people are always asking me. what is the path what is the path to redemption. we have to head something. how about it. it's not my responsibility to figure it out. how about you work shop it. .. .. with author and wall street journal columnist jason riley, author of, author of in: the case for open borders," "please stop helping us: how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed" and "false black power?".

>> host: jason riley, author, columnist, contributed to "the wall street journal," fox news contributor and among your books, "please stop helping us: how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed". i want to begin where your book concludes, quote, liberalism has succeeded tragically in convincing blacks to see themselves first and foremost as victims. >> guest: i believe that is a big part of a political strategy actually and they have been at it for some time. unfortunately they have had a lot of success painting blacks is primarily victims, defined by their victimization first and foremost and the follow-up that we have a government program or government solution to help you overcome your victimhood so it is a political strategy. >> guest: there have been a number of books about lending johnson's great society.

was a failure or success? >> >> guest: if you look at the track record of the program, the goals, the objective stated at the time you would have to say it was largely a failure particularly with regard to the people that were targeted by many of these programs, i mean the black poor. there a lot has not significantly improved to the extent that we were told it would improve at the time. another debate we have moved beyond, separate but equal but in your book you talk about historically black colleges. in the case of president ronald mason. who was he and why is he important in terms of trying to -- jackson state university forced out because of concern of the impact on other institutions? >> guest: the issue there was what has become of these

institutions since the civil rights act, since we've seen a lot more integration in the country and the problem these institutions have are that because black students have options they didn't want have in the first half of the 20th century they are exercising those options and are not attending a historically black college to the extent they once did because they have more options so these schools are struggling with how to stay viable both economically and in terms of what they can contribute to higher education and among some of the plans for smaller colleges to perhaps emerge, take advantage of scale and this has been resisted by some who want the schools to maintain their independence and i can understand that but it is often for nonstatic reasons rather than practical reasons so someone pushing for this, a

way to save some of these schools and the pushback. >> are these schools still relevant or should they merge -- >> if they are producing good results yes, they should stay in existence, the problem is a lot of them are not and are being kept afloat merely through federal dollars and my point is if the school board is failing its charges then it should close, doesn't matter if it is an all black school or traditional white school. if it is not meeting its objectives it should close. where i think the value added in the school systems of late, in recent decades is where they do an excellent job of educating kids math, science, engineering and so forth and you see a preponderance of

blacks to go into these fields, very very vital purpose in higher education but not to say all of them are doing that duty at the same level. >> host: the cover story of "the wall street journal" sunday magazine visualizing racism and one of the lines calling it america's longest war. your reaction to that? >> guest: i think there is a tendency to view black history writ large in america as a history of what whites have done to blacks and there are various reasons why various groups want to keep that narrative alive but in the end black history is about more than that.

racism still exists. i don't know any reasonable person who would argue otherwise, nor do i expect to see america vanquished of racism in my lifetime. but i do think black history is more than that. the more relevant question is what can be done in the face of whatever racism exists? what was done in the past by blacks in the face of racism and that is the relevant story to tell today and that is the message to give to the young people today and my fear is by perpetuating this notion that it is all about victimization, all about racism, we are sending the wrong message to the next generation. why try in school if the teachers are racist and the tests are racist and police are out to get you and employers are racist. you syndicate out the door with

that sort of message i don't think you are helping that child. >> have you felt the sting of racism? >> certainly. i have experienced racism. i have been called names, followed around department stores, pulled over by police for no reason i can understand. >> host: you wrote about that in detail. tell us about that. >> guest: i was doing an internship in the early 90s in washington dc, interning at usaid today and staying with relatives in the area and i was on the sports desk. so we didn't leave work until the baseball games on the west coast were over so it was usually quite late at night by then and i was driving to and from my own collapse house where i was staying in usa today headquarters and i had my car which had new york plates

because i was from new york although i was driving in dc and i was driving home one evening after work probably early the next morning and i hear these sirens blaring in the police pulled me over and order me out of the car and push me to the ground face away from the car and all the rest and said i fit the description of someone they were after without state plates. >> what were you thinking? >> i was terrified. i remember getting back into the car after i left because they seemed to be gone as quickly as they came after they realized i wasn't the right person and sitting in my car shaking i remember i had a standard and i couldn't get it out of gear, my hand was shaking so vigorously but it was terrifying. >> host: a story making national headlines, two black men, 16 years old 36 years ago

convicted of murder they did not commit were just released from jail. what does that tell you about america's criminal justice system? >> guest: that it is not perfect and i think you will find -- you will be hard-pressed to find a black person of my age who hasn't experienced the things that i have experienced. i think the criminal justice system is an improvement over what it used to be, what my father or grandfather experienced in this country but it is still not perfect but i would caution against taking these examples and saying they are typical versus exceptions or aberrations or saying that the reason so many blacks are involved in the justice system is because it is a racist system per se. i don't see a lot of evidence for that and i think often times we have discussions about

the racial makeup of prisons and jails but we don't talk about the racial makeup of people who perpetrate crimes and i don't think you can have one discussion without the other. as imperfect as the, justice system is, has been and continues to be i still think that there are behavioral differences among groups that lead to some being overrepresented in that system and others being underrepresented. >> the title of three of your books, "please stop helping us: how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed". what is the message? >> that was a look at the great society program put in place under lyndon johnson, expanded under nixon and others and i wanted to say what is the track record? these were programs that were put in place to help the black poor in particular.

welfare programs, housing programs, expansions of minimum wage laws and so forth and i wanted to look back and say what has worked, what hasn't worked, and why and that is what i was attempting to do with that book. >> host: your other book, "false black power?". >> guest: i had a little of this in "please stop helping us: how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed" but the "false black power?" book was essentially about the track record of using political power to advance a group economically which is essentially the strategy of the civil rights movement since the time of king. the issue is if we can integrate political institutions everything else will take care of itself, just get our own people in place. the civil rights movement had quite a bit of success in doing that. by the early 1980s you had

major black cities in the us, los angeles, philadelphia, washington dc and so forth that had black mayors. in addition to that you had black police chiefs and fire commissioners and school superintendents and so forth but if you look at the track record of the poor in these cities, marion barry's washington dc in the 1980s or newark, new jersey in 1990s or coleman young's detroit in the 1970s under these black regimes you had the poor becoming more impoverished on their watch so i don't think the track record is a very good one. that is not to say blacks should disengage in the political process because we have seen regression, black regression underweight mayors

and white police chiefs and so forth. it is to say the connection we were told was essential between black political power and black economic progress is not proven to be as strong as some people hoped it would be. >> guest: have these government programs helped or hurt african-americans? >> by and large they have hurt and they have heard in a way, the way i explain it is that what the underprivileged need of any race or ethnicity is self-development that has to occur. it is not something that lends itself to political solutions. these are cultural changes that need to take place. economists refer to as human capital, certain attitudes and behaviors that need to develop in a group in order to rise and what we see happening to other groups in this country. to the extent that a government

program interferes with that necessary self-development is doing more harm than good and what a lot of great society programs did was to interfere with that self-development. a person or group's work ethic is not going to improve if they think the government is going to take care of them. you can't replace the father in the home with a government check and if you have a system in place that if you have an additional child we will send you more money, if we see the father of the child around your house we are going to stop sending you that money. imagine the perverse incentives put in place under programs like that and that is what we saw going on. we corrected some of this with bill clinton's welfare reform in the 1990s but not entirely.

