but every specific unique behavior was, at the core of this contains with the same. and it was to move from being a bystander to a status quo to saying we all need to take a role in untangling in terms of patriarchy and building equitable public policy. >> here's the book. it's called how to start a revolution, young people and the future of american politics. lauren duca is the author. thanks for being with us.

jason riley author columnist at the wall street journal and among your books, please stop helpings us, i want to begin where your book concludes you said the following quote to liberalism has succeeded tragically in convincing blacks to see themselves first and foremost as victims. >> yes, i believe that is a big part ofev political strategy actually. and they have been added for some time. on fortunately they've had a lot of success in taking blacks is primarily victims. they are defined by their victimization first and foremost. and then the follow-up is of course that we have a government program, or government solution to help you overcome your victimhood. so i think it's a political strategy. >> your bookl writes about a number of essays and books on lyndon johnson and the great society. was it a failure or success?

>> i think if you look at the actual track record of the programs, if you look at the goals that the objectives that were stated at the time, you'd s,ve to say it's largely a failure. that particularly regard to the people that were targeted. but they were targeted by these many programs i mean the black poor. there are lots has not significantly improved to the extent that we were told it would improve at the time. >> another debate that i think we move beyond the separate but equal, and your book you talk about historical black colleges in the case of prejudice ronald mason. who was he and why is he important to understand in terms of merge historically black college jackson university forced out because of the concern he would that would have another institutions? >> i think the issue there was what's become of these institutions since the civil

rights act's. since we've seen a lot more integration in the country. and the problem of these institutions have are that because blacks did not have options that they didn't once have the first half of the 20th century, they are exercising those options and they are not attending as starkly lack college to the extent that they once did because they have more options nowadays. and so the 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 the small colleges are perhaps merge, take advantage of scale. and this is resisted by some schools to remain and maintain their independence. and i understand that, but it's often for nostalgic reasons rather than practical reasons. in so for someone who is pushing for this plan, as a

way to save some of the schools they got a lot of pushback. >> so are the school still relevant? or should they merge? >> i think if they are producing good results, yes they should stay in business. the problem is that a lot of them or not. there being kept afloatpr through primarily federal dollars that flow to them. and my.is that if the school is failing, it's failing its charges, then it should close. it doesn't matter if it's an all-black school or traditional white school. if it's not meeting its objective, it should close. why think the value added in these schools has been of late in recent decades, is the stem fields where they do an excellent job of educating kids, and math and science and engineering and so forth, and you see a preponderance of blacks who go into those fields coming out of the

school. so i think they still do some very, very vital purpose in higher education. but that is not to say that all of them are performing at that same level and should all be kept. >> this is a cover story of the washington post magic magazine with racism. one of the headlines of gene robinson saying america's longest war. your reaction to that.t.sm >> i think there is a tendency to view black history, at large to clean america. as a history of whites is number two blacks. there are various reasons why various groups want to keep that narrative alive. but in the end, i think black is about more than that. yes, racism still exists. i don't know your reasonable person who would argue

otherwise. nor do i expect to see america vanquished of racism in w my lifetime. but i do think black history is more than that information the question, the more relevant question is what can be done in the face of whatever racism still exists. what was done in the past by blacks in the face of racism? and i think that is the relevant story to tell today. and that is the message to give to young people today. i my fear is that by perpetuating this notion that it's all about victimization, but it's all about racism, you're sending the wrong message to the next generation. why try to school if the teachers are racist in the tester races and the police aree out to get your. the employers are racist. a menu syndicate out the door at that sort of message, i

don't think you're helping that child. >> have you felt the sting of racism? >> zero c certainly. i experience racism i've been called names, i didn't fall down department stores, i've been pulled over by police for no reason i could understand. >> you right about that in detail in washington d.c. and what happened of a warrior? >> i was doing an internship back in the early 90s and washington d.c. i was interning at usa today and staying with a relative in the area. and i was on the sports desk. so we had to, we didn't leave work until the base ballgames on the west coast were over so is usually quite late. i was driving to and from my uncles house why was staying. on the essay today headquarters. and i had my car which had new york plates because i was from

new york, although i was driving in d.c., and is driving home one evening after work and is probably sometime after midnight and i hear the sirens blaring and the police pulled me over, order mail the car at gunpoint and push me to the ground. they step with the car and all the rest.nd i fit the description of someone they were after with out-of-state plates in my car model. >> what you thinking? >> i was terrified. i remember getting back into the car after i left because they seem to be god as quickly as they came after they realized i wasn't the right person, and just sitting in my car shaking. i remember i had a standard lie couldn't get it out of gear my handld was shaking so vigorously. it was terrifying. >> store in washington d.c. making headlines three black men 16 years old convicted of

a murder they did not commit. they were just released from jail. what is that tell you about america's criminal justice system? >> but it's not perfect. when i think you will find you be hard-pressed to find a black person of my age who hasn't experienced the things that i've experienced. i think the criminal justice system is certainly an improvement today over what used to be, but my father grandfather experienced in country. but it's still not perfect. but i would caution against btaking these examples and saying they are typical. versus exceptions or operations. or saying that the reason somebody blacks are involved with the criminal justice system is because it's a racist system.he se. i don't see a lot of evidence for that. when i 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 in this country. and i don't think you could really have one discussion without the other. so as imperfect as a criminal justice system is cute and has been and continues to be, i still think there are behavioral differences among groups that lead to some being overrepresented in that system and other being others represented. >> will suckle thehe titles of three of your books. the first one please stop helping us, what's the message? >> well that's look back at the society programs put under lyndon johnson and expanded under nixon. and others. and i wanted to say what is a track record? these were programs that were putxo in place to help the black poor in particular. welfare programs, housing

programs, expansions of minimal age laws and so forth. and i wanted to look back and say what has worked, what hasn't worked, and why? and s what is attempting to do with that book. >> your second book false black power? >> that's a book about, and i had a little bit about this and please stop helping us, but the false black powerbook is essentially about the track record of using political power to advance a group economically. that has been the strategy of the civil rights movement of king. the issue there was if we can integrate political institutions, the economics everything also take care of ofitself. we just need to get our own c people inn place, and the civil rights movement had quite a bit of success in doing that. if you look back by the early 1980s, you had major black cities in the u.s.

los angeles, you're philadelphia, washington d.c.'s and so forth. la mayors.lack in addition to that, you had black police chiefs and fire coming sugars and school superintendents, and so forth. but if you look at the trackan record of the poor in these black run cities, if you look at marion d.c. washington d.c. in the 1980s in new jersey in the 1990 or coleman youngs untroit, in the 1970s, under these black regimes, you had the poor becoming even more impoverished on their watch. so i don't think the track record there is a very good one. now that is not to say that black should disengage from the political process, because we've seen regression, black regression under white mayor spirit and white congressman a white police chiefs and so

forth. it isn't to say that this connection we were told was essential between black political power and black economic progress simply is not proven to be as strong as some people hoped it would be. >> so generally speaking have these government programs helped or hurt african-americans? >> i think by and large they have hurt. they have hurt in a way, the way explain it is that they are, what the underprivileged in need of any race or ethnicity as a sort of self-development that has to occur. it's not something that lends itself to essentially political solutions. these are cultural changes that need to take place. economists refer to as human capital. certain attitudes and behaviors and habits that need to develop in a group in order to rise and in america we've seen that happen to other groups. and toe in the extent that a

government program interferes with that necessary self-development, i think it's doing more harm than good. and what a lot of great society programs did was to interfere with that self-development. persons or groups that work ethic is not going to improve if they think the government is going to take care of r them. we can't replace a father in the home with the government check. and if you have a system in place that says to a woman if you have an additional child will send you more money, if we see the father of that child is run your house we're gonna stop sending you that money. you can imagine the sort of perverse incentive where there were put in place under centers like that. but that's we saw going on. think we corrected some of this with the bill clinton's reforms in the 1990s. but not entirely.

