More Harm Than Good: Great Society Policies Have Largely Failed African Americans

Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed By Jason L. Riley Encounter Books, 2014, $23.99; 184 pages. Jason Riley challenges the value of affirmative action and liberal social reform precisely 50 years after their birth as part of the "Great Society" conceived by President Lyndon B. Johnsons administration in 1964 and 1965. At the time, it was said that it would take 40 to 50 years to truly measure their impact. That time span has now passed, and Riley's verdict is a harsh one. The book reminds the reader of the challenges facing many African Americans today, including high unemployment, staggering neighborhood crime and violence, and large percentages of children growing up in low-income single-parent households. As a reviewer for Education Next, I was particularly interested in Rileys treatment of education policy and its consequences. Among the education topics he discusses are the black-white achievement gap, education reform strategies, improving outcomes for African American students, and affirmative action in higher education. The general premise of Please Stop Helping Us is that "liberal" social policies specifically targeting African Americans have done more harm than good. He "examines the track record of the political left's serial altruism over the past half century." Riley evaluates these policies by combining evidence from leading social-science research with personal stories about his experiences as a black male. He provides moving examples of what it was like for him growing up in a single-parent household, being teased for acting and sounding white because of his commitment to academic excellence, and having direct encounters with both sides of crime and violence in America. I find his stories and many of his claims compelling, and I encourage anyone interested in these matters to pick up a copy, as it challenges conventional wisdom at every turn. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Still, the work has its limitations. First, his charge against liberal advocates is overly generalized. Often he seems to treat any and all Democrats as equally guilty. With regard to K-12 education reform, for example, it is not accurate to cast all Democrats as people who oppose charter schools and school vouchers. Riley offers the District of Columbia Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) as an example of a school-choice initiative denounced by "liberals." But the reality is a good deal more nuanced than that, as my own research has shown. The OSP is the first federally funded voucher program in America, and it was launched in the District of Columbia in 2004. The District of Columbia is a heavily Democratic-leaning school district and city, and OSP would not have been established there without the support of key leading local Democrats. Many of these leaders, in fact, came together to create a "three-sector [education] strategy" that focused on 1) securing greater federal support for traditional public schools, 2) creating a facilities fund for public charters, and 3) providing low-income families a scholarship or voucher to attend private schools. The goal was to create "one of the best systems of schools in the country." The author must give these liberals due credit here. Riley also lacks clarity regarding who is the "us" in the title and his criteria for assessing the impact of "help" or affirmative action. …