there is still a legacy affect. >> we are new york, august is jason riley, he is a regular contributor to the wall street journal. we welcome your phone calls, 202-748-8200. in the eastern or central time zones, 202-748-8201. in the mountain or pacific time zones follow us@booktv on twitter, send us a text message to 202-748-8003. let them in. "let them in: the case for open borders". >> that was a book written in the late 2000s about immigration. i was working at the wall street journal at the time and the persons i had been covering immigration for the paper, about a new position and asked if i wanted to take over the

beat and that is how it fell into my lap. i didn't have a real dog in the fight that i'm not an immigrant, not a child of immigrants and so forth but i did enjoy studying history and immigrant history is fascinating if only because some of the arguments you realize as you write about are so old and been around for so long. so that book really came out of my writing editorials for the newspaper at that time and sort of expand on a lot of the arguments "the wall street journal" editorial pages made and it is a very pro-immigration editorial page. which sometimes upsets conservatives in particular, but it is interesting what happened with that debate because the sort of immigration view on the right in the trump era is very different from what

it used to be. you always had a sort of isolationist, protectionist strain on the right going back to pat buchanan in the 1990s but that was never the dominant view on the right. reagan was extremely pro-immigrant, put in place amnesty in fact. george w. bush and his father were both very pro-immigrant. even the republican nominees that lost, mccain or romney were still far more pro-immigrant than you had in donald trump. this is a sort of new development on the right although there has always been this more and i immigrant passion on the right it was never the dominant one. we are in a new era here. >> host: are the rules any different for an immigrant versus a refugee? >> yes.

they are two different groups that traditionally have been taught, have been considered 2 different groups, these days they are more conflated but people who studied this will generally tell you someone who is forced out of their country who would rather be back home is going to behave differently from someone who willingly leave their country to start a new life in a new place and so what i am writing, primarily economic immigrants and the case that i make is that we would do better to put in place guest worker programs or other types of programs that allow the law of supply and demand to determine a level of immigration. right now it has been made by

politicians and public policymakers were trying to think real hard about the needs of the economy. we will take a little from here or there, pull this demand this demand doesn't work. it is soviet style central planning that has left us with document fraud, 12 million illegal immigrants in the country, hundreds of dead bodies in the arizona desert. we would do better to put in place market mechanisms that would allow us to regulate the flow. >> host: the current book you are working on? >> guest: i'm working on an intellectual biography of the economist thomas soul who thinks the uber institution, someone i have known a little bit over the years and whose books and writings had a huge impact on me in college. it is a project i am really looking forward to. >> host: how would you define your ideology? can you put it in a box or is it more disparate then that? >> guest: i would define myself as a free market individual,

free-market conservative, someone who believes smaller government is the way to go and someone that believes in individual freedom. >> host: you wrote the civil rights movement has, in your words, become an industry. by whom? >> guest: it has become an industry for everyone from individuals like how sharpton and jesse jackson to entire organizations like the naacp. i think they have effectively monetized black victimization. different groups have done it for different reasons. if you are a civil rights organization like the naacp it is not in your interest to

acknowledge that things have improved for black people and what you are trying to do, the civil rights battles have been fought and won and you are trying to stay relevant. if you are an organization like black lives matter you want to raise money so you're going to play out certain aspects of what is going on on the racial front, whether or not they are actually relevant, you are going to play that up because it is in your interests to do so. we were talking about the victimization narrative and that is something democrats and black democrats use to get reelected. different groups have different incentives, but it has very much become an industry. >> host: an industry with no vested interest in realistic assessment of black path allergy. >> guest: that doesn't serve their purpose. they want to stay relevant or

raise money or get reelected so they are going to keep racial victimization front and center in the national debate whether or not it is relevant. >> host: where do you do most of your thinking and writing? >> guest: at home. i have a home office and that is where i work. >> guest: you have self-discipline to do that? >> guest: discipline enough. it took some getting used to. i commuted to an office for two decade that the wall street journal so it took a little adjustment, but i find it more productive now to get started right away. >> host: our guest is jason riley on booktv "in depth" as we will get your calls in just a moment. you write about your father in the book, your parents had separated when you were young. your father was in your life as a child. >> guest: he was. it made a big difference. he was an excellent role model. not only my father.

i grew up -- my mother is very religious. we attended church 2 or 3 times a week and the congregation was full of black men to carry their families, behave a certain way, i was very fortunate, i grew up along very solid mail role models, and today part of the problems many blacks faces not having that sort of stability, lack of role models in the community or even in the home given the high illegitimacy rate and single parenting in poor black communities, it is a problem. >> host: born and raised in buffalo. from yonkers, new york, welcome to booktv.

>> caller: the question i want to ask. good afternoon. the question i want to ask, republicans, especially black republicans, why don't they educate the blacks who fail history as far as that. and voter suppression, it is the ability of 40 million bucks since roe v wade in 1973. they could have been 70 or 80 million blacks and 60 million blacks voted power to the blacks and you should have me on your tv program discussing

this and what i'm asking you to do is go through history and tell the black people, because i did when iran for the house in florida as a republican, i was called a racist. when jackie robinson was my hero and my musical radio program i honor martin luther king and we are being called racist, especially me. that is terrible. ask what democrat put them to schools in the south. that is what you should be teaching them. >> we will get a response. there's a lot of black history,

and black politicians, it doesn't serve it doesn't serve their personal interests. what was going on in between the end of slavery and the beginning of the modern day civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s and this progress is remarkable given what is happening, these are the days of jim crow. if you look at the rate at which blacks relieving poverty or educating themselves lose both in absolute terms and relative to whites. the rates they were joining the middle-class professions, appear go of tremendous progress that actually slowed

after the civil rights legislation of the 1960s past, & many of the used trends. and reversed course. doesn't get a lot of attention from the civil rights act because it doesn't serve their narrative. >> you write in "please stop helping us: how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed" that blacks, especially poor blacks performed in the absence of government and affirmative action. >> guest: we have had affirmative action for half a century. we can see if these programs were affected. in 1996, the university of california system ended

race-based affirmative action in admissions policies throughout the entire system. after that man went into place, the number of black graduates from the university of california system increased by 50%. they increased by 50%. a program, the racial preferences that increase, expand the ranks of the black middle class. and architects were social workers with the absence of policy. and look at the track record over the years. >> welcome to the conversation. i remember reading you in the new york post.

