tv After Words CSPAN August 27, 2014 2:32am-3:00am EDT
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go out and recruit african-americans to come in and they give them scholarships to read they give them thousands of dollars for scholarships to come to the schools in harvard university and amherst have been battling back and forth between being the number one school to graduate. >> guest: many of them are black immigrants mightily. they are not people that grew up in a subculture that i talk about in this book and which are graduating from the schools and any of them are immigrants and you find that when you look at education across the country come and in particular in the big cities here in new york where i live you have some selective high schools and the kids have managed to get into those schools do tend to be immigrants. so, there is that. but the issue with affirmative action again is are we helping
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the intended beneficiary? when you lower the standard for the admission, are you helping or hurting the child's chance of graduating clicks and i think the evidence is overwhelming. >> host: in society today you are no one and i hate to say this but you don't make anything if you don't have a college degree. >> guest: why are we assuming that it's for sale or nothing? >> host: we were talking about mit. so i'm bringing integral to the table harvard if they've named other schools and made appeals that harvard has been very prominent in how they -- >> guest: i have no problem with harvard recruiting kids. the problem is when they recruit for those that can't handle the work because they want to make
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the freshman class more diverse. that's what i have a problem with. where they can handle the work and they are more likely to graduates like most people in america. they go to school where they can handle the work and you see the higher graduation rate when the person entering as a freshman when their credentials match the credentials of the average student at the school that's where kids graduate. >> host: very interesting conversation. i want to talk about another topic. again, let's go back to the title of the book please stop helping us how liberals make it hard for blacks to succeed. voter id. it's been a very big issue in the black community. especially since the last couple of years even before the president. we've been talking about this issue and its 100% with this president. i want to read a piece of your book that says it so happened to
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black voters turn out suppressed the white turnout on the record in 2012 even while more and more states were implementing these supposedly racist voter id laws. about two thirds of the three eligible blacks 66.2% voted in the 2012 presidential election higher than this thank .1% of the non-hispanic whites who did so. talk to me about the need for or if we don't need a voter id in your opinion. >> guest: the reason that i addressed this in the book is because i think it is shameful the way that the attorney general eric holder's and others have essentially been going around the country trying to scare blacks to the polls that the wall is being passed to disenfranchise them and the evidence doesn't support that.
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it's interesting that trend predates the obama presidency in case someone dismissed it as a phenomenon of having a black president. that trend dates back as the census makes it clear to the clinton years when the turnout was steadily increasing. and the other point to make here is that it's not only the most democrats and republicans and men and women and conservatives and liberals support a voter id so do most black americans. so, the president is out there telling people that support voter id and the majority in a number of polls taken in the recent years have shown this. he is telling them that the republicans are not interested in the ballot integrity. they are only interested in suppressing votes. and my point is giving the voter
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trends and turnout trends they are trying to suppress. they are doing a pretty bad job of it given that voter turnout occurred also and went up as you mentioned in the statistics on the strictest voter id law in the country >> host: some question whether the voter id is reminiscent and promotes procedures in the past when it comes to voting for blacks. you need an id to get a library card. the idea that it's too much to ask of people. it is quite insulting and i think that again most agree with me because a majority of them have told them repeatedly they
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do support the voter id. it is wide and deep in the country. he would never know that listening to the rhetoric, but it is and has been for a long time. i'm sitting with the author of please stop helping us how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed. very, very hot topic i think and before we go any further you might have your supporters who think i'm cheering you on. but let's find out who you are. we understand that you sit on "the wall street journal" editorial board and urls are a contributor at fox, fox news coming at you are an independent, correct? where did you get your ideas and start out this way? did it happen all of a sudden or did it start growing it into
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someone help shape your ideas flex >> guest: it happened gradually starting in the late teens very politically aware as a young teenager i didn't live in a political household we didn't sit around discussing politics in my family in my immediate or extended family. but in school through social studies through the courses of the time you are required to do some report on current events or read a newspaper and i started doing so. in college i started reading the authors like shelby steele and what they said made a lot of sense. and i liked the fact that they brought the deed to the discussion and they were not
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just shooting from the hip and speaking from experience is in many cases with people like shelby steele, and it resonated with me. they were trying to show me the way or point me in the stretch and. >> host: where did you graduate college? >> guest: new york buffalo. i graduated from there and i was born and raised in buffalo. >> host: talk about your influences. you come from a divorced household. your mother cared for you and your father was in your life? talked to me about that and how it relates. as it relates to president obama and how he talks about fathers. >> guest: i grew up in a home but only where my father had a huge amount of influence even though he didn't live with us my
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parents were divorced when i was younger but my father had visitation rights three or four days a week, weekends, holidays, he was a presence in my life coaching little league baseball and things like that. but i also have an extended family .-full-stop strong intact families that was just quite common. everywhere i looked whether it was my church, extended family, i saw men all around me that went to work in suits and ties. it was just the norm. i have too many role models to o count but my father was very much a part of that. and my mother, despite the diverse always appreciated that aspect of him that he stuck around. he was around for his kids and grandkids. >> host: since you have something that unfortunately many kids including president obama did not have.
