excellent online long-form journalism.

Though it’s true that podcasts, social media, and Substack blogs offer a more intellectually diverse information ecosphere than the staid predictability of the Washington Post or The New York Times, research indicates that consuming information via print results in far better comprehension. And to get one’s news primarily from social media (as many Americans now do) risks becoming overly-reliant on an often simplistic, emotive, and stove-piped form of discourse that is inimical to the kind of extended, thoughtful debate required for republican government. In our increasingly anonymous and atomized world, digital partisan echo chambers reduce our exposure to people (and ideas) different from our own, even though such persons may literally live next door to us.

As Tocqueville observed, the influence of the press in early American life was immense. “It is the power which impels the circulation of political life through all the districts of that vast territory. Its eye is constantly open to detect the secret springs of political designs, and to summon the leaders of all parties to the bar of public opinion,” wrote the French aristocrat. Even when newspapers were demonstrably partisan, as they typically were until journalistic objectivity became part of the professional brand beginning in the 1890s, their role was to both inform readers and bring them into conversation with their political representatives.

Despite his disdain for American journalists who could be “crude” and “artless,” Tocqueville recognized that a vibrant, independent press served as an important “ingredient of liberty” and even sustainer of civilization, because it was not beholden to elite bases of power. “In America there is scarcely a hamlet which has not its own newspaper.” That, of course, is no longer true—the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times are owned by billionaires, while the largest print dailies represent little more than the opinions of the “American aristocracy.” Over the last generation, many modestly profitable family newspapers have sold out to larger, publicly-traded corporations in the search for higher quarterly revenues, destroying many multi-generational local and municipal newspapers.

Robert D. Putnam famously catalogued the effects of this crisis in his now classic Bowling Alone. His research found that Americans who regularly read newspapers were more knowledgeable about current events, had higher membership and participation rates in local civic associations, volunteered more frequently, had higher voter turnout rates, and trusted their neighbors more than Americans whose sole source of news was television. Since then, further research has linked the closure of newspapers to declines in civic engagement, increases in government waste, and more intense political polarization. As local news dies off, Americans pay more attention to national politics, reducing competition in local campaigns.

American journalists are well aware of (and bemoan) this frightening trend and its effect on the health of our polity. Yet attempts to restore record-low trust in the fourth estate have been risible. After the November election, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos announced that the paper’s opinion section would be “writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” as if valorizing these principles would somehow persuade millions of disenchanted Americans of the Post’s editorial integrity. Since then, though, there has been little appreciable change in how the newspaper covers the issues of the day.

That every section of the prominent American dailies features content within a scarcely-hidden liberal bias is suggestive that the ideological rot of our nation’s media industry is deep indeed, beginning with the training they receive in journalism schools. Journalists working even the domestic news or sports desks have been trained to look for stories that will further particular narratives about race, sex, gender, social class, and religion. One looks in vain, for example, for straight news stories from the Post or the Times sympathetic to religious conservatives.

Nevertheless, I know I am not the only one who yearns for a newspaper delivered daily to my driveway, one I may not always agree with, but which provides a significant chunk of information required to be an informed citizen in a free republic. The popularity of Walter Kirn’s County Highway, a 20-page broadsheet published six times per year, born during covid lockdowns and serving as a “hand-made alternative to the undifferentiated blob of electronic ‘content’ that you scroll through every morning,” suggests I am not alone. Yet as impressive as that broadsheet may be, its infrequency can only make it a competitor with magazines such as The Atlantic or Harper’s rather than a replacement for outlets that inform us daily.

Admittedly, it would require an incredible amount of creativity (and financing) to replace America’s dying print media industry, including both local media to report on the news citizens require to make informed decisions on local politics, but also ones that can appeal to a broad cross-section of our diverse nation. The Wall Street Journal is too urbane and elite to fill that role; the New York Post, despite some periodic strong reporting and opining, remains too much of a tabloid (and, like the Journal, is too focused on one part of the country).

It’s possible that those colleges and universities with a strong sense of the founding principles of our nation, such as Hillsdale College, which currently offers a minor in journalism, could offer journalism majors with the hope of restoring a profession that, since our nation’s founding, has been integral to republican self-government. It’s difficult, however, to imagine this being done at a sufficient scale to combat or replace legacy print media. Nor does it seem likely that investors could be persuaded to corral enough conservative journalistic talent to form competitors and replacements to dying papers.

Perhaps, then, what is most realistic for now is for Americans to fashion personal, bespoke means of consuming information that, as much as possible, incorporates the traditional benefits of paper-reading while resisting the worst tendencies of the digital age. One such way to do this is to subscribe to veritable print publications which, though they are not dailies (or even weeklies), still provide a means of reading long-form journalism and essays without the distractions of the Internet. Another is to be intentional about reading local online sources, whether it be the “local” section of larger papers, or the websites of those smaller local papers that remain. Setting careful guardrails around our consumption of social media, as Clement Harrold recently urged at First Things, would also be beneficial to the health of our republic.

There are even bipartisan legislative proposals to provide tax credits for those who subscribe to local news sources as a means of supporting outlets not as beholden to the partisanship of corporate legacy media. None of these, I acknowledge, is a particularly satisfactory replacement for what has been lost, given the decline and increasing irrelevance of print journalism.

For now, I remain one of an increasingly small percentage of Americans who still shell out hundreds of dollars a year for a print subscription to my hometown paper, willing to put up with its pervasive bias, in part, out of a (perhaps naive) desire of teaching my children how to read the news in print and a nostalgic pleasure in reading the comics and sports with them. The framers of our Constitution so valued the press that they included its protection in the First Amendment. If America is to uphold a tradition that predates our very founding—and avoid a future world of news that is entirely screen-dependent—we have our work cut out for us.