i'm a black american and agree with everything you say. it doesn't make a difference. and it is not going to change. a racist or racism, and feelings and emotions, and facts are facts and facts don't care about your feelings. what i believe you are saying -- my family, no matter what, i didn't vote for trump. i won't vote for him in 2020. it doesn't make a difference. i sound defeated but you were

told, it is never going to change. democratic party is waiting for you. i know what you are talking about too. are we shooting something like that? black folks get feelings and emotions up and vote democrat and take them for the past -- i didn't vote for trump. i'm voting for him now because what have you got to lose? look at the facts. look at the facts of unemployment, employment. you know what i am talking about, never going to change. >> host: thanks for the call. your response? you are smiling. >> guest: makes a lot of

excellent points. it is a tough road home. and pushing government programs are the solution. and, he does make some excellent points. >> the democrats are coming here not to work but to take advantage of our magnetic social welfare program, why then are they disproportionately saying skimpy with citizens for the poor? >> guest: that is one question i often ask my friends on the

right who see immigration as a problem, going on the dole. the idea immigrants are coming here to go on welfare to go on work is not borne out by the facts on many fronts. pick your number. the unemployment rate in a 50 year low. and 1.2 million jobs available, notwithstanding that we have 15

million people here illegally. the other argument is they put dollard pressure on wages. as a black person, you should be especially wary of these folks coming because they are going after jobs that are held by a lot of blacks. what is the situation today? black unemployment, we are at generational lows. wages have been rising at the low end of the pay scale. and rising for management. they were stealing jobs and wages. >> you basically say 50 years ago he was fighting for jim crow laws, fighting for his own relevance. >> guest: absolutely. they were thought and won.

what you see among civil rights leaders is a search for relevance even among the activist groups. what they are pushing for, where they want emphasis placed is so at odds with the reality, hard to know where to begin. one of the previous callers, police shootings are tragic. and is that the problem today that these activists today, and in the early 1970s, 1971, shot 300 people, the most recent

staff from a couple years ago, and in police shooting fatalities over the past 41/2 decades. and activist movement out there based on there being an epidemic of police shootings in this country. the facts do not bear that out. new york is not an outlier. you can look at other large cities where police shootings make up 1% or 2% of all shootings going on in the country. if there are bad cops let's root them out. if someone breaks the law and they hold a position of authority like a police officer. and they are responsible for 2% of the shootings instead of 90% of the shootings. especially it is completely ridiculous. >> host: let's talk about crime rate and blacks in jail. >> guest: we begin with the

fact that blacks are responsible for an astonishingly disproportionate number of times which is the case for the past half-century. >> guest: blacks are responsible for have all murders in this country despite making up 12% of the population. it is different. that is something we to speak honestly about. and it was the prison system but don't want to think about the racial makeup. they have nothing to do with one another and that is ridiculous. they obviously have something to do with one another and if we want to reduce the number of people involved in the control justice system or the number of blacks we have to do something

about the black crime rate but that is having an artist conversation. >> if you look at the poverty rate, what percentage our african americans are black americans. >> poverty rates are 3 times higher among married blacks, poverty rates are in single digits and have been for 25 years. the idea that racism is driving the poverty rate versus family formation, that was the facts -- that is at odds with the facts. no one is going to not disseminate against you if you are black because you are married and make a distinction, look at the totality of the

situation, is poverty a function of racism or family formation, if it is the latter, why aren't they at the rates, and the poverty issue. they jump into racial disparity resulting from racism and the other factors driving these outcomes. you don't need to deny that racism exists. the question is to what extent is racism responsible for these outcomes we see. >> guest: >> host: it is that cycle. and to have these families.

>> >> my father - he never lived more than a couple miles, take holidays and weekends and he was very involved in my life. the problem is that is not typical. that is atypical and that is the problem. you go back as recently as the 60s, you have 2 of 3 black kids raised by a mother and a

father. that statistic alone goes a long way toward explaining gang related violence or involvement in the criminal justice system of these kids. >> did - did you realize what he did. >> guest: i'm sure i didn't thank my father enough, >> thank you for waiting. welcome to "in depth" on booktv. >> i'm sitting here listening, i have so many questions for this gentleman, utilize the statistics to support his

position, obviously didn't have a good class in statistics, black families if they are married, kids are in a better position, 60%-70% of all marriages in america end up in divorce. or when he cites that for example by his analogy, in new york city in the 60s and only ten rapes of women in the 60s, not only ten rapes, to emphasize how important it is that you shouldn't rape women, you talk about a systematic -- people using the civil rights movement to their advantage. you have been in a situation your entire educational career and professional career, where you were the first or only

black wherever you were so therefore. at the wall street journal they are happy to have an educated black man like yourself who espouses theories that generally are not supportive of black people. you have done probably the same thing in your professional life that you are accusing jesse jackson and others of doing. let me make my final point. you talk about a system, the g.i. bill was affirmative action and for white soldiers from world war ii because black people were not allowed to be in the army. the loan bill was affirmative action. you just have to be a white mail in world war ii & up and go to any college the government would pay for. after the economy start to boom and everyone is moving out, all the business of left urban

areas, rapists it is, left black people in the cities and all the people moved to the suburbs. factories moved to the suburbs, the banks which are sanctioned by the government, refused to give blacks loans, gave whites loans, the new factories refused to hire blacks even if they could get out there. red line the district where blacks were with support and backing of the federal government. >> host: we will get a response. a lot on the table. >> guest: i will respond to a couple points. i haven't accomplished anything other black people didn't accomplish before me. to the wall street journal by a black gentleman who had been senior editor for a number of years and could not have disagreed with me more on my

politics at the time. in terms of the g.i. bill -- there are blacks who attended college in the g.i. bill in the 50s. the gentleman i'm writing about, who attended college on the g.i. bill. quite thankful for the g.i. bill for allowing them to do that. also mentioned deindustrialization as a source of many problems in the inner cities and in these societies, communities disintegrated and he is getting the order wrong. the factories left after these societies had fallen into

disrepair. the riots happened first, then the companies left. you have to get the order right. >> host: taking your messages at 200-748-8003. a lot coming in including from a viewer saying police shootings are down because of protests and demonstrations. >> guest: that is not what the record shows. in 1971, 314 police shootings, 20 years later by 1991 that had fallen by more than half, fallen down to 100. 20 years later it had fallen into the teens. this has been a long-standing trend that predates what we have seen in the last two

years. useless force has been declining steadily. particularly among use of force against minorities. there was in a study from the economist in harvard that was published a couple years ago, he examined a number of police shootings in big cities around the country and expected to find bias. he found black suspects and hispanic suspects were less likely than white suspects to be shot at by police. this was not a function of these protests. what protests have done a risk doing is forcing police to scale back, to stay in their cars and not patrol on foot, to take their time answering these

911 calls. a have this target on their back, if they have politicians and activists breathing down their neck it will affect how they do their jobs and my fear there is people who are harmed most by this are law abiding blacks in poor communities who are the majority of blacks in poor communities. the criminals prey on them first and foremost. they are not headed into lily white suburbs to rob holmes. they are robbing their neighbors. to the extent the police pull back and what is effective policing in these communities you are hurting the blacks more the, the most. that is what i fear activists will be doing by making policing the problem and the problem is criminality. >> host: another text message, how much chris's and you get from friends and colleagues when they see you on fox news? >> guest: deepens which friends and colleagues.

i have friends of all political persuasions, relatives of all political persuasions, but when people see you on tv they are more likely to tell you how you looked then how you sounded. >> host: edward joining us across the river in jersey city, new jersey. welcome to "in depth" on booktv. >> caller: i want to say happy holidays to you, rest in peace your father, there was a personal story you shared. >> guest: thank you. >> caller: no problem. i don't have a problem with your view on how democrats are dissatisfying the blacks or a harmful party in your view, but as far as politics go, the way forward for our country and black people particularly and i am black, i believe in bernie sanders.