i think there is still a legacy effect. >> we are in new york, our guest is jason riley in addition to his books he is a regular contributor, scallop available at wsj.com in the wall street journal and we take phone calls feel even eastern or central time zones be sure to follow us booktv on twitter, you can also sent as a text message that 202,748,003 and jason riley let them in the case for open borders. >> that was a book written in the mid to late's and it was about immigration. i was working at the wall street journal at the time, and the person that had been covering immigration for the paper got a new position and imked me if i wanted to take over the beat. that sort of how it fell into my lap.

i didn't have a real dog in the fight of the sense i'm not an immigrant, i'm not the child of an immigrant self-worth, but i did enjoy studying history. an immigrant history is fascinating. if only because some of the arguments he realized that she write about it are so old and a been around for so long, so that first book really came out of my writing editorials for the newspaper. and it's t sort of expand on a lot of the arguments of the walls of the article on immigration over the decades. the very pro-to immigration editorial page. which sometimes upsets conservatives in particular, but it's interesting what happened with that debate. because the sort of immigration view on the right and the trump era is very, 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's view in the 1990s, but that was never the dominant view of the right. reagan was extremely pro- immigrant, and put in place amnesty. george w. bush and his father were both very pro- immigrants, and even the republican nominees that lost like the mccain or romney were still far more pro- immigrant that you had an donald trump. so this is sort of a new development on the rights although there's always been this faction, this more anti- immigrant nato faction december been the dominant one. source sort of a new era here. >> are the rules any different for an immigrant versus refugee? >> oh yes.

they are two different groups and traditionally have been taught -- and have been considered to differ groups. these days there's a little different. the people decided this would generally tell youho that someone who is forced out of their country, who would rather be back home, and is coming to the u.s. is going to behave very differently from someone who willingly leaves their country to start a new life in a new place. and so, what i am writing about a netbook or primary economic immigrants. the case that i make is that we would do better to put in place guestworker programs or other types of programs that allow the laws of supply and demand to determine the level of immigration. right now it's been made by politicians and public policymakers who are trying to think real hard about the u.s. needs for the economy. we'll take a little bit from here will tickle but from there, will fill that demand

will do this demand, but that just does not work. it's soviet styled central planning that is left us with document fraud, 12 million plus illegal immigrants in the country, hundreds of dead bodies in the arizona desert, i think we would do better to put in place market mechanisms that would allow us to regulate the flow. >> in the current book they are working on is what? >> i'm currently working on intellectual biology whoseon base of the hoover institution. at someone who have known a little bit over the years whose books and writings had a huge impact on me when i discovered them in college. it's a project i'm really looking forward to. >> how would you define your ideology? can he put it in a box or is it more disparate than that? >> i guess i'd find myself as

a free-market individual. a free-market conservative who someone is believes in smaller government is the way to go. and someone who believes in individual freedom. >> from please stop helping issue also wrote the following. the civil rights movement has become an industry by whom by the way? >> it's become an industry for everyone from individuals like your al sharpton's or jesse jackson's, to entire organizations like the naacp. iso think that they've effectively monetized black victimization. and different groups have done it for different reasons. i think if you are a civil rights organization like the naacp, it is not in your interest to acknowledge things

have improved for black people. and that's what you are trying to do, the civilized battles have been fought and won. and you are trying to stay relevant. if you have an organization like lack lives matter, you want to raise money so you are going to play up certain aspects of what's going on out there on the racial front. whether or not they are actually relevant. you are going to play that up because it's in your interest to do so. we were talking earlier about the victimization narrative and not something that democrats and black democrats in particular used to get reelected. sososo different groups have different incentives here. but it has very much become an industry. >> you saidbu it's an industry that has no interest in assessments of black methodology. >> again that doesn't serve their purpose. they want to stay relevant, or they want to raise money, or

they want to get reelected. so they're going to keep race and racial victimization front and center and the national debates.oi whether or not it's relevant. >> or do you do most of your thinking and writing? >> at home, have a home office and that's what i do mostly. >> and javid self disciplined to do that? >> discipline enough article : getting used to. i commuted into an office for more than two decades at the wall street journal. so it took a little adjustment, but i find it more productive now to just simply be able to get started right away. >> are guesses jason riley with your book in-depth. lemay first asking about your father. you're right about him in your book your parents separated when you were young, but your father was silver much in your life as a child. >> yes he was, and i think it made a big difference. he was an excellent role model, not only my father, i

grew up in my mother was very religious, and we attended church two or three times a week. in the congregation was full of black men who took care of their families, and dress a certain way, spoke a certain way, behaved a certain way, so i was very fortunate i grew up around a lot of very solid male role models. and i think it made a big difference. and imo think today, part of the problems that many blacks, particularly the young blacks isks they don't have that stability. they don't have role models in the community orr even in the home given the high illegitimacy rate, the high rate of single parenting and poor black communities, it's a problem. >> born and raised in buffalo? yes born and raised in buffalo. joining us from yonkers new york, welcome to book tv fill.

>> hello. >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon. the question i want to ask is are republicans, especially black republicans, why don't they educate their own. the blacks have it in history is pars political. they only have, they just understands going on. i was going to ask the question myself. he heard democrats speak about from the house. voter suppression, will voters of oppression explains it. your have roe v wade since 1973 and there could be 7,080,000,000 blacks in maybe 60 million blacks power to the blacks. but no we don't have power to the blacks i could be here, you should have me on your tv program discussing this.

and what i'm asking you to do is to go to history until the black people, ask them. because i did. when i ran for the house in florida as a republican ganz's other republicans i was called a racist.t. when jackie robinson is my hero, and on my musical radio problem i honored notot doctor martin luther king and we are being called racist. especially me. that is terrible. at the fact that i asked them what democrat open up the schools in the south? it wasn't jfk noah's republican power their fears objections are democratic governments and i can go on forever. and that's what you should be teaching them. >> host: thank you for the call will get a response. >> guest: i will agree with the caller, there is a lot of black history that does not

get a lot of attention from civil rights organizations and black politicians. particularly liberal black politicians. because it does not serve their interests. their personal interests. and a lot of this has to do with what is going on in the black community in between the end of slavery and the beginning of theen modern-day civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s. and there is quite a bit of progress being made. in this progress is remarkable given that it was happening during a time and verlyn and widespread racism in this country. that was open and illegal. those are the days of jim crow or if you look at the rate at which a blacks relieving poverty calmly the rates they were educating themselves, both in absolute terms and relative to whites at the rates at which they were joining the middle-class and , ofessions. it was a period of tremendous progress that actually slowed

after the civil rights legislation of the 1960s past. and the decades that followed of the passage of the civil unstrung of that we sell the translocation down install or change course. it doesn't get a lot of attention, from the civil rights activist because it doesn't serve their narrative. >> host: something you said earlier in your road and stop helping us blacks especially poor black performs better in the absence of government and schemes of affirmative action. >> guest: we have a lot of natural experiments that have happened that we can look back on and see if in fact these programs were effective. and back in 1996, the university of california system ended race at base to serve affirmative action in admissions policies.