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>> guest: i would love to hear him speak like that and i wish that he would do it more often. the point i was making is the flak that he catches on the left from black intellectuals in particular when he says these things. he is accused of talking down and condescending. it's more about airing dirty laundry making the same arguments that raise concerns talking about blacks. talking about culture as the real corporate and a lot of what ails the underclass today is quite taboo among blacks.
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those are fighting words. and one of the reasons we don't talk about it more often is because he catches so much flak. but i think that he is dead on when it comes to these issues. when it comes to staying off drugs and staying in school, getting married or having children, is extremely powerful. and that hasn't just been shown anecdotally. there is hard t social science d empirical data backing that up and so i wish him all the best and i wish he would talk about it a lot more. we are talking about race an ana dvd that this time there is racism in this country?
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>> guest: of course and i will not live to see a time when there isn't. but the question isn't whether it exists. it's what extent is racism a barrier to progress in this country and when i look back at what blacks achieved when racism was much more open and overt and even legal, it's hard for me to draw a connection between racism and 70% of the community or double-digit unemployment rates in the community. given that in previous times they faced many obstacles in the country we had better outcomes in both of the categories. >> host: please stop helping us how liberals because harder for blacks to succeed. jason riley, when you are on fox
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news or writing the columns for "the wall street journal" do you include this kind of conversation or dialogue that is in your book? >> guest: i do commentary on television on all types of topics. most of them not having to do with race that when it comes up, sure. i see these types of thing thind recommeni'vewritten in this boon fact, that's where i said vendors either in the pages of "the wall street journal" or the publications over the years order on television. i have been doing television commentary for about a dozen years now. so there've been many opportunities to speak about these issues and i try to take advantage of them. >> host: what has been your response from the civil rights leaders to sum up this? have touched these anyway and backing up with the endnotes with what is the response?
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>> guest: there is a lot of name calling. it is a lot of childishness. unfortunately what you don't get is a lot of engagement of the idea. instead you put on the couch. you've seen this happen with clarence thomas. justice scalia is wrong on a number of issues if you are a liberal, but clarence thomas isn't just wrong. he is a sellout. he has got psychological problems. that is what the reaction typically has been. that's usually coming from black elite. independent tree of journalism
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or politics i get a different reaction. there is a naacp rank-and-file and i think they are wide differences. and it is unfortunate to me that many of the media, many in the media continue to run to the house sharpton speak on behalf of blacks and over the past decade the interest of the jesse jackson and al sharpton is diverged wisely from what the black underclass in particular needs in terms of the public policy. >> host: before we go to break and after we come back we are going to talk about more of these issues that you dare to touch in this book. does it bother you when you hear the community rise up against you for what you say?
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>> guest: that would be a little melodramatic. no one likes to be called names. i don't believe that. but i believe these things need to be said. i don't think liberals and the policies that are put forward would help the black underclass furthermore i don't think they are not just not helping. i think in many cases talking about affirmative action earlier that they are harming. they are doing more harm than good. that's what motivates me. they are saying what needs to be said and it is a positive contribution to the date and that is an important debate. some name-calling is something that people put up with. >> host: jason riley "keys
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stop helping u"thesestop tellins make it harder for blacks to succeed." we will be back with this conversation in a moment. he wod like to download and listen to "after words" while you travel. >> host: we talked about third rails. you are touching that on the conclusion of this book when it comes to president obama's addressing the nation in the surprise announcement or speech to the nation that friday about almost a week later after the verdict and i'm saying you touched the third rail. for whatever reason i was on the andy and i had to be in florida,
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landing in orlando florida the night of the georgia cinnamon verdict and it was across the airport and across the state of florida and a week later almost, president obama came out to the briefing room to the press corps and he spoke from the heart. he knew about racial profiling and things of that nature. >> guest: it seemed that he had its instructions on what it could take into account and what it couldn't. mainly that was a different matter what the scenario was in terms of who is following who. what mattered in terms of what the jury was told that there is a memento of his life was in danger.