bernie sanders's vision for the country, he challenges the democratic party. that is me telling you i am 35. i am a black mail, i live in new jersey, i'm dissatisfied with the democratic party. they are not doing enough with wars overseas or in new jersey we don't have any trade schools, trade schools are private, why don't we have trade schools that teach like public high schools, welding, we are not doing enough in education. the democratic party is not doing enough getting big money out of our system. i don't -- our primaries all the way in june, the presidential election and a closed primary so i have to declare. that is a couple reasons of dissatisfaction with the democratic party and that is fine but you are not encouraging us to vote for the republican party, are you? if you are than i don't like that but they don't spend any

dollars on our communities. it is beneath the republican party. for some reason maybe they don't turn their backs towards or against us but they don't even look at us. lindsey graham doesn't speak to us at all on the federal level. which one of them, who speaks to us? bernie sanders is the way forward. you and candace owens, your views are very toxic. you are black and have the right. we all have the right to everything so suggesting our way forward, but the gop is not the answer. >> caller: let me respond two level, let's separate bernie sanders for a second.

the caller is right, i think, when he talks about the lack of interest republicans are showing on the black vote. you can speculate, on a practical level, what is driving it is they don't need the vote to win. in politics it is about numbers and time spent going after a constituency you don't have much chance of getting, or on people you think you can get. that could be one explanation right there. >> host: jack kemp and paul ryan did try to push word. >> guest: they are not the only examples. you have ian good smith, another politician who did this and chris christie when he ran for reelection as governor of new jersey did quite well among black voters because he went into these places and asked for

their vote but the problem with all the people we just named is they are the exceptions and not the rules. you don't see republican candidates in black neighborhoods at the barbershop or grocery store and don't see them advertising on black radio or television programs. when it is allowed it is for the democratic candidate to paint a complete monster with no pushback so i do think republicans have to do a better job with this vote and i don't blame blacks who have the attitude of voting democrat are staying home. >> host: last month in your column in "the wall street journal" you wrote black voters showed little interest in either cory booker or kamala

harris and why? >> guest: if you had asked me about cory booker and kamala harris five years ago i would have had positive things to say about both of them. both of them are democrats, both of them are liberals. we can start with cory booker. cory booker was an education reform minded man before he became a senator. he believed in school choice. he believed in charter schools. he was tough on crime. he came in, he hired a proactive police commissioner and was going to model what he was going to do in his city on what rudy giuliani and bloomberg did in new york. kamala harris as a prosecutor and you can look up youtube videos of her saying yes, there may be races in the criminal justice system but that's not

the reason i applied locks on my door. she was a tough-minded prosecutor when it came to protecting the rights of poor black people in those communities which were the targets of these criminals. they have abandoned -- booker walked a little bit of anti-charter stuff but by and large they decided they need to become more progressive. that is where the party was or put aside what i consider a sensible talk and that is my problem with where we are today versus where they are before. the other thing was bernie sanders. essentially my problem with bernie sanders is his socialism which amounts to wealth redistribution as a way of

helping the poor and helping the black poor in particular and talking about the great society program, redistributing wealth, passing out checks to poor people false poverty we would have solved it a long time ago. it doesn't. what these folks need is development of human capital, learn about wealth creation. i think the progressives are too focused on wealth redistribution as a solution and it is not. it is not going to be the solution and bernie is all in on wealth redistribution and that is essentially my problem with this program. >> host: you wrote about michael bloomberg who apologize for stop and frisk and you defend by saying do we want to go back to treating criminals like victims and police officers like criminals? is that a fair assessment? >> guest: i have a problem with

michael bloomberg and i did when he was mayor of new york city but one of the things i liked was his staff on policing. he had the backing of the police, basically because he continued a lot of policies of his predecessor, rudy giuliani who put a lot more cops on the street in these communities and people talk about tensions between police and the black community but no one calls the police more than black people in this country which is a funny way of saying you don't like us. that is where the 911 calls originated mayors like bloomberg and giuliani were responding to those calls and i appreciated that. the stop and frisk policy bloomberg was walking back or

apologizing for, i would argue saved a lot of lives. if you go back to the early 90s in new york city were looking at 2200, 2300 homicides a year in the early 90s, 70%, 80% were black people being murdered. you fast forward to last year you are down to a couple hundred. if we had maintained the rate of homicide we had in the early 1990s for the next quarter century, do you know how many more dead black people we would have today? i was appalled that bloomberg would apologize for a policy i would argue saved not only black lives but kept black people out of prison as well and he is walking it back because that is where the party is now and if you want to run in this democratic party you have to talk about policing as the problem and not criminality. >> host: we are in the second

hour of "in depth" conversation with otter and columnist jason riley. more of your calls, comments in just a moment. who was your role model? >> guest: my role model was my father first and foremost. no one has replaced him since then. there are people who have influenced me intellectually throughout the course of my career and among those folks i would name shelby steele, glenn lowery is another one, walter williams, people i started reading back in college and agreed with. >> host: are you where you envisioned he would be in buffalo? >> guest: that is a good question.

i haven't had a whole lot of jobs, i got interested in journalism after joining the school paper. i read something in the paper, went to complain and they said why don't you join the staff and write about this whenever you want and that got me interested in newspapers and after i completed that college internship at usa today in washington i knew i wanted to be a journalist. six months after college i found myself at the wall street journal and stayed for two decades and continued to write for that paper. i still look forward to getting out of bed every morning and getting started whether i'm going to get a column or work on a book or speech or what have your prepare for interviews on c-span. i am very much enjoying it. >> host: your wife is a journalist. who is the toughest editor?

>> guest: i don't burden her with editing me but i her up with ideas. >> host: we go to cameron, your next with jason riley. >> caller: how are you doing? i have three questions. you have relative success of black folks during jim crow. .. that, under jim crow so if you could provide references or comments because -- >> when i was talking about their is between 1940 and 50,

black poverty rate in america fell by 40 percentage points. 40% decline before civil rights act from the voting rights act of 1965. in the decade alone, black household incomes doubled in this country so that's prior to that. it often perceived black income. if you look at the period between 1930 and 1970, you had the number of black professions, social workers, teachers, lawyers and doctors, the number of black and think these professions quadrupled during that period. so the point here is what's going on in the rest of the country during this period. i would argue that the folks

making those gains were experiencing a great deal more racism in american society than what we have today. yet, it was not able to stop them. the question then begins, what did stop? what happened? why did we see a slowdown or a reversal in some cases and what was happening? i would argue that the government intervention policies or expansions of the great society is one thing that got in the way. it's the black family and we started to see all kinds of other efforts to help, it interfered with the development taking place and we saw this shift in the civil rights arena. we saw the shift from a focus on the development of the human capital that we saw in the kingdom era to electing

officials and that became the primary focus and i think that proved problematic. you mentioned doctor martin luther king, would he be satisfied with where we are today, 50 years after his assassination? >> no, i don't think he'd be satisfied. i think it be -- >> would you say we've made progress? >> of course. twice elected black president, as well as senators and mayors and governors and all the rest. on a certain level, certainly but in terms of black, there's been quite a bit of work to do their. a situation that has in some ways, regressed in the days of king. it's really sad, i think.