throughout the entire system. i what we saw after that, banned wood into place, is the number of black graduates from the university of california system increased by more than 50%. the number of hispanics increased again by more than fit the percent. so a program that has been put in place for the racial preferences to help increase expand thera ranks of the black middle class, had in practice been resulting in fewer black doctors or lawyers, or architects, or social workers to me would've had in the absence of the policy. and so again we don't have to guess here. we don't have to speculate. we can certainly look at their track record of these programs that we've had in place over these years in see if they been effective. >> host: are going to rob welcome to the conversation. >> caller: good afternoon mr. riley i'm a big fan of yours i've ever reading of the new york post. i'm a black american, i agree

with everything you say. but it really doesn't make a difference man, it just doesn't make a difference when you have a mentality of being a victim or if you're comfortable being a victim, it's not going to change. in the democratic party knows this. the democratic party in 2020, this is me their favorite word. racist or racism. and there to me black folks just can be attracted to that. it's about feelings and emotions. and that's what the democratic party is banking on. you know i heard a wisemen once say facts are facts and facts don't give a damn about your color. and no matter what he said, or what i believe in your saying, blacks. [inaudible] no matter what i didn't vote for trump, i'm going to vote for him in 2020. and i am just telling you now just doesn't make a difference. i'm sounding defeated, but it's just not an you've been told, we've been told, and you have a national party telling

you that. it's just never going to change. and get this, democratic party is waiting for a big racial win. that's what they are banking on. i promise you, you know what i'm talking about. black forecastle just go though get their feelings and emotions up and they will vote democrat and they'll take them for granted like they did for the past eight years. i didn't vote for trump but i'm going to vote forpa him now. because like youdi said his quote what he got to lose. look at the facts. natural fingers, look at the facts, unemployment employment, we are all better off. but like i said before, really doesn't make a difference. i'm sorry for sounding down and out, but you know what i'm talking about. this is just never going to change. the black guys just never gonna change. >> host: rob thank you for the called jason riley response. >> guest: i appreciate the

call, and i think he makes a lot of excellent points about the strategy of the democrats. and he's right, it's a tough road to hoe. the democrats have been very, very effective at pushing this victim mentality. and pushing government programs as a solution. and so it's, it is very difficult to change minds out there. but i do, i am more optimistic than the color i will say. but he does make some actual points. >> host: 's pro from the book let the man he wrote this if the restriction is to insist that immigrants are coming here not to work but to take advantage of our magnetic social welfare program, why then are they flocking disproportionately to states who are so skimpy with benefits for the poor? >> guest: that is one question i asked mike when friends on the right who see immigration

as a problem were reporting poor people are going to go on the dole. the idea that immigrants are coming here to go on welfare and not work i think he is just not borne out. by the facts. on many fronts, but we can just look at the situation we have today. you have i don't know, pick your number ten, 12, 15 million people in the country illegally. yet you have unemployment rates at a 50 year low. >> the wall street journal reported recently that one point to million more jobs available then there are people looking for work. we have a labor shortage in this country. notwithstanding the fact that we have 15 million people here illegally.

so again, the other argument would be there going to put downward pressure on wages. i can tell you how often i've been told by others that say jason, 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. and again, what is the situation today with black unemployment? we are generational lows. and wages have been rising for the people at the low-end of the pale scale -- pay scale faster than they have been rising for management. so if in anger immigrants are stealing jobs, where's the evidence? >> host: from the book false black power you basically say that 50 years ago he was fighting the jim crow laws today he is fighting for his own relevance. >> guest: absolutely i think the civil rights battles have been fought and won.

what you see now among civilized leaders in the search for relevance. even among the activist groups, i think what they are pushing for, where they want the emphasis placed in terms of the problems, the black community. it is so at odds with the reality that it's hard to know where to begin. one of the previous colors mentioned the way the left plays up police shootings. which are tragic. any shooting is tragic. whether tapping by police or t anyone else. but is that the problem today that these activists have made out to be? we are here new york where one of the few places that is kept detailed records of police shootings going all the way back to the early 1970s. in 1971 the police in new york shot more than 300 people. the most recent stats from a couple years ago show that that is down to a dozen.

that's a 90% reduction in police shootings. and in police shooting fatalities over the past four and a half decades. and we have an activist movement out there based on there being some sort of epidemic of police shootings in this country. the facts simply do not bear that out. new york is not an outlier here. you can look at other large cities were police shootings may make up one or 2%. of all shootings going on in the country. if there are bad cops, let's root them out. someone breaks the law and they hold a position of authority like a police officer, they should face the penalty. but the idea that that's what we should bey a emphasizing, te folks responsible for 2% of the shooting and some people responsive for 98% of the shootings strikes me as completely ridiculous. >> host: the cycle at the crime rate and blacks in jail. we write about the fact that

blacks are responsible these are your words forward in stanching disproportionate number of crimes which have been the case foror at least half -- of the half past century. >> yes blacks have been responsible for half of the murders in this country even though they make up only 12 or 13% of the population. the black violent crime rate is ten times higher than the whites violent crime rate in this country. and that something mean to speak honestly about. as i said earlier, we want to have debates about the racial makeup of the prison system, but we don't want to talk about the racial makeup of who commits crimes. we pretend these two things have absently nothing to do with one another. and that's ridiculous. they obviously have something to do with one another. if we want to reduce the number of people involved in the criminal justice system and the number blacks, we have to do something about the black crime rate.

but that entails having an honest conversation about who is committing these crimes. we don't have that. >> host: but if you look at the poverty rate what is the percentage in your mind is black americans in poverty. >> guest: black poverty rates are about three times higher than white poverty rates in this country. but i will say this, among married blacks, poverty rates are in the single digits. and have been for 25 years. so the idea again that racism is driving the poverty rate, versus a family formation, again, is at odds with the facts. no one is going to not discriminate against you if you're black because you're married. they are not gonna make any distinction, racism is not going to make a distinction. so we have to look at the totality of the situation here. is poverty a function of

racism? or is poverty of function primarily of family foundation? and if it's the latter, why aren't blacks marrying at the rate that other groups marry? because when they do, they go a long ways towards addressing the poverty issue. but again, these are not discussions we typically have. we jump right to a racial disparity resulting from racism. we don't look at all the other factors that could be driving these outcomes. other than racism. and again to have this conversation you don't get to deny that racism is in america is what extent is racism responsive foror the outcomes we see. what are the other factors? >> host: so than sharepoint it's the cycle of family formation, the poverty rate and crime. >> guest: sure it has a lot to do with that. to the extent that these government programs has interfered with that family foundation or dis- incentivize people to have these families,

to keep the fathers around and so forth, to keep those with their families intact and hasn't help the intended at all. >> host: what was your own personal experience again going back to your father who separated from your mom at an early age but wanted to remain part of your life in buffalo new york? >> guest: he did, he never lived more than a couple miles away from us. he coached my little league teams. my sisters and i spent the holidays and weekends with him and usually couple days a week at his house. doing our homework after school. so he was very involved. it was very involved in my life. problem is that's not typical. that's atypical. and that's the problem. you go back to as recently as the 60s, you had to out of three black kids being raised by a mother and father.

