blacks. >> guest: i think that's insulting. you need i.d. to get caught medicine. >> host: certain cough medicines. >> guest: you need i.d. to get a library card. the idea that it's too much to ask for people to produce identification to vote i think is quite insulting to blacks and again most blacks agree with me. amar jorde of them have told pollsters repeatedly that they too support voter i.d.. support for voter i.d. is wide and deep in this country. you would never know that listening to the white house rhetoric but it has been widely deeper long time. >> host: i am sitting with sub jason riley the author of "please stop helping us" how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed. a very hot topic i think and before we go any further our viewers are like do is this guy? you may have your supporters who

who say i'm cheering you on and you have the detractors, what is he talking about? left by now to ur. we understand that you sit on "the wall street journal" editorial board and you are also a contributor at "fox news" and you are an independent, correct? where did you get your ideas? how did you start out this way? did happen all of a sudden or did someone help shape your ideas? >> guest: i think it was, it happened gradually probably starting in my late teens. i was not very politically aware and as a young teenager didn't live in a particularly political household. we didn't sit around discussing politics and my family either my immediate family or my extended family. but in school through various

social studies or courses of that kind you are required to report on current events or read the newspaper and i started doing so. but really in college i think i started reading authors like tom ball and shelby steele and what they said made a lot of sense. i like the fact that they brought data to the discussion. they were just shooting from the hip. speaking from experiences in many cases with people like shelby steele. that was really it. it was really more self-discovery than an individual i would say trying to take me and show me the way or put me in one direction. >> host: where did you go to college? >> guest: i attended the state university of new york in buffalo and i was bored and raised in buffalo. >> host: talk to me about your influences. your dad and you come from a

divorce household. the your mother and your father were nearby. talk to me about that and as it relates he said something before we started as a relay to present a bomb and how he talks about fathers if he didn't see his father is much. >> guest: i grew up in not only a home where my father had a huge amount of influence even though he didn't live with us, my parents were divorced when i was very young. my father had visitation rights three, four days a week and most weekends and holidays is addressed. he had a presence in my life coaching little little league and that sort of thing but i also have extended family followed strong and tact families. it was quite common. everywhere i looked whether it's my church, my extended family, i saw a black man all around me that word to work just in suits and ties, spoke proper english, didn't swear, didn't drink to excess.

it was just the norm. i had too many role models to count but my father was very much part of that. my mother despite the divorce always appreciated that aspect of him that he stood around. he was around for his kids and his grandkids. >> host: so since you have something that unfortunately many young men, to include president obama, did not have what is the issue that you have with the president when it comes to him talking about black fathers or are you on board with him? >> guest: i love to hear him speak like that and i wish he would do it more often. the point i was making is the flak he catches on the last from black intellectuals in particular when he says these things. he is accused of talking down, condescending, the uppity sort

of phrase comes to mind. it's more about airing dirty laundry. it's the same arguments that racist conservatives make about blacks. talking about culture and culture as the real culprit in a lot of what ails the black underclass today is quite taboo among blacks. those are fighting words and i think one of the reasons the president doesn't talk about it more often is because he catches so much flack when he does. but i think he is dead on when it comes to these issues. and in particular father had. the influence of a father when it comes to a child staying out of trouble with the law, staying off drugs, finishing school, getting married before they have children.

>> host: it's powerful. >> guest: it's extremely powerful and that is not just shown anecdotally. there is hard social science empirical data backing that up so i wish him all the best and i wish he would talk about it a lot more. >> host: we are talking about a lot of issues and pretty much we are talking about race. do you believe at this time there is racism in this country? >> guest: of course there is racism in this country and i expect that i will not live to see a time when there isn't racism in the country but the question isn't whether racism exists but where racism is a barrier to black progress in this country. when i look back to what blacks achieved when racism was much more open and avert an even legal it's hard for me to draw a connection between racism and

70% out of wedlock birthrates in the black community. or double-digit unemployment rates in the black community. given that in previous times when blacks face more obstacles in this country we have better outcomes in both of those categories. >> host: "please stop helping us" how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed, jason riley. when you are on "fox news" or when you are writing your columns for "the wall street journal" do you include this kind of conversation or dialogue dialogue that's in dialogue that's in the book? >> guest: sure, i mean i do commentary on television on all types of topics most of them not having to do with race but one race does come out i say this type of thing. i've written this book and in fact that's where i set them first in on the pages "the wall street journal" or the

publications over the years or on television over the years. i've been doing television commentary for a dozen years now so their opportunities to speak about these matters and i try to take advantage of them. >> host: what has been a response from civil rights leaders to some of us. you have touched third rails rails on their way and you backed me up with your facts sender and not by what has the response been? >> guest: there's a lot of name-calling and a lot of that i think childishness. unfortunately what you don't get is a lot of engagement of the ideas. instead you are put on the couch. you have seen this happen with clarence thomas. justice scalia is wrong on a number of issues if you are a liberal but clarence, susan just wrong. he is a sellout.