but that is where we are. that's where he'd be most disappointed. >> is a voting right requirement need to be kept in place? >> i don't think so. i think people have been willing to cross racial lines to vote for some time. they don't have a problem with keeping it in place, you get kindreds that don't need to make any appeals and i think it only fuels polarization. it probably hurts candidates who aspire to run statewide at some time. you're just running in that one area but if you want to be a

senator or governor and you spent all your time only making these narrow appeals to a certain group and want to run statewide, that's a much more difficult leap to make. i think it puts in place perverse incentives and it ignores the fact that we have come a long way in terms of black candidates. >> who is responsible for racism in our country and why? >> i don't think any one individual is responsible racism. it predates america. it's a human condition, i would argue. it's not about one group being responsible for perpetuating it. or one group being able too and it. it predates all of us and i believe it will still be here when i am long gone. i think it's just part of the

fact of human nature. >> welcome to book to be. >> thank you so much. i really appreciate them stating facts and i want to check a statement, everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts so it's like they're always stating facts, i'm a whistleblower, i was in the "wall street journal" back in 1983, which triggered an investigation and eventually led to the resignation to the speaker of the house. i told them factual information. the article is offered by jonathan, he's aware who he was but bring in solutions, that's

what we should be focused on. let's get together and stop the racial polemic. we have indigenous people in concentration camp reservations that need our help, too. it all starts with stopping arguments and bringing solutions. thank you. >> thank you for the call. >> i didn't hear a question there, but -- [laughter] >> i thank him for the call as well. >> john panten, who is he? >> he died recently, an eye doctor from michigan who also was a political activist, he started out as environmental activist actually, places like the sierra club and moved into

reproductive rights, started maybe the first -- or one of the first planned parenthood in michigan. worked with his concern about population growth in the u.s. he was concerned there were too many people and this was detrimental to nature, to the ecology, to the earth and so forth which explains interest in abortion and also placed interest in immigration ultimately that america was becoming overpopulated with immigrants and so he started any number of -- of organizations to fightan for lower levels of immigration and they expanded quite rapidly and some of them have become pretty popular, i

think it's the federation for immigration reform. center for for immigration studies is another one and the reason i wrote about it in the book is because many republican restrictionists have joined the common cause with the organizations over this year and even though on many -- for different reasons, so you had people who got in bed together even though they came from very different places and joined forces to reduce immigration and what i was trying to explain is the history of some of these groups in the book because i think there are many republicans who didn't realize who they were,ca who they were in bed wi. >> let's talk about the republican party, in the first two years of the trump administration, donald trump is a candidate, used immigration as a key issue in his campaign, he

brought it up again in 2018 when they ultimately lost control of the house of representatives but they had the white house, the house and the senate, for two years the chance to get something on immigration on an issue that republicans ran on, what happened? >> i think here ran in the same problem thatnk obama ran into wn he controlled, his party controlled all 3 branches for the first two years in office and it's a complicated issue and ndeven within the party, within each party there are different factions with different beliefs on immigration. clearly most republicans are not with the president when it comes to some of his more extreme views. more recently he's -- we've had the dreamer issue, kids -- people who were brought here to the country illegally as

children and what to do about them and obama had passed something tond executive action, trump wanted to undo it, the mpmajority, however, of republicans not just americans, majority of americans, large majority of republicans want to give amnesty to the dreamers and not -- and not deport them so there you have an issue where trump is at odds with the members of his own party, a lot of the members of his party aren't on board with expanding the border wall to the extent that trump wants to do it. so that's the reason, it's a complicated issue and it's hard to get even all of one party to act in agreement on something let alone something bipartisan done. >> and you took the president to task on that issue? >> on a number of issues, i mean, one of the -- i was not a trump supporter, mostly on grounds of temperament and -- and fit for the job but also on

some of the policy issues and one was immigration and another one was trade, those are two issues that i disagreed with him on. on other issues i have agreed with him on and written approvingly, i like his education policies, i like his education for secretary, betsy devos, vouchers, charter schools and tax credits and all the rest and she's spent her professional life supporting those causes and i like the fact that trump appointed her and he too has been vocally supportive of education choice. when people talk about where i see this country going or where i see black america headed going forward i think it's all going to come down to getting a decent education for kids in these poor communities. i have no faith that the traditional public schools in the country can do that and i don't believe that they're

acting primarily in the interest of the children these days. i think they arent acting primarily in the interest of the adults that public education has become a job's program first and foremost, not an education program and i think the best way to fix that is to give it some competition, whether it's alternative public systems like public charter schools or vouchers that allow people to take their kids out of schools and send them to private schools or schools and need competition and form within. so for me trump has been a mixed bag. i don't reflectively criticize him and i don't reflexively praise him, if he does something i like, i will say something nice about it and if he does something i don't like i say so. >> you can listen on free c-span radio app, the next call from california, jim, youan are next, good afternoon.

>> thank you very much for taking my call. mr. riley, where i live there's a lot of white poverty, rural, primarily rural, a lot white, descendants of the immigration from the dust bowl area in 1930's and there seems to me as i look at it a lot of systematic poverty that's been here for generations now. is there a fundamental difference, do you think, between what i see in certain communities and black poverty versus white poverty and i also have seen examples of the police, the sheriffs, basically, you know, it's not so much color, it's poverty that's why people are discriminated against to a very large extent i think,

least where i live, so what -- what do you see as a difference, similarities, any fundamentals there, thank you? >> jim, thank you. >> i don't see fundamentally a lot of difference. i think the -- the same human capital will lift blacks and whites alike out of poverty, authors more recent like jdvance has written about the situation in white america. i think it's received less attention because the white poor are smaller percentage of whites than the black poor are blacks, but in a fundmental level, no, i don't see any difference in how you go about helping these groups or what they need to do to change their situation.

>> black politicians often act in ways that benefit themselves but do not represent the bconcerns of most blacks. >> that is not unique to black politicians. >> that seems like a generalization. >> perhaps, but i -- i would argue there are enough examples to make it relatively accurate generalization. politicians act in the interest of getting reelected no matter what, what color they are, so i will give you an example, president obama comes into office and blacks overwhelmingly voted to put him well, one issue that polls very well in black community and long has is school choice, both charter schools and

voucher programs have polled very well among blacks, far ahead where they polled among whites and other groups, in fact. one of the first things obama tries to do is shut down the dc voucher program which is do proportionately helping blacks, why would he do this? why would the first black president take an issue that is overwhelmingly popular among blacks and -- and try and shut down the dc voucher? because now he's president and part of the reason he's president is that teachers unions helped make him president, special interest groups and they don't like school vouchers because many of the schools with vouchers are used are not unionized so they want these kids in traditional public schools, not in voucher programs, so obama has to make a decision, do i act in the interest of the special interest

that t helped elect me or my fellow blacks, and he made his choice. and i think other politicians have made -- faced with the same dilemma have made a similar choice, that's what i mean about looking to politicians to address some of these basic needs in the black community, politicians have their own political interest to be preoccupied with and they are not always going to align with the interest of the black, poor in the case of black politicians. >> our next caller from connecticut, charles, welcome to the conversation. >> hi, thanks for taking my call. i was wondering do you say that there's a silent majority within the black middle class and if you think so how would you describe it? >> well, there's an interesting book, an excellent book written