and now more than 70% are not. and i think that statistic alone goes a long ways towards explaining these gang-related violence, the involvement with the criminal justice system ofmi these kids. why they are joining gains, why are they shooting each other in places like chicago. think there's a lack of male role models for these kids in the large number of the situations. >> host: your fathers passed away but did you ever tell him that was unusual, thank you? be too i'm sure i did not think my father enough when he was alive. but i'm sure a lot of people can say the same thing. but i think both of my parents knew how much they mention a. >> host: were going to go to michael and riviera beach florida. welcome. >> caller: thank you, just sitting here listening, and i have so many questions for this gentleman. number one, how does he utilize statistics to support his position while obviously he didn't have a very good

question statistics for when he just cited that while black families if theyla are married the kids are in a better position at a time when 60 to 70% of all marriages in america and up in divorce. so -- or when he cites that for example about his analogy if there were 909 rates of women in the 60s another's ten rates in and then there is ten rates are we now not still emphasize how important it is they shouldn't rape women? now you talk about a systematic -- you talk about people using the civil rights movement for their advantage. i would guess that you have been in the situation, mr. reilly, just about all of your education and career, and professional career were even the first or the only black in

your area of employment were everywhere. and so therefore, at the wall street journal they are very happy to have an educated black man like yourself who espouses theories that generally are not supportive of black people. so you have done probably the same thing in your position, your professional life, that you are accusing jesse jackson and the others of doing. eliminate my final. you're talking about a system. the g.i. bill. that was affirmative accident for white soldiers from world war ii because black people were not allowed to be in the army. va loan bill, was also affirmative action, all you had to do was be a white male in world war ii, and you can sign up and go to any college that you wanted to in the government would pay for. and then after the economy started to dwindle and everybody started to movee out west, all the businesses left the urban areas they rate race

the cities left the black people in cities all the people moved to the suburbs, the factories moved to the suburbs, the banks which are sanctioned by the government for cues to give black lungs gave white's nose and the businesses they refuse to hire blacks even if they could get outt, there, but hire whites, and then redline the districts where the blacks were with the support and backing of the federal government. so when you have be one thank you for the call a a lot to respond to. >> guest: i'll respond a couple of points. in terms of my personal background, no i haven't accomplished anything in my life that other people didn't accomplish before me. in factors recruited before me to the wall street journal by a black gentleman to administer your editor there for a number of years. and probably could not in disagreed with me more my politics at the time.

in terms of the g.i. bill, i'm not sure if he has his facts straight there. there are blacks attended college on the jive bill. back in the 50s and 60s. in fact the gentleman i am writing about thomas soul is one who attended college on the g.i. bill. sod gis could take advantage of the g.i. bill and many did. he is quite thankful for the g.i. bill for allowing him to do that. he also mentioned about the industrialization as the source of many of the problems in the inner cities. the factors up and left and then the societies, these communities disintegrated. he's even the order wrong here. the factories left after these societies had already fallen into disrepair. the riots of the 1960s

happened first, then the companies left to these areas. they have to get the order right when you're talking about some of these matters. and sometimes people don't. >> host: were taking your text messages as well a lot of them -7arty coming in including this reviewer saying police shootings are down because of the protests and demonstrations. >> guest: again that is not with the record shows. cityentioned new york earlier, 1971 i believe there are 314 police shootings. twenty years laity or by 1991 that had fallen by more than half. it had fallen to about a hundred. and then 20 years later again, it fallen down into the teens. so now this is been a long-standing trend that predates these protests that we see in the last few years.

this is not something new. the police and used to force a been declining steadily act against minorities. the study from economist at harvard that was published a couple years ago, and he examined a number of police shootings in big cities on the country and said he had expected to find bias. he found a bias he found black suspects and hispanic suspects were less like it to be shot at by police. so this is not a function of these protests. with the protests have done what they risk doing is forcing police to scale back. to sale their cars and not patrol on foot. to take their time and answer 911 calls if there can have a

target on their back and the politicians breathing down their neck, that's how they do their job. in my fear there, is that the people who we harm the most by this are law-abiding blacks in these poor communities. the majority of blacks in these communities are the ones it will be harmed because the criminals prey on them first and foremost. they're not going until only white suburbs to rob holmes. they are robbing their neighbors. search the extent the police pull back and do less effective you're hurting the black poor. that's what i feared they are doing the problem was. >> host: how much criticism do you get from colleagues when you're on fox news. >> guest: it depends on which colleagues and friends.

my friends of all political persuasions i have family of political persuasions but when they see on tv they are more likely to tell you how you looked than how you sounded. >> host: and joining us across the city and in jersey city new jersey welcome to in-depth tv. >> caller: good afternoon thank you very much. mr. riley i just on a start off by saying happy holidays to you. that was a very nice personal story with your father. thank you for sharing. see maxson cubes. >> caller: i don't have a problem with your view about how the democrats are more than dissatisfying the blacks they are like a harmful party interview to us. but ass far as government going forward our country and black people specifically and i am black, i believe in bernie sanders. so bernie sanders vision for

our future. that's me telling you that i am 35, i'm a black male, i live here in new jersey, i'm very dissatisfied the democratic party. they are notfi doing enough with overseas, they are not doing enough with right here in new jersey we don't have any trade schools. trade schools or private. why don't we have public trade schools that teach public high school welding, all the trades, electrician, we are not doing enough in education. the democratic party is not doing enough or big money out of our system. i don't like new jersey rimaries all week till june for the presidential election. and we also have a cold primary so i have to declare. that's a couple of reasons of examples of my dissatisfaction with the democrat party. and that's fine, but you are not encouraging us to vote for the republican party are you? if you are, then i don't like that.

