How black Americans were on the rise before affirmative action: new book – The College Fix

‘This idea that black advancement in this country is contingent on special treatment, set-asides, quotas and what have you is just something not supported by the facts’
Wall Street Journal columnist and Manhattan Institute senior fellow Jason Riley is out with a new book: “The Affirmative Action Myth: Why Blacks Don’t Need Racial Preferences to Succeed.”
Published Tuesday, the book details how “Black incomes, homeownership, and educational attainment were all on the rise in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century and began to stagnate only after affirmative action became the law of the land,” according to its online description.
In an interview with the New York Post, Riley said “I find it annoying that I have to make what I consider commonsensical points that others deem controversial, to say, ‘No, police are not a bigger problem than the criminals.’ This is something that’ll get your head handed to you today to say.”
“ ‘Black kids should spend more time studying and less time playing video games, and that will go a long way toward closing the achievement gap in schools’ is a very controversial thing to say.”
Riley said he was inspired to write the book after the reaction to the 2023 Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which made race-based decisions in admissions illegal.
“There was so much doomsaying up to the decision on how the black middle class would be impacted if the court banned racial preferences. And the argument seemed to be that racial preferences had created the black middle class, and so blacks would be devastated if these policies go away. And I wanted to say that is not what the historical record shows,” he told The Post.
“This idea that black advancement in this country is contingent on special treatment, set-asides, quotas and what have you is just something not supported by the facts,” he added.
“What really prompted the book is to respond to this sky-is-falling-argument I was hearing about the court case and what could happen if the justices rule the way they ultimately did.”
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A picture of author Jason Riley and the cover of his new book / YouTube screenshots
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