by scientist at university of new york called the black silent majority and he makes the argument about the black political elites have not always acted in the interest of the black boor,ct even the majorityf blacks and i think he makes a pretty strong, pretty strong argument, if you take something like crime, polls will tell you, when pollsters ask people in the black community whether the criminal justice system is too easy on criminals or too hard on them, the black general public tells pollsters that the general public system was too easy on criminals, that's not what you're going hear coming out of the mouth of black politicians or black civil rights groups or black activists and that's what your average black person on the street is going to tell you. i just mentioned the example of education where -- where the interest of black elites differ

from the interest of average blacks and that goes all the way back to the days of busing when the ncaap supported it but most blacks did not, so there's a long history here of what will advanceer someone's political career versus what the black community actually -- actually wants and what a lot of people on the black left counting on and this goes back to what a caller mentioned, blacks will vote democrat or they will stay home but they do not fear that this black constituent will go vote for a republican and that is one thing that can count on not happening and that is an example of when -- which is often said that the democrats take the black vote for granted, that's what they're talking about there. you know, one way to fix that would be for the republicans to make a play for this vote and and that way blacks could use our two-party system the way

other groups in america use their two-party system to get what they want, but right now you don't see a lot of that happening in black america. >> have you looked at the divorce rate among black men versus poor white men and is it same, similar, disproportionate ly different, do you know where we were in the 1960's and where we are off today? >> i don't know the numbers off the top of my head. if i had to guess, i just -- i don't know, i don't know the numbers. i would -- i don't want to speculate on that. >> i ask the question to go back to your earlier point, those who grew up in single parent.

there was a study done by a political scientist at the university of virginia that was looking at school suspension rates broken down by race among kids and he found that when you controlled for broken families, whites were actually suspended at higher rates than blacks in these schools which is very interesting finding because, again, this is one issue liberal activists that racial disparity, automatically attributed and

here we have -- >> nearly 5 million that live with only their mother with 12% of households have two parents present compare today -- compared to 41%. attitudes towards marriage and attitude towards child rearing and, again, this is all post society in terms of trends, this is not what we were seeing prior to that. and -- and it matters the nuclear family matters and, you know, become almost taboo to say

that out laud that this matters and when you have a child coming from an impact family all kinds of outcomes improve for child, the chances of them getting involveed with the criminal justice system and teenager parents and the chances of them graduating from school, all increase, you know, go in the right direction and -- and yet we -- we don't often have honest discussions about the importance of the nuclear family. >> we go to norwalk, connecticut, you are next with jason riley. >> yes, good morning, afternoon, and just thank you so much for this dialogue that you have in here, this is right up my alley. i'm an african american, i will be 40 very soon, i was a

sociology and i grew up myself in the criminal justice system, i have so much on my mind that i want to share with you, be patient with me and let me get this out. so i have christian values, i have christian views and i was raised to believe and respect authority, you know, god puts them in place for a reason and they're appointed by, you know, by god, so we are supposed to respect them and since i voted for obama i became interested in politics for the first time after i cleaned up my record, got off probation and parole, starting reintegrating back into society, working, just getting back to my beginnings of what i wanted to do when i was a kid, those dreams and those visions before i got thrown off and distracted by, you know, everything that black men face out here, young black teenagers, you know, education was really big, the one thing that really

sustained me growing up through the justice system and through gangs and through everything that apply to black man is my education, education -- my mom she was an educator. i'm not from newark, connecticut, it's california, we was very strict and instilled that in me and mye education and my dad worked for mcdonald douglas and the aircraft industry in the 60's or not and rolling out the md11's, i saw the work ethic from my father as a black man but when i went to school, you know, i had my own struggles at schools, my teachers, it was really hard to get the attention that i needed, you know, in school so i had to figure it out on my own, i was kind of a class

clown, i would always, you know, want to be seen c and want to be heard and do things for attention because that's all i really needed, i was very creative artistic and i'm also an inspiring journalist myself, so to fast-forward to today, i wanted to say that the black community is very beautiful and can contribute very much to society, we've come so far, i've heard it all, i've seen it all as far as, you know, our past and what our ancestors did to get -- to pave the way to where we are today and it's just a beautiful thing where we contribute to society and i see poverty, i see crime, but education like you gentlemen mentioned earlier is key and teachers need to pay more attention to the black students and like the gentleman said earlier, trump is a mixed bag, i've seen him tackle and confront many viable issues in the black community, the white,

asian, mexican, every community, every issue that, you know, past presidents didn't really get a chance to get to, you know, i see him confront that and i -- i've always been, you know, the underdog, the black community has always been the underdog ourselves so i believe in trump, i like what he's doing and i give him his props and pat on the back for staying strong through all the adversity, you know, with all of the impeachment inquiries and everything, so my question is to -- to the gentleman on here is, from your perspective as an intellectual black man i really admire and respect, you know, the way you speak and how articulate, i admire that and i want to know from your

perspective as a black man, as a black vote for the black community, do you honestly believe that donald trump has our best interest at heart and do you think that we should as a black race, i'm a democrat, i voted democrat. >> i'm going to jump in, you put a lot on the table, thank you by the way for sharing your story and joining in on the conversation. how do you answer that? >> i think donald trump has donald trump's interest in mind frankly and i think donald trump always has donald trump's best interest in mind. now the question is whether that matters in terms of black progress in this country. can a president who doesn't necessarily have the interest of blacks or is indifferent

facilitate black mobility through its policies and i think that there's no doubt that that is true and i would point to the advances that blacks had, have made under previous administrations, when the person in the white house was at best indifferent to what was going on in black america and we saw the gains that i cited earlier in the first half of the -- of the 20th century. so blacks can prosper under donald trump, i have no doubt that about. but it doesn't necessarily that's because he has their best interest in mind. >> final yes aside, what did you hear from maurice, what was your take away from his story? >> i'm glad he's -- he seems to have turned his life around and that's very heartening and he seemed to think that education had a lot to do with it, that he

didn't take it seriously as he should have when he was younger and now he understands how important it is and -- and i would agree with that and it's -- it's why it's so painful to listen to black civil rights organizations and some of these politicians running for president turn their back on charterk schools which have just a tremendous record of success particularly in helping low-income, poor-inner city blacks, we have example of example of kids in schools that are 90% plus black all free and reduced lunch in terms of income, testing, hitting it out of the park, outscoring kids in the white suburbs and the idea

would not be replicating these education models is completely absurd to me and here you have a bernie sanders and ncaa and elizabeth warren saying they want a moratorium on charter schools that are producing these kinds of results in the black inner city and this guy is a testament to how important education is, certainly was in -- in my case and the idea that, i mean, there'sde a connection in these inner cities between the high dropout rates and the poor test scores and all the other social ills that are going on in these an these communities, there's a connection, our jails and prisons are not full of college graduates or even high school graduates, so i -- i -- it really pains me when i watch people attack school reform the way i hear some of these attacks today. >> next caller from washington