but they don't spend any dollars, mr. riley, on our community. it's beneath them. i'll say that again the local lateral level is beneath the republican party. maybe they don't turn their backs towards us or against us, but that you look at us. if lindsay grant doesn't talk to us at all, which one of them, who speaks to us? like i said bernie sanders is the way forward, i believe you and sister candace owens, your views are very toxic. but you are black and you have the right, we all have the right tour say. suggesting our way forward, please gop, is not the answer. >> guest: let me respond to this on two levels. let's separate bernie sanders for second from the rest of this. the caller is right i think

when he talks about the lack of interest the republicans are showing on the black vote. now you can speculate as to why that is whether it's racism or what's driving it. on a very practical lever, with driving it is they don't need this vote to win. and politics is about numbers. d and time spent is going after a constituency you don't have much chance of getting is not time spent you think you can get. so that could be one explanation right there. >> caller: let me talk on that.jack kamp and paul ryan did try to push for this. >> guest: and they have not been the only examples. steven goldsmith is another politician to do this. even chris christie when he ran forid reelection as governor of new jersey went well among black voters. becauseid he went into camden he went into trance and any asked for their vote. but the problem with all the

people we just named is they still remained exceptions. and not the rules. you don't see republican candidates and black neighborhoods at the barbershop. nor the grocery store at the community center. you don't see them advertising on black radio or during black television programs. they have conceded this vote. and what is allowed is for the democratic candidate to come in and paint them as complete monster with apsley no pushback.ic so i do think the republicans ought to do a better job of courting this group. and i certainly don't blame blacks who have the attitude now that all the democrat oral stay home. >> caller: two notes on camping 2020 you wrote black voters have shown little interest in either of the black candidates, cory booker jersey or pamela harris of california. why? >> guest: if you would asked

me about cory booker and pamela harris maybe five years ago, i would've had some very positive things to say about both of them. both of them are democrats, both of them are liberals, bullets are cory booker. cory booker was a very education reform minded mayor. before he became a a senator. he believed in school choice. he believe in charter schools. he was also very tough on crime. he came in, he hired a very pro active police commissioner and was going to model, what he was gonna do in his city on what giuliani and bloomberg had done in new york. pamela harris was a prosecutor. you can go look up these youtube videos of her saying things like yes there may be racism in the criminal justice system, but that's not the

reason iac have five locks on my door. i mean she was a very tough-minded prosecutor when iit came to protecting the rights of those poor black people in those communities. those law-abiding black people who were the targets of many of these criminals. abit's. >> host: they've gone back on the charter stuff here recently but by and large they id cited the need to become more progressive to run for the president. out of the party was so they had to put aside what i would consider a very sensible talk. and that's my problem with where they are today versus where they were before. the other thing previously mentioned was bernie sanders. monica, essentially my promo bernie sanders is his socialism. which amounts to wealth redistribution as a way of helping the poor. in helping the black poor in

particular. again return but the great society programs. if giving -- of redistributing wealth, passing out check support people solve poverty, we would've solved a long time ago. it doesn't. what these folks need is a development of human capital. they need to learn about wealth creation. i think the progressives are too focused on redistribution as a solution and is not. it's not going to be the solution. m burning us all in on the wealth redistribution. and that's essentially my problem with his programs. >> host: another note on the campaign you wrote about former mayor michael bloomberg who apologized, and you offended by basically saying do we want to go back to treating criminals like victims? and police officers like criminals? 's.

>> guest: i have some problem with michael bloomberg to. and i did when he was mayor of new york city. but one of the things that i liked about michael bloomberg was his stance on policing. he had the backing of the police, he let them know that. it was basically because he had continued a lot of the policies of his predecessor rudy giuliani, who put a lot more cops on the street in these communities. and by the way people like to talk about the tension between the police the black community, but nobody calls the police more than black in this country. [laughter] it's a funny way of saying you don't like cops but that's where the 911 calls. and mayors like bloomberg and giuliani were responding to those calls. and i appreciated that. the stop and frisk policy that bloomberg is walking back and apologizing for, i would argue saved a lot of lives.

if you could back to the early 90s in new york city, you're looking at 2200, 2300 homicides a year in the early 90s. seventy and 80% of them are black people who were being murdered. you fast-forward to last year, you're down to couple hundred. if we had maintains the rate of homicide that we had in the early 90 these. for the next quarter-century do you know how many more dead black people would have today? i mean -- i was appalled that bloomberg would apologize for a policy that i would argue saved not only black lives but probably kept a lot of black people out of prison as well. and is walking it back again because that is o where the parties now. and if you want to run of this democratic party, you have to talk about policing is the problem and not criminality. >> leona second hour of the

in-depth conversation with author and columnist jason riley more of your calls and comments in just a moment. hoosier wilmar? >> guest: my role model was my father first and foremost. no one's really replaced him since them. there are people who have influenced me intellectually, throughout the course of my career. among those folks i would name people like thomas saul, shelby steele, glenn lowry would be another one, walter williams, these are people i started reading back in college and agreed with them a lot of what they wrote. >> host: are you at today were you envisioned you would be as a student in buffalo when you're dealing with some those buffalo winters? [laughter] >> guest: that's a good question.

i haven't had a whole lot of jobs since college. i got interested in journalism after joining the school paper, i'd read something in the paper and was down to complaint and the editor said why don't you join the staff and write about this whenever you want. and that's what got me interested in newspapers. and i did complete that internship, that college internship in washington i knew i wanted to be a a journalist.. hs six months after college i found myself at the wall street journal, and stayed there for more than two decades and continue to write for that paper. i can say i still look forward to getting out of bed every morning and getting started, but i'm going to write a column or work on about, or work on a speech or what have you. or prepare for interviews on c-span. some still very much enjoying it.

>> of the success black folks under jim crow? so to provide any reference or any comments because i was under the impression. >> what i was talking about

they are is between 1940 and 50 the black r poverty rate so you're talking a 40 percent decline with those voting rights act of 1965 it in the sixties alone its prior to the era of affirmative action and if you look at that. 1930 in 1970 you have the number of skilled professions and social workers teachers and lawyers and doctors in the middle class professions quadruple during this period. so again and the points here is what is going on with the rest of the country during this period i would argue that the folks that were making the

gains were experiencing a great deal more racism in american society and yet was not able to stop them. what did stop? what happened? why did we see a slowdown or a reversal of what was happening? and i would argue and with those interventional - - interventionist policies of great society got in the way. and then to see all those other government efforts to help with that self-development taking place in the country and welace saw a political shift in the arena from a focus on the development of that human capital that was the primary

focus and that was problematic in the long run. >> you mentioned doctor martin luther king would he be satisfied where where we are todayis 50 years after the assassination? >> no. i don't thank you would be satisfied. >> would he say we made progress? >> of course. we had a black president. twice elected as well as senators and congressmen and mayors and governors. someone a certain level certainly but in terms of the last four, it was still quite a bit of work to do their. the situation in some ways has regressed from the days of

king and it is really sad. >> so does the voting rights act and then they need to be kept in place? >> and i know they cross those lines to vote for some time. with that you get candidates i don't need to make any appeals outside their racial or ethnic group. and then to aspire to runt statewide.

if you want to be a senator or a governor trying to make these very narrow appeals to run statewide that is a leap toto make it put in place perverse incentives and the fact that we have come a long way. >> los angeles with a question who is responsible for racism and why? >> i don't think any one individual is responsible for racism. that predates america as part of the human condition. it's not about one group being responsible to perpetuate but like i said it predates all of us and will still be here when

i'm long gone. as part of the tragedy of humanum nature. >>caller: thank you so much. we appreciate mister wright release stating thehe facts everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts. when all he does is state the facts i was whistleblower and picked up in an article in 1983 which triggered an investigation and that eventually led to a resignationed from speaker of the house and shame. that was all based on factual that was all based on factual the article was authored. >> i don't know him.