he's got psychological problems. you get a lot of that. black conservatives get psychoanalyzed. >> host: they do. allen west. >> guest: that's what the reaction typically has been. now that is a reaction usually coming from black -- when i engage average blacks who aren't in the business of punditry or journalism or politics i get quite a different reaction. it's just common sense of course. who thinks differently? so there is this disconnect between your naacp national urban leg and rank-and-file blacks. i think they are wide differences and it's unfortunate to me that many in the media continued to run to the jesse jacksons and the al sharpton to speak on behalf of black swan over the past decades the

interest of the jesse jacksons and al sharpton's has divert widely from what the black underclass in particular in terms of public policy. >> host: before we go to break and after a comeback to break we will talk about more of these third rail issues that you dare to touch in this book that doesn't bother you, you are a black man, does it bother you when you hear the black community rise up against you for what you say? >> guest: well i haven't seen now. i think i would be a little melodramatic. >> host: you said they called you names. >> guest: well i don't like to be called names, no one likes that. i believe these things need to be said. i don't think liberals and the policies they have put forward have helped the black underclass. i think they are not just not helping, think in many cases and when we are talking about affirmative action earlier they are harming. they are doing more harm than good.

i think someone needs to point that out and that's what motivates me. and yes there will be some name-calling but if you believe that what you are saying needs to be said and is a positive contribution to the debate and that is an important debate, name-calling is something you can put up with. >> host: jason l. o'reilly, "please stop helping us" how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed. we will be back with this hot conversation in a moment. >> host: jason l. o'reilly "please stop helping us" how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed. we talked about the third rails.

you are touching the third rail in the conclusion of this book when it comes to president obama's address to the nation the surprise announcement of her speech to the nation friday is almost a week later after the george zimmerman verdict and then saying you touch the third rail. for whatever reason i happen to be in florida that night. i was landing in orlando florida tonight that the george zimmerman verdict came down. across the airport and across the state of florida and a week later almost president obama came to the briefing room to the surprise of us in the press corps and he spoke from the heart. he knew about racial profiling and things of that nature and you taken to task for that. talk to me about that. >> guest: in terms of avert itself is in clear to me the jury had his instructions on what it could take into account what occurred in. namely it didn't matter what the

scenario was in terms of who was filing to what the police told the dispatcher told zimmerman to do or not to do. what mattered in terms of what the jury was told to take into consideration was whether he felt his life was in danger when he pulled the trigger. >> host: >> guest: but what i took to task i took up residence task over where the various debates he wanted to drag into the discussion weather was gun control or racial profiling or the perception of young black men in this country and how he wanted to talk about that. to me, i think we should have a conversation about how young black men are perceived but they can't divorce that conversation from black behavior. these perceptions are coming out of nowhere. i don't think we can talk about

racial profiling without talking about black criminality and that's not a conversation many on the left want to do. there was a law professor that wrote the book that i talk about in my book called the new jim crow, where she is at pains really to ever bring up black crime statistics. she complains at length about black incarceration rates that doesn't want to talk about any of the behavior that leads to those higher black incarceration rates. as i pointed out earlier black incarceration rates, the black white gap in 1960 was narrower than it is today. it's wider now and obviously if you think there was or is a racist criminal justice system out there responding or responsible for these high black incarceration rates it had to be

much more racist in 1960 then this today when the head of it is a black man eric holder who reports to another one, president obama. >> host: since you brought this up you are talking about george zimmerman and the acquittal. at the end of the day there's a young man who is dead who was wearing a hoodie. in your opinion was he racially profiled? >> guest: yes, i believe that he was viewed suspiciously because of the color of the skin of the way he was dressed. i don't have any doubt about that really. >> host: but again the question is why our young black man dressed a certain way perceived that way? >> host: with all due respect as a woman i have a marketer's vineyard goodies so am i wrong? i'm a black woman and if i choose to wear my hoodie and no

makeup you don't know whether i'm a man or woman wearing my martha's vineyard city. >> guest: if we have a problem with black men being more perceived to commit crimes we need to do something about black behavior. >> host: since you are saying that web in your opinion should be done not just by black lawmakers but by the federal government and the state government, universal. what should be done to prevent these things from happening? >> guest: again to the title of the book to me it's more about what we should stop doing. the obama administration's response to this problem is to go easier on criminals. he wants to reduce sentences on drug dependency princess. >> host: the crack-cocaine versus the powder cocaine --