state, norm, good afternoon, go ahead, please. >> yeah, gentlemen, good day to you. a lot of us remember the quote, he talked about leaders appealing to the angels of our higher nature and it seems that the current occupant in 1600 pennsylvania avenue right away coming down the escalator talking about immigrants coming down talking about immigrants as criminals and rapists and therefore would not be fair to him, you know, obviously example of blatant racism, so it's obvious that some politicians perhaps including the president

are not appealing to the angels of our higher nature on the issue of immigration among other things. so the question that sort of went through my mind, he's got all of the evangelicals so called, 81% i believe that support him and i'm wondering, because they have to know the statements of jesus, among others, where it's the opposite of a christian viewpoint, so i'm wondering, jason, have you ever -- what's your opinion on that about how people claim to be christians can back a political leader that is so blatantly racist and that's my question. >> well, i think an evangelical would turn around and point to a reverend jesse jackson and

reverend a al jackson about abortion, both of them. so both sides play this game and obviously what's going on is that they're voting on other issues and if you ask people in the evangelical community why they support this -- this president despite his, all of the personal, all of the baggage that comes along with that, they'll talk about his pro-life stance, they'll talk about the judges he's appointed and they'll say, those are the litmus test that i've used and i'm going to let everything else go because i've decided this is -- this is what's most important to me and all voters do that. you're not going to get a candidate that likes everything you like to the degree that you like it and you're going to pick and choose your issues and vote on those. >> send text message

(202)202-2008. recent interview with mike wallace in which he interviewed morgan freeman and what can stop racism and morgan freeman said stop talking about it. [laughter] >> your reaction to that? >> well, i agree with that to some extentt and it's to this extent that that, again, for the -- the civil rights industry that i mentioned earlier if not racket, keeping race front and center is good for business and it means that it gets dragged into discussions where it doesn't really belong or as best a side issue and maybe that's what morgan freedman was getting at that that everything isn't about race and racism and yet

that seems to be the direction we are tilting in too often these days. >> anthony in york, welcome to the conversation. >> hello. >> yes, go ahead, please. >> hello. yes. i've seen mr. riley several times over the last few years, i can tell he's a conservative. he knows quite well the statistics he's given as he said earlier in his interview pretending to the blacks who have entered professions and professional schools and graduate schools, increased tremendously from late 60's intoe now, has not been expanded as much during the previous period through early 60's and 50's, made progress but nothing compared but whatever statistics he's quoting,

conservative racist groups, as it relates to black politicians, i'm one of them, we don't serve the community well but many who do and when you ask them, statement he made, those of us involved in political know he's conservative, what he says about schools, many teachers union don't support charter schools and they will put unions and most of them don't have the same kind of standard that the public schools but i respect conservative views but in reference to affirmative action and increasingly black professional life and graduate school, et cetera, he's totally wrong and he knows that's not true, thank you very much. >> anthony in pennsylvania, your response. >> well, like i said before, the track record of affirmative action is not something that we need to speculate about, i mentioned the situation in california system on what happened after racial

preferences ended but you could point to florida and texas and see the same results after they also passed similar policies were put in place. in terms of the data on what was going on in the first half of the 20th century, that's census data, that's government data, that's notry coming from any quote, unquote, conservative organization, that's looking at data that's widely available to anyone who cares to look. again, it's not very well known and i understand why it's not very well known but c that doest mean it's not true, the rate at which blacks were increasing levels of education, the rate at which blacks were entering middle-class professions, the rate of which blacks were leaving poverty, all of those rates were far higher in the period prior to the 1960's than they were in the decades immediately following the 1960's.

and before affirmative action policies were put in place, but in terms of higher education, we have particularly strong data sets to show what is going on here, you know, harvard was recently taken to task by a group of asian students whoec sd because they said that harvard was putting in place quotas on who could enter the school, so we have tons of data on the rakes -- races of people who have entered and so forth. affirmative action is harmful in another way as well. i mean, you can -- you can talk about the equal protection clause and whether it makes sense to be picking and choosing favored groups in increasingly

plural society or you could say does it work, just does it work asas intended, have we experiend what the proponents said we would experience if we put these policies in place, there was a study done at mit some years ago about blacks who had been admitted to that school, highly selective schools and blacks had been admitted to mit had scored in top 10% on the math portion of the sat of all kids in the country, you're talking about some very smart black kids but they were in the bottom 10% among their peers at mit and as a result more of them were dropping out or switch to go easier majors and so forth. you had taken some extremely smart black kids and set them up to fail, kids who would be hitting it out of the park at less selective institutions were struggling at mit because mit we

wanted to make its freshmen class look like america regardless whether kids were going to graduate, harmful, harmful by-products that nobody foresaw and some didn't and some did. it's an interesting reading to look at articles, by and large it's been accepted by universal good, it's made blacks better off and so forth but that is just not simply the track record. >> well, to that point, one person that you write a lot is daniel patrick, before he became a u.s. senator from new york, workeded in the nixon and before thatna in the johnson administration, part of the great society, what's his legacy? >> well, one of his legacies, he wore several different hats, later became a senator is the so-called report that he released in the 1960's about

the black family and the trends that he saw in their situation and he was looking at increases and he said this will not bode well in terms of going forward with the communities, lower workforce participation and so forth and he came under tremendous amount of attacks for -- for his conclusions, many of which by the way were based on the work of black associatists in -- sociologists and was consensus view of more people that looked at this and he became the face of it and he was tacked as a racist and as someone who was blaming the victim, you have to remember at the time the dawn -- they were trying to pass the civil rights act and he was getting in the

way, he was a distraction and what ended up happening is the way he was treated did not go unnoticed by socialists, political scientists, anyone else who wels wanted to look ino the situation, they were scared off for many years, didn't make professional sense to go digging around here called a racist and everything else. there was a long period of neglect in the area, more recently you've had sociologists look into it, orlando patterson enhave looked at this and they said, you know, we have to talk about this culture stuff, it's the elephant in the room, we

can't talk about all of the disparities that are going on, all of the racial disparity that is we see going on in american society today without talking about culture and it's ridiculous to even try doing this, yes, it plays a role in the outcomes and we need to talk about it but for decades many sociologists pretty much steered clear of this area and i think it was to the detriment of -- of the people that needed the most help, that's the black poor. >> the books of jason riley including the following, please stop helping us, how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed, also let them in the case for open borders and false black power. jim is next, martínez, california, go ahead, please. >> yes, sir. hello, jason, i want to follow up on a comment you made just a little bit earlier, my understanding regarding the dreamers was that president

trump did, in fact, allow about 800,000 to become permanent residents or citizens but he tied it to also them building the wall, to prevent uncontrolled border crossings, he didn't just cancel out president obama's executive order but he actually was trying to make it even more so but also make it a law that go through congress and be more permanent and not temporary, i am just wondering, if you can be easier on president trump because that's the way i see it and i'm a -- i'm a new citizen here, that means i came and got educated here in college and i got naturalized, so to me as an immigrant i don't see this uncontrolled border crossings, million a year, it's actually

sort of affecting the culture and so i thought if tieing the wall to allowing dreamers to stay didn't seem unreasonable so why that's not a good thing? thank you. >> jim, thank you. >> well, yes, the president was trying to tie the fate of the dreamers to funding for his wall, the democrats considered this a poison pill because they were not going to compromise on funding the wallto and the president knew that that they weren't going to budge on that issue or he should have known that they weren't going to budge on that issue, whether or not it was a good-faith proposal, who knows, but that was what he was -- was attempting to do. the -- the problem is that president trump could do this as a stand-alone issue if he wanted to and i think he'd have enough democratic support to get this