>> so then to bring to a solution that so we should be focused i on. so let's get it together to stop the racial baloney we have indigenous people in concentration camp reservations that need our help that all starts with stopping arguments. >> i didn't hear a question there. [laughter] teeseven you write about an individual of the name of john hinton.jo >> he was a i doctor for michigan. he died recently. and started off as the environmental activists.

and was one of the first planned parenthood in michigan. and wise unsatisfied, this is part of his environmentalism. with the concerned about population growth in the us. this was detrimental to the ecology and the earth and so forth. which explains his interest in abortion and then it was becoming overpopulated with immigrants and then started any number of organizations for lower-level. and then to expand quite

rapidly and fair is one of them it's the federation reform. center for immigration studies is another. because many republican restriction asked and where these organizations over the years and for different reasons of people who have gotten back t together even though they came from very different places ideologically they join forces touc reduce immigration. t in the history of some of these groups.

>> let's talk about the republican party the first years of the trump administration he used immigration as a key issue in his campaign.t and then the house in the white house and the senate cannot get anything on immigration that something republicans ran on. what happened? >> he ran into the same problem that obama ran into when he controlleded all three branches for the first two years in office. it is a complicated issue and even within the party there are different factions with different beliefs on immigration. clearly most republicans are not with the president when it comes to his more extreme views.

and to have the dreamer issue. those who were brought here illegally as children know what to do trump wanted to undo it a majority of republicans a large majority want to give amnesty and not deport them so trump is at odds with members of his own party. and then expanding the border wall. and just to have all one-party actin agreement let alone something bipartisan. >> you took the president to task on that issue. >> on a number off issues. i was not a trump supporter. mostly on grounds of his

temperament and if he was fit for the job but also the policy issues. but those are two issues that i disagreed on. other issues i have agreed and i have written approvingly i like his education policies and his choice of education secretary. i am a big supporter of school choice and vouchers and charter schools. and she has spent her professional life supporting those prefer like the fact trump appointed her and he too has been locally supportive of education choice. when people talk about where i see this country going or black america headed going forward i think it all comes down to getting a decent education for these kids in poor communities.

it's at the root of everything and i have no faith the traditional public schools in this country can do that because i don't believe i that they are acting primarily in the interest of the children they are acting in the publict of the adults education is a jobs program not an education program in the best way to fix i that is to give it competition whether alternative public systems like charter schools or archers --dash vouchers and while they take them to private or parochial schools with a private education needs reform it will not reformn. from within so for me trump has been a mixed bag i don't reflect literally criticize himxi or praise him if he does something i like i will say something nice if he says something i don't i will not. >> the next caller is from

california good afternoon. >> thank you for taking my call. where i live there is a lot of poverty overwhelmingly white a lot of people in this area are ntdescendents of immigration from the dustbowl area in the thirties and as i look at systemic poverty that's been here for generations is there a fundamental difference between what i see in certain communities and black poverty versus white poverty? and i have seen examples of the police and sheriffs basically not so much color

but poverty that's why they are discriminated against to a large extent i think where i live so what do you see as the different similarities? any fundamentals? >> fundamentally i don't see a lot of difference. i think the same human capital will lift blacks and whites alike out of poverty. others like jd vance have moved - - written very movingly about the situation in white america but it's receives less attention because the white poor are a smaller percentage of white they and black are black but on andm elemental level, i don't see any difference how you help these groups are what they need to do to change

their situation. >> in the book you write the return has been so meager is that black politicians often benefit themselves but do not represent the concerns of mostt blacksks and that is not unique to black politicians it seems like a generalization. >> perhaps. but i would argue there are enough examples to make it a relatively accurate generalization. politicians act in the interest of getting reelected. no matter what color they are. so one example president obama comes into office and blacks have overwhelmingly voted to put him there. one issue that polls very well in the community is school choice.

both charter schools and voucher programs have pulled very well among blacks. far ahead of whites and other groups. one of the first things obama tries to do is president is shut down the dc voucher program which is disproportionately helping blacks. why would he do this the first black presidentes an issue that is overwhelmingly popular amongnd blacks and shut it down? because now he is president? part of the reason he is president because of the teachers unions help to make him president was special interest groups and they don't like school vouchers because many of the schools with the vouchers are used are not unionized so they want the kids in traditional public schools. not voucherou programs.

so obama has to make a decision. do i act in the interest of special interest to elected me or m my fellow blacks? he made hisan choice. i think other politicians facing the same dilemma have made a similar choice and that's what i mean about looking to politicians to address the basic needs and the black community. they have their own political interest to be preoccupied with and they will not always align with the interest of the left. >> the next call is from >> the next call is from >>caller: thanks for taking my call. you say there is a majority of the black middle class and if you think so how do you describe that? >> that there is an excellent

book written by an author at the university of new york called the black majority and he makes the argument that black political elites have not always acted in the interest of the black poor even the majority i of blacks and i think he makes a pretty strong argument. if you take something likeng ,crime pulls will tell you the pollsters about the people in the black community whether the criminal justicesy system is too easy or too hard on criminals the black general public tells pollsters that it goes too easy on criminals but that is not what you will hear coming out of the mouth of black politiciansig or activists but that's what the average black person will tell you on the street i just talk to you about education where the

interest of black elites from the interests of average blacks and that goes all the way back to the days of busing when both one - - mo supported it but blacks did not so there is a long history of what would advance a political career versus the black community and what the people are counting on is that blacks will vote democrat or they will stay home they do not fear that black constituent will vote for a republican and that is one thing they can count on not happening and that is an example it's often said they take the black vote for granted that's what they are talking about. one way to fix that is for republicans to make a play and

that way blacks could use the two-party system the way other groups in america use the two-party system to get what they want but right now you don't see that happening in black america teeseven have you looked at the divorce rate black men versus poor white men is it the same or similar from where we were in the sixties or today? >> i don't know the numbers off the top of my head. if i had to guess, i don't know the numbers. i don't wantat to speculate. >> i ask because the roots of poverty from those who grew up in single-parent homes i wonder why the women get the children and not the men? is that part of society? >> yes.

the sociologists and others that have looked at that say it is in the best interest of the child. but that would be my guess that family breakdown when you control the family breakdown you often get very different results. one example i came across recently there was a study done by a political scientist at the university of virginia looking at school suspension rates broken down by race and he found when you controlled for broken families whites were suspended at higher rates than blacks which is a very interesting finding because this is one issue where liberal activists have looked at racial disparities and outcomes including school suspensions and automatically attributed it to racism.

peer we have somebody says let's control the home environment and you get a very different outcom outcome. >> such a put numbers on the table that you cite data that among blacks nearly 5 million children 54 percent live only with their mother just 12 percent of poor black households have two parents present compared to 41 percent of poor hispanic households. >> yes. eattitudes towards marriage and child rearing and again this is all post great society in terms of trends not what we were seeing prior to that.