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but what i took to task is whether it was gun control or racial profiling or the perception of young black man in the country and how he wanted to talk about that. i think jimmy we should have a conversation about how young black men are perceived. but we cannot divorce the conversation. that is from black behavior. they are not coming out of nowhere. and so, i don't think we can talk about racial profiling without talking about the black criminality. and that is not a conversation many on the left want to have. there was a law professor that wrote a book that i talk about in my book.
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she complains about the black incarceration rates, but she doesn't want to talk about any of the behavior that leads to those incarceration rates. as we pointed out, the gap in 1960 was narrow than it is today. it is wide now and obviously if you think there was a system out there responding were responsible for these incarceration rates that had to be a chore racist bac were raci8 and is today. >> host: since you bring this up and you are talking about georgia cinnamon into the acquittal and racial profiling. at the end of the day there is a young man that was bad for a --
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more a hoodie. >> guest: he was viewed suspiciously because of the color of his skin and the way that he was dressed. and i don't have any doubt about that really. >> host: why do they proceed that way? >> host: there are people that where hoodie. i have a martha's vineyard to hoodie. am i wrong if i have my hair pulled back you don't know if i'm a man or woman wearing my hoodie. >> guest: if we have a problem with black men being perceived as more likely to commit crimes, we need to do something about the crime rate behind those perceptions. we need to do something about black behavior.
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>> host: what in your opinion should be done not just by black lawmakers but by everyone. the federal government, state government coming universal. what should be done to prevent these from happening? >> host: >> guest: with wha >> guest: with what we should stop doing. the obama administration's response to the problem is to go easier on criminals. he wants to reduce sentences for drug offenders. besides from that in schools, he wants kids suspended at lower rates than they currently are because there is a disparity. >> guest: regardless of who is doing the bullying in the schools.
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>> host: many people are not fully aware or they may not be about the disparity. at one time in the 100-1 disparity where those who had -- were using crack cocaine got a much larger sentences than those that did powder cocaine. who is the one -- what is the group that is thought to do cocaine into the group that is thought to powder, white america so that disparity has been whittled down in the administration said there is a racial element. >> guest: do you know who but the initial ratio in place by >> host: bill clinton had a chance to pull it down. >> guest: the congressional black caucus. >> host: they had a chance to pull it down and they did not. >> guest: the lawmakers at the time wanted law-enforcement to crack down on this. it was driven by black lawmakers
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in the disparity. is it, to turn around all these years later and say it was racially based it is not accurate it's rewriting history. >> guest: >> host: they have to start hadt from the base of the environment or at the time. when they were working at the time and they kept moving it down they hav had to start the s to move it down. >> guest: one is to increase the sentencing. you don't have to reduce the sentencing for the crack offenses. there is another way to make it equal. secondly, i think that no one is asking why the administration
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said that these are with the drug dealers and not the victims of their crimes. how does it help the black communities to help these guys returning back to the neighborhood sooner rather than later? how does that help the law-abiding individuals of those communities? and of course the majority of black people that live here are law-abiding and they have to live through this nonsense because of the thugs that make life a living hell for them. similarly in schools. how does it help the kids that go to school to learn. where are your sympathies? mine are with the law-abiding residents is. my sympathies are with the kids in school are to learn. i want to see them achieve and get ahead. and it's more difficult for them to do that. but some of these policies that
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are being put in place in the name of helping the black for. i think they are having the exact opposite of that. >> host: you talk about several other items in the book. current issues to include the minimum wage and immigration, these hot button issues right now and we are talking about the hot conversation. the author, jason riley "v. .-full-stop helping us to liberals make it hard for blacks to succeed." talk about your feelings of immigration as you've been writing about that and what you say about immigration reform. >> guest: this book i don't get much into the immigration reform and i will say that there have been some conservatives who have wanted to scapegoat for high black unemployment rates and i don't think that the data backs that up. if that were the case it we see high levels of immigration, we
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should see lower levels of black employment and vice versa but that isn't what the data shows the black unemployment as you know has been doubled for decades and it's been irrespective of immigration trends in this country. i don't think that it should be scapegoating for the unemployment rate. on the minimum wage, and again aanother policy that is intended to help the black poor, but it is another poor and high poverty tool. most poor people make more than the minimum wage. most of that make the minimum wage are not poor. poor households are in that circumstance typically because no one is working in the house. not because they are people working at jobs that don't pay enough to what they need is a job more than a
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