-- to get this done. i think it would help him politically as well given that there's such bipartisan support for doing something about the dreamers and taking them -- taking them out of this limbo. the president brings an interesting mind set to the topic of immigration which is why it was explaining the statistics in terms of economic outcomes in america notwithstanding the fact that we have so many people here illegally. the president has -- sees this as zerosome game and immigrant taking a job means one fewer job for you and me which is most economists it's now how labor markets work in this country but that is the mind set that that president trump brings to this issue, the caller also mentioned

the -- every new wave of immigrant gets the same reaction, even predates america, benjamin franklin was complaining about too many germans coming to pennsylvania in the mid-1700's and he said they will never know our language, they are going to germfy us and this is an old, old concern and german immigration, germans were coming in at mucher higher rate than mexicans and much smaller than mexicans would be years later and the same with irish m and my other groups. this is a time honored concern and it's very difficult to get things doneon on immigration in this country and you couple that with what you had in the obama

years whichit was slow economic growth, he inherited this recession from george w. bush that he was dealing with through most of his presidency, toxic blame and now that we've come out of the recession, now that we have seen the growth, now that we have seen the increase in wages and so forth without a wall and without the deportation of all of the people illegally it makes you wonder whether they were in fact, the problem to begin with and -- and but if you bring them the mine set that trump into this, coupled that it's a winning issue whether it's true, rally after rally railing against illegal immigration he thinks gins up his base and helps at the polls, i don't expect him to change his tune no matter how many facts are put before him. >> text message from paul in new

jersey saying what will it take for democrats enslaved for black democrats enslaved in the plantation which is upward obbility to move to the 1%, in other words, to get to the wealthy? >> what will -- >> for black democrats to leave the plantation, upward mobility to reach 1%? >> well, i think, again, if -- if -- if republicans want to -- want blacks to stop voting in such high percentages for democrats, they need to go make a play for that vote, for whatever reason, you are still something of a republican outlier when you venture into an inner city and -- and active i will go after the black vote and that's -- that's got to change

if you expect black voting to change. >> you're in the case. >> mine is more like comments. i can understand why the afro americans made progress from after 1945 because of the programs of, of fdr and everyboy improved. if you look back, i want his opinion on republican ideology versus democrats ideology in regards to all kinds of rights not just, not just civil rights or afro american rights or black rights but women's rights, workers rights, union rights, genderut rights, sexual rights, all the way around, now with lbj that really got a bunch of old white guys to vote for the civil rights law, you have to remember that's what happened and at that

point when the south sow that the democratic party was going towards civil rights they all went republican because they were segregationists, so i guess my idea that if you look at who has been supporting rights for everybody including afro americans it's been the democratic party all along and the republicans resign themselves of just trying to buy for the white vote at no matter what cost it does to other people. now, i don't know if peripheral economics that trump, i have not improved economically and i don't think many other people in middle class have. >> we are short on time, you begin your book, please stop helping us by remembering what lyndon johnson spoke to the class of 1965 at howard university in washington, d.c. >> yes, yes, and he -- he -- it was an argument for affirmative action for preferences that he made in that speech, give people

equal rights and you have to give them special rights because of whatal blacks had gone throuh in the past and that's what he attempted to do and 50 years of trying to give special rights wo groups and you look at the racial disparities that persist and you have to wonder if these efforts had been counter counterproductive. do i want to correct something the previous caller made about everyone did better in the post war period and post new deal, he's right. post people did do better but not at the same rates, in other words, black incomes and black education levels rose not only in absolute terms but also relative to white incomes and white education levels and so forth, into other words, blacks were closing the gap, they weren't just making gains in absolute terms and that's an

important distinction so, yes, when thent economy was doing wel and the post war period all votes didhe rise but some rose highers than others and blacks were made significant progress in catching up or making significant progress and catching up, the trends would later slow down and in some cases reverseow course. >> linda, you will get the last word on this conversation joining us from germantown, maryland. >> hi, thank you for taking my call, i agree with mr. riley, we were just talking about the gains that blacks made during the 50's, post world war ii period, i grew up in baltimore in a place called cherry hill, the only planned community that the federal government built and i wrote a book about, cherry hillai successfully raising children in jim crow baltimore, mr. riley state that is he feels that the johnson, the johnson programs killed our progress but

i want him to comment but how did benign neglect and the reagan budget cuts affect our progress. >> linda, thank you. >> well, i'm having trouble but she said what -- what slowed the progress? >> benign progress. >> benign neglect on the part of -- i don't think it was benign neglect, i don't think the great societies programs can be called benign neglect, these were huge government expansions, we spent trillions of dollars since 1960's on antipoverty programs, literally trillions of dollars, the war on poverty, housing programs and so forth, i think what this shows is are the limits of government, there's only so much that the government can do and -- and we also know what it can't do. if you take away good policing

and if you take away good schools and if you take away stable homes, there's nothing the government can do to replace those things. >> so let me take the other side of the title, how can blacks succeed today? >> i think two things need to happen, one we need to have honest conversations about the problems that weas face, we need to talk about black crime rates, for example, when we are talking about black incarceration rates. basic things like that need to take place, simply honest conversations of what the studies say and c the importance of outcomes later in life and so forth, secondly what i want from the government is simply to stop doing things we know don't work, affirmative action in terms of higher education is not working based on the track record of affirmative action, these antipoverty programs that disincentives work means that a group will not develop work ethic to get out of poverty and

to stay out of poverty. don't keep kids trapped in schools that are failing them, let them attend schools when we know a model has been successful in teaching the -- kids from the most difficult background, let those models proliferate, don't put a moratorium on them. it's more of what the government should stop doing than what it should startp doing, but in ters of the commentary and the intellectuals and the academics and the rest, let's just have some honest, honest conversations about what's actually happening out there and what are the causes and what are not the causes. >> we have half minute left, two final questions, what are you reading now, what are your favorite books? >> i like biographies, the biography by ron of rockefeller comes to mind, titan was the book i really enjoyed because it

showed not only what -- how wealthy rockefeller became but how much he improved american society in the process whether it was building black schools or -- or making things look cheap so everyone can enjoy them an not just the rich and you didn't have to stop working when the sun went down at night. ind really enjoyed the history lesson i got out of that in addition to learning a lot about rockefeller himself. a lot of the books i'm reading nowadays are for the research for my intellectual biography of tom sole, that's taking up a lot of my time, but the rockefeller book comes to mind, i'm also reading a book called the warmth by isabel wilkinson, former new york city reporter who wrote about black migration out of the south, my wife recommended it, i

just started that one. i'm enjoying it so far. >> if viewers want to follow you on social media, what can they do so? >> i'm on twitter at jasonriley jasonrileywjs. >> jason riley joining us on book tv in-depth, we thank you for the conversation. >> thank you. .. ..