and the nuclear family matters it is almost taboo to say that out loud and when you have a child coming from an intact family all types of outcomes improve for the child the chances of getting involved with the criminal justice system, becoming teenage parentse parents, graduating from school, they all increase. they go in the right direction. but yet we don't often have honest discussions about the importance of the nuclear family. collar go ahead. >>caller: good afternoon. thank you for the dialogue you are having this is right up my alley. i will be 40 very soon i am a sociology student in 1998 i

grew up in the criminal justice system. i have so much on my mind i want to share with you but be patient with me to let me get this out i have christian values and views and i was raised tond believe in respectability so we are supposed to respect them and i believe where obama became in interested in politics for the first time after i started to reintegrate back w into society to get back to my beginnings of what i wanted to do as a kid with those dreams before i was thrown off and distracted that the black man faces as a

teenager but one thing that sustained me growing up through the justice system through gangs through the plight of the black man was education i'm on the west coast i wanted to make that clear my mom was an educator for the district and was very wellt, known and very strict and instilled that in me with my education my dad worked for mcdonnell douglas in the sixties so i saw that work oohic from my father as a black man when i went to school i had my own struggles at school with the teachers it was g hard to get the attention that i needed so i had to

figure it on my own. i was a class clown because i was creative and artistic and i'm also an aspiring journalist myself. so too fast forward today the black community is beautiful we havee contributed to society and have come so far i have heard it all and have seen it all and what our ancestors did to pave the way for today is just a beautiful thing when we contribute to society to see poverty and crime but education is key and teachers need to pay more attention to the black student and like the gentleman said earlier i have seen him tackle and confront

many bible issues in every community every issue i see him confront that the black community has always been the underdog i believe in trump i like what he is doing i give him a pat on the back for staying strong through all the adversity with the impeachment inquiries so my question is to the gentleman on here, from your perspective as an intellectual black man did i respect the way you speak and how articulate that you are, i admire that we don't get to see that much of that here.

i just want to know from your perspective as a black man and as a black vote for the black community, do you honestly believe that donald trump has our best interest at heart? do you think we should as a black race i voted democrat. >> you have put a lot on the table but thank you for sharing your story and joining sharing your story and joining

there is no doubt that that is true and i would point to the advances they've made under previous administrations. when a person and the white house was indifferent to what was going on and of the 20th century, so blacks can prosper under donald trump i have no doubts about that but i don't know if he has their best interest in mind. >> host: what did you hear, what was to take away fro the te story? >> guest: he seems to have turned his life around. very heartening. and he seems to think that

education had a lot to do with it, he didn't take it as seriously as he should have and now he understand how important it is. i would agree with that. it's why it's so painful to listen to the black civil rights organizations in some of these politicians running for president turned their back on charter schools, which has a tremendous record of success. we have example after 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. the ideali that we wouldn't be replicating these education models is completely absurd to me. he reduced the bernie sanders and naacp and elizabeth warren saying they want a moratorium on charter schools are producing these kind of results. and this guy misses how important it is. the idea that there is a connection in the inner cities. it really pains me when i watch

people attack school reform the way that i hear some of these k.. >> from washington state, you've been patient. good afternoon, please. he talked about leaders feeling to be angels of our higher nature and it seemed the current occupants r right away coming dn he talked about immigrants coming across the southern border. then there was a church sharing his case. being hispanic, an obvious example of blatant racism.

it's obvious some politicians perhaps even including n the president are not appealing to them on immigration among other things. so, the question is sort of what's in my mind is the evangelicals with 81% that support him. what is your opinion on data about how people came to be christians in fact political theater.

both sides play the game and what is going on there is but if youu ask people in the evangelical community why they support this president despite the baggage that comes along with that, they will talk about his pro-life stance and the judges he's appointing and that those are the litmus tests are used and i'i useand i'm going tg else go because they decided that is what is most important to me and all of them do that. you are not going to get a candidate that likes everything yoyou bike to the degree that yu like it and you will have to pick and choose your issues.

>> (202)748-8003. chucchuck and highland hills oh, the interview with morgan freeman said what can stop racism and his response was morgan freeman said stop talking nabout it. i agree to that to some extent. the civil rights industry that i mentioned earlier keeping race front and center is good for business and it means that it gets dragged into the discussions where it doesn't really belong. maybe that is with morgan freeman was getting at

everything wasn't about race and racism and that seems to be the direction we are talking. >> host: anthony in new york pennsylvania. welcome to the conversation. >> caller: hello.ye >> host: go ahead, please. >> caller: i can tell he's a conservative and has held positions he has not held. he knows the statistics that he's given in the interview pertaining to those that entered the profession. it hasn't been expended too much in the previous period. they made progress. one of the statistics as it

relates to the politicians there are many who do and [inaudible] what he says about the schools many don't support the school. they don't have the same kind at the schools. like i said before, the track record of affirmative action isn't something we need to speculate about. i mentioned the situation at the university of california system

in terms of what happened after the racial preferences but you u can point to floridaas and texas and see the same results after they also pass similar policies but its census data that isn't coming from any quote on quote conservative organization. that is my it's available to anyone who cares to look. again it isn't very well-known and i don't understand why it isn't very well-known but that doesn't mean it isn't true. they were increasing their levels of education and the rate at which they were entering middle-class professions and the way in which they were leaving property. all of those were far higher in the period to the 1960s than

ythey were in the decade immediately following the 1960s. before they were put in place but in terms of higher education, we have particularly strong data sets to show what's going on here. harvard was taken to task by a group of students that sued because they thought harvard was putting in place quotas on who could enter the school. we have tons of data on the people that have entered. affirmative action is harmful in another way as well. you can talk about the equal protection clause and whether it's reverse discrimination. you can talk about whether it just makes sense to pick and choose favorite groups or you

can say does it work as intended, have we experienced whawith the proponents said we would experience if we put these policies in place. there was a study done some years ago, highly selective schools and had been admitted to mit and in the past on that portion of the sat so you are talking about some very smart kids. but they were in the bottom 10% among their peers. and as a result more of them were dropping out or switching to easier majors and so forth. you have taken some extremely smart black kids an had set thep to fail. kids who would be hitting it out

of the park at a lesser institution are struggling at mit because they wanted to make the freshman class look like america. whether or not they are actually going to graduate, affirmative action has had that these harmful byproducts that nobody foresaw. going back and lookingng at the, by and large it's been accepted as a universal good. it's increased the black middle class and so forth, but that is just not the track record. >> one person you write about is daniel patrick moynihan who before he became u.s. senator and beforsenatorand before thatn administration, what is his legacy? >> guest: one of his legacies, he wore several different hats.