cocaine. >> guest: in schools they want black kids suspended at lower rates than they currently are because there's a disparity between the rate of black suspensions and white suspensions. >> host: let's go back to crack. let's go back to the powder versus crack-cocaine. many people are not fully aware or may not be about the disparity. at one time it was 100 to one disparity where those who were using crack-cocaine got a much larger sentence and those who did powder cocaine. he was the one and what is the group that is thought to do crack-cocaine? african-americans in the group thought to do powder, white americans so that disparity has been whittled down to the obama administration. there is a racial element there. >> guest: do you know who put the initial ratio in place? >> host: is bill clinton. bill clinton had a chance to

pull it down. >> guest: it was the professional black caucus. >> host: and e i know but bill clinton had a chance to put it down and he did not. >> guest: my point is they wanted my enforcement to crack down on this and that is what happened. it was driven by black lawmakers this disparity so to turn around all these years later and say it was racially based that there were some sort of racism behind it is not accurate and it's rewriting history. >> host: what i'm saying is they have to start from the base is when they did that and i was around at that time so that they had to negotiate with was 100 to one and they started whittling it down. i was in the white house at the time of the cdc when they were working with bill clinton and they kept moving it down but they have to start with a basis to move it down.

>> guest: two points. first, one way to make the sense of sequel is to increase sentencing for powder and then dashes -- powder offenses. secondly i think that no one is asking why the administration's sympathies are with the drug dealers and not the victims of their crimes. how does that help these black amenities to have these guys returning back to the neighborhood sooner rather than later? how does that help law-abiding individuals of those communities and of course the majority black people who live in these ghettos are law-abiding and they have to live through this nonsense because of the books that make life a living hill for them. similarly in schools. how does that help the kids to go to school to learn if you force the schools not to suspend

black bullies at the rate they otherwise would but for the federal government leaning on them? i mean where are your sympathies? my sympathy is with the law-abiding residents of the ghetto and my sympathies are are with us kids were at school to learn. i want to see them achieving get ahead and it's more difficult for them to do that with some of these policies that are being put in place in the name of helping the black poor. i think they are having the exact opposite effect. >> host: you talk about several other items in the book, current issues to include minimum wage and immigration hot-button issues right now. we are talking about and this is a hot conversation the authors to do "please stop helping us" how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed talk to me about your feelings about immigration reform is you been writing about that and what you say in your book about immigration reform. >> guest: in this book i don't get much into immigration reform

in this book. i will say that there have been some conservatives who have wanted to scapegoat immigrants for high black unemployment rates. i don't think that the data back that up. if that were the case when we see high levels of immigration we should cede lower levels of black employment and vice versa but that's not but the data really shows. black unemployment as you know doubles the white rate for decades irrespective of immigration trends in this country. so i don't think that this bannock should be scapegoated for the high black unemployment rate. on the minimum wage, again another policy that is intended to help the black poor but it's a very poor antipoverty tool. morris -- most poor people make

more than the minimum wage. most people that make the minimum wage are not poor. poor households are enough circumstance typically because no one is working in the house, not because there are people working at jobs that don't pay enough. so what they need is a job more than a raise to lift themselves out of poverty that is. and so to the extent that minimum wage laws price less experienced blacks out of the labor market and result in a reduction in jobs overall in the economy they don't help adjust poverty -- address poverty. >> host: is a talk about minimum wage in the right in the book about the minimum wage and we talk about other issues that are in this book "please stop helping us" how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed, what is your commitment that you

feel is a black man to the black community? do you think it's leading the charge of saying stop with the cdc and the other groups in the civil rights leaders to help black amenities? zeiger chargebacks. >> guest: i think it's important not to be cowed into groupthink and it's important not to say the right thing for fear that you will be called names. i think it's amazing how young such fears can take hold in a black person. i remember going to visit my older sister at home back in buffalo many years ago shortly after i had started at "the wall street journal." i was by myself in a conversation with my niece and her daughter and asking her how school was going enough sort of thing. she stopped me in the middle of a sentence and she said why do you talk white uncle jesse?

