Jason Riley on the history of black poverty and the family in America

Jason Riley: Let's look at poverty. Between 1940 and 1960, black poverty in America fell by 40 percentage points... in 20 years. That's before the Civil Rights Act, before Voting Rights Act, before Brown v. Board of Education... Now it continued to fall through the '70s and '80s, but at a much slower rate. You had a much stronger black family coming out of slavery, throughout Reconstruction, into Jim Crow. Two parent households were much more likely among blacks than what you have today. And in some years, according to census, two parent households... the rate exceeded that of whites. The difference today, and I would argue largely as a result of these efforts to help blacks, you have seen the disintegration of the black family. And until blacks repair that damage - and there is significant damage there - I don't see how these other outcomes are going to improve. 

Nick Gillespie: What can the government do? 

Riley: It's not about what I want the government to do; it's what I want the government to stop doing. Stop raising the minimum wage and pricing blacks out of the labor force. Stop mismatching kids with schools in the form of affirmative action and setting them up to fail. Stop trying to replace a father in the home with a government check. 

~ Jason Riley, "Black Americans Failed by Good Intentions: An Interview with Jason Riley," 5:38 mark, Reason TV, September 3, 2014