he was looking at increases and said this will not go well in terms of going forward for these communities, nor will it work for participation and so forth. he came under a tremendous amount of attack for his conclusions many of which were based on in his view it was the consensus view among people that looked at this material, but he became the face of it and he was attacked as a racist and by somebody blaming the victim. you have to remember at the time, people were tryingng to ps the voting rights act and he was

getting in the way with this rhetoric. he was a distraction. and what ended up happening is the way he was treated didn't go unnoticed by the sociologists, political scientists, anyone else who wanted to look into this situation.. they were scared off for many years. it doesn't make professional sense to go digging around here. lest you wind up like moynahan did. so, there was a long period of neglect in this area of what was going on, socioeconomically among this area and more recently we've had some like orlando patterson that looked at this and said we have to talk

about this stuff. it's's the elephant in the room. we can talk about the disparity is going on without talking about culture. yes it plays a role in the south did we need to talk about it, but for decades, and any sociologist steer clear of this area, and i think that it worked to the detriment of people that need the most help. >> host: the books of jason riley included the following, please stop helping us, how liberals make it harder for blacks to succeed. also, with an income let them ir open borders and false with iapower. i want to follow-up on a comment that you made earlier. my understanding regardinghe the

dreamers is that presented trump did allow about 800,000 to become permanent residents or citizens, but he tied it to them also building the wall to prevent uncontrolled border crossings. he didn't just cancel out president obama's executive orders but he was trying to make it evene more so by making the law where it would be more permanent and not temporary. so if you can speak a little bit easier on president trump because that is the way i see it. i am a new citizen here that means i came and got educated and got naturalized so i don't

see this million-a-year it's actually sort of affecting the culture so i thought that it would allow them to stay doesn't seem unreasonable so why is that not a good thing. >> the president was trying to tie the state of the creamer dre funding for his wall. the democrats were disappointed because they didn't want to compromise and they knew they were not going to budge so whether or not it was a s,good-faith proposal, who know, but that is what he was attempting to do. the problem is that he could do this as a stand-alone measure

and i think he would have enough democratic support to get this done. i think it would help them politically as well given that there is such bipartisan support for doing something about the dreamers and taking them out of this limbo. the president brings an interesting mindset which is why we were explaining the statistics in terms of economic outcomes notwithstanding the fact we hav that so many peoplee illegally. so in emigrants coming here to take a job most economists will tell you that is until the labor markets work but the mindset of president trump brings to this

issue. the caller also mentioned whether immigrants are having too large of an impact on our culture which is a time-honored concern we've had every wave of immigrants gets the same reaction. benjamin franklin was complaining about too many germans coming to pennsylvania in the 17 hundreds. this is an old concern and they were coming in at a much higher rate to a much smaller country than the mexicans would be years later and the same of the irish and other groups so this is a time-honored concern and one of the reasons it's difficult to get things done and you couple

that with what you have in the obama years who inherited this recession from george bush for most of his presidency and you have a talk at the blend of the economic problems of today. not only coming out of the recession but now that we've seen the growth and increasing the wages and so forth, now it makes you wonder whether they were in fact the problem to begin with, and if you bring the mindset trump does coupled with the fact of a winning issue whether or not it's true. he thinks that it's his base to helgrace tohelp in a couple of t

message saying what will it take for democrats enslaved in the plantation which is upward mobility to move to the 1% in other words to get to the wealthy. what will it take for black democrats to leave the plantation for their upward mobility to reach 1%? >> guest: if republicans want to stop voting in such high percentages for democrats they need to go make a place as well and today too few make that effort so whatever reason you are still something of a republican outlier when you venture into the inner-city and actively go after. that's got to change a.

>> host: i can understand why they made progress from after 1945 because of the programs of fdr in the 30s and the industrialization of the country everybody in proved, but if you look back i just kind of want his opinion on republican ideology versus democrat ideology with regards to all kinds of rights not just to civil rights or afro-american rights or black rights, but women's workers rights, union rights, gender, all the way around. with lbj, there is a bunch of guys to vote for the civil rights law.em you've got to remember that's

what happened. and at that point, when they saw the democratic party was going g towards the civil rights, they went republican because they were segregationist. so i guess my idea is if you look at who has been supporting the rights for everybody including the afro-americans it's been a democratic party all along. and the republicans are almost t resigning themselves o to trust trying to buy for the white vote and no matter what cost it does to other people. i don't know the peripheral economic whenever trump is done, which i don't see it and i don't think that many people in their class have. >> host: you begin your book by remembering when lyndon johnson spoke to the class at the university in washington, d.c.. >> guest: it was an argument for affirmative action for the

preferences that he made in that speech. he said you can't simply give people equal rights, you have to give them special rights because of what they do in the past and that is what he attempted to do. you look at the racial disparities that persist in you have to wonder if these efforts have been counterproductive. i wantnt to correct the comments the previous call made about everyone did better in the postwar period and post-new deal. he is right. people did better but not at the same rate. in other words, black and comes in black education levels rose not only in absolute terms but also relative to white incomes and white educational levels and so forth. in other words, blacks were closing the gap.

they were not just making gains in absolute terms and that is the important distinction, so yes when the economy was doing well in the postwar period, but don't advise thaadvised that son others and when they made significant progress in catching up progress, again the trend would slow down or in some cases reversed. >> host: duplicate the last wor and you will get thelast won joining us from maryland, go ahead. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i agree. we were talking about the game to be made during the 50s, the post-world war ii period. i grew up in baltimore and the only planned community that the federal government built. felt. i wrote a book about it called raising successful black children in jim crow baltimore. now, mr. riley states that he feels that the johnson programs

killed our p progress, but i wat him to comment on how the benign neglect and the reagan budget cuts affect the progress. >> guest: i'm having some trouble. >> host: the mine progress or neglect. i don't think that the society programs can be called benign neglect. they were to permit extensions we spend trillions of dollars since the 1960s on these programs. trillions of dollars. the war on poverty, but housingg programs and so forth. i think what this shows are the limits of the government largesse. there's only so much the government can do and we also know what it can't do if you

take away the good policing in schools, stable homes, there's nothing the government can do to replace thosee t things. >> host: how can blacks succeed today? >> guest: two things need to happen. we need to have honest conversations about the problems that we face. we need to talk about black crime rates for example, when we talk about black incarceration rates. basic things like that, honest conversations about what the studies say and the importance of the outcomes later in life and so forth. what i wantdo from the governmet is simply to stop doing things we know don't work. affirmative action in terms of higher educatio education is ang based on the track record of affirmative action. anti-poverty programs that do since the device work mean that

they would develop the work to get out of poverty and to sustain out of poverty. don't keep kids trapped in schools are failing. lethat are failing. let them attend schools where we know the model has been successfulin in teaching kids fm the most difficult backgrounds. backgrounds. what proliferate. don't put a moratorium on them. so, it is more about what the government should stop doing them but it should start doing. but in terms of the commentary and intellectual academics and the rest, let's have some honest conversations about what's actually happening out there and what are the causes and were not the causes. >> host: what are you reading now, what are your favorite books? >> guest: >> guest: i like biographies. the biography by b wrong rockefeller comes to mind. because it showed not only how

wealthy rockefeller became but how much he improved american society in the process, whether it was building block schools like stalin, or making things like kerosene cheap so everyone can enjoy them, not just the rich and you don't have to stop working at night. i really enjoye really enjoyed y lessons i got out of that in addition to learning a lot about rockefeller. a lot of the books i'm reading mnowadays for the research fory intellectual biography of tom sold so that's taking up a lot of my time, but the rockefeller book comes to mind and i'm also reading the walk with other sons who was a former "new york times" reporter that wrote about black migration out of the

south. my wife recommended it. >> host: if the viewers and listeners follow you on social media how can they do so? >> guest: iem on twitter at jasonrileywj. >> host: joining us on in depth, we thank you for the conversation.