she turned to her little friend sitting there and said doesn't my uncle sound white? try to sound so smart? and i laughed and they had a chuckle at my expense but it stopped me what she said. he was an 8-year-old, a 9-year-old linking race to intelligence and knowing that they stick -- sophisticated enough to avoid certain speech patterns herself and mock them and others. eight years old. i had forgotten how young this stuff starts. >> host: you have experience that and michelle obama's experience that. oprah winfrey has experienced that. so many african-americans have experienced that when you are not necessarily trying to have the lingo, the street lingo you want to work in the business world. >> guest: might seem that this

book has one is that there are limits to government benevolence. blacks ultimately help blacks. >> host: you are talking about self responsibility. >> guest: self responsibility and get in the black culture in order, think those are the things that need to take place. blacks need to develop the attitudes, habits and behaviors that other groups in america had to develop for them to rise into the extent that a government policy however well-intentioned gets in the way of that black self-development that does more harm than good. >> host: so when does the political structure get in the way because right now washington is in gridlock. ever public in fear, democrats here. they are not coming together and the question is you have groups of people who are in need and there is fighting, not looking at the groups of people but ye yet -- >> guest: i don't know if

there's a political solution to what i'm talking about other than encouraging the government to get out of the way and stop doing similar things it's doing. raising the minimum wage is pricing blacks out of the labor force. stop doing it. when you block school choice you are not helping them and that is what democrats and many liberals continue to do, push policies that side with the teachers unions and the adults in the education system over the needs of the kids particularly poor kids who oftentimes are black. >> host: it's interesting the republican party particularly since george w. bush's first term they were trying to get more of the black vote and then katrina happened and they knew it wasn't going to happen. the numbers are just far. >> guest: i don't think this is serious republican offered -- ever. you ever have republicans here and there who are trying.

paul ryan comes to mind. in the past about people like jack kemp stephen goldsmith in minneapolis but those are all exceptions to the rule. i think that republicans still believe that they can win elections without the black vote. i don't think racial animus is necessarily driving it. it's just pragmatic politics. time spent courting one group is time spent not courting another group. going to where you will get a better return on investment of time. right now for instance republicans are starting to think they need more latino voters and to see this big debate going on in the gop over how to do that outreach. there's no such debate going on in the republican party with regard to black outreach. i don't think there will be until republicans decide they need black voters to win

elections. i think you'll see a concerted effort to go get them both. >> host: they have gone after the white male in the last presidential election. do you find that a problem though? they are now realizing that there was a problem. they are gender specific and race specific, white male. anything else falls along the wayside. they are now trying to play catch up. do you find that is a pandering move to say you are part of this country and you have to do that or do you think we really need to broaden the umbrella because this is one country not necessarily one country but a country for one. >> guest: i don't like pandering and i think that the left, i associated more with the left i guess what you'd call identity. >> host: so you think the liberal standard --

>> guest: appealing to hispanics as hispanics and not as americans. i think there's a pattern that goes on and i hope republicans don't go that route. i don't think it's a very unifying message but at times i guess both parties have been guilty. >> host: push of the republican party open up its umbrella more so for more inclusion? do you feel back? >> guest: o. kosher and i think they will have no choice going forward giving the change in demographics of the country. the question is how do they go about doing that and we will see. again right now at least with respect to black voters, i don't think they are make in are make being a serious outreach. his speech to the naacp v. convention at her for years is not black outreach. standing up and saying i support school choice is not i think

black outreach. again when they have done now, when house republicans, those few republicans have done that i think it has paid dividends and i would like to see my dad. >> host: talk to me me about the independent party and its outreach in this effort if it is won or is not one? >> guest: one? >> guest: the independent party? >> host: will talk to me about the independents. those people who want into that group that's independent, the ones who are undecided. the independent group i call a party unto themselves. >> guest: they would like to think they are. they tell you how independent is going to vote if they get one or two more follow-up questions. people like to call themselves independents back. >> host: the independent vote can swing an election and so they are an important group. they are the third party.

>> guest: they are, and a lot of these elections are coming down to who can swing the independents. so we will see. but i think both sides probably want a broader tent, bigger tent i should say that but you are right republicans in particular, i think it's something on their minds right now but i would say more so with respect to latinos than blacks at this point. >> host: once again we are talking with jason riley. "please stop helping us." that alone just makes your eyebrows raised. "please stop helping us" how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed. he has been giving us his thoughts, very informed thoughts that have footnotes and all facts and figures that he is basing his information on but as we look through this book, i want to go back to the black unemployment rate and talking about, you are talking about the households where there are people who don't work in these households.

>> guest: right, what you have among poor households and in most of them there are no workers. >> host: so where do they get their money? >> guest: the government and that's the problem but what they need is a job. that's an antipoverty program is a job not an increase in them minimum wage. >> host: so these people who are not working and rely on the government, sometimes they're people who fall through the? and they need to training programs and things of that nature to bring them up out of where they are to get into society again. ..