Segregation Nostalgia
Democrats exploit black voters on race, yet again.

 

By Deroy Murdock
NationalReview.com

Election Day approaches and, yet again, Democrats are doing their damnedest to terrorize blacks into marching to the polls.

• Maryland Democrats are promoting their black gubernatorial nominee, Anthony Brown, with a flier that includes an old photo of a sign for a colored waiting room and another showing white bigots, circa 1960, beneath a placard that reads: “Go back to Africa, Negroes.”

• New York City’s public advocate, Letitia James, attacked Republican gubernatorial contender Rob Astorino as “someone who reminds me of Bull Connor in the 1960s.” Unlike Connor — the infamous commissioner of public safety of Birmingham, Ala. — Astorino never sent German shepherds after civil-rights protesters. Unlike Astorino, Connor never picked a black running mate.

• A flier mailed to black voters in North Carolina says Democratic senator “Kay Hagan doesn’t win! Obama’s impeachment will begin! Vote in 2014.” The background is a grisly, historical photo of a crowd of white people posing with a black man who has been lynched.

Why the scare tactics? That’s all the Democrats have to offer.

Democrats cannot appeal to blacks about the future, as they have nothing to promote on economic growth, innovation, or national competitiveness. They could explain how lowering America’s 35 percent corporate tax — the developed world’s highest — would keep U.S. companies and jobs here. This would benefit Americans, black and otherwise.

Instead, Democrats moan about “corporate greed” and fight “tax inversions” with class-warfare rhetoric and threats of exit taxes for firms that move to lower-tax locales. This recalls the “confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels” advocated in Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.

Hiking the minimum wage seems to be the Democrats’ answer to nearly every problem. Of course, they never explain how often-squeezed employers will finance higher labor costs. They could pay higher wages and cut employees’ work hours, but this accomplishes nothing. As McDonald’s is demonstrating through computer tablets that customers can use to order food, more automation often means fewer workers. Supermarket self-checkout stands also illustrate this phenomenon.

Earlier this year, the Congressional Budget Office analyzed Obama’s proposal to boost the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10. CBO estimates that this measure would kill 500,000 jobs.

Democrats cannot appeal to blacks about the present, which finds things broadly worse for them than they were when Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009.

The black unemployment rate has fallen a bit, from 12.7 percent back then to 11.0 percent in September of this year. But the labor-force-participation rate for blacks has slid during that same period, from 63.2 percent to 61.7 percent.

According to the latest Census Bureau data, the number of black Americans below the poverty line has grown on Obama’s watch, from 25.8 percent to 27.2 percent. Meanwhile, real median income for black households has slipped in the Obama years from $34,880 to $33,321.

Under Obama, the number of black Food Stamp participants has ballooned, from 7,393,000 to 10,955,000. And home ownership has dropped from 46.1 percent of black Americans to 43.5 percent.

This is all George W. Bush’s fault, obviously. But Obama was elected six years ago next week. What do black Americans have to show for more than a half decade of his governance?

Education offers a route out of this mess, as Obama knows. He sends his daughters to Sidwell Friends, Washington’s most exclusive private school. But for those less fortunate, Obama repeatedly has defunded the school-voucher program in Washingotn, D.C. Thankfully, House speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) has found ways to finance it.

Nationwide, most Democrats slavishly stand shoulder to shoulder with their teachers’-union masters. Together, they labor mightily against charter schools, vouchers, teacher report cards, dismissals of incompetent instructors, and almost every idea that might help black children flourish.

As for black adults, Obama has just imposed a “gainful employment” regulation that could hammer for-profit colleges and universities such as DeVry, Kaplan, and University of Phoenix. These institutions, but not their private or government-school counterparts (e.g. ,Princeton or UCLA), now face arbitrary new rules on student-debt loads relative to incomes soon after graduation. For-profit schools consider this a major threat. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 31 percent of black college graduates last year emerged from such establishments. But this did not dissuade Obama from punishing schools that actually make money while bestowing career-oriented degrees.

So, ignoring the future and the present, Democrats appeal to blacks about the past. They invoke burning crosses, attack dogs, nooses, and other revolting things that blacks overcame a half-century ago. America is not free of racism, but these ugly memories are as relevant to blacks today as car fins and rotary telephones.

With the polls about to open, Democrats offer black Americans nothing but fear itself.

— Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University.