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good morning again. good morning again. we're going to continue with our program. our panel is called culture and family, but i think we could use that as a point of did he part ture. i think culture and family could be considered one answer to the problem of african american poverty and its persistent.

and i'm going to ask our panel to reflect broadly on that with some focus on cultural and family but not exclusively on that. we have a very distinguished panel, on my far left -- on my mar left is gene dattel who is the author of a powerful new book called reckoning with race, america's failure. he grew up with the mississippi delta and has been surrounded by african-american poverty his whole life and is perplexed by it. anthony bradley from king's college say distinguished faculty member there and the author of -- the director of the center for human flower risching, chair of the religious and theological studies program and the author of the book "blook and tired liber brating

black theology". and susan good den is from virginia common wealth university. she's also the president of the america society for public administration. and susan has completed a fascinating new study which she'll be reporting about and falls directly into the context of what we're discussion here this morning. i want to begin with gene. and i didn't bring up your book to disrespect the author's -- the other author's books but rather to quote from it, if i might. and we were talking at the end of the previous panel about programs and efforts concentrated government-direct prod gra programs and whether they helped or behindders. there's a lot of skepticism on your book. trillions of dollars were spent on the programs and were

eloussive at best and did not end poverty. and then you quote an official of the office of economic opportunity who wrote i can't think of a single idea or policy recommendation that emanate from the group that was of any lasting consequence. well that's -- that's very dispirited. what do you take away from that experience in we still hear calls for a marshal plan, for a major government intervention to uplift the black poor. what do you take away from the experience that began in the '60s and persists to this day? what lessons should we learn? >> well, first of all, the marshal plan is the favorite metaphor in terms of black leadership now, it's also the favorite metaphor for a lot of other things. but one of the things that i take away from it is the large programs, once you deal with a federal government, it has to go down to the local community.

the local community admin straits it. so up end up with the same problems which are the bureaucracy, the inefficiency, and the lack of accountability in terms of these programs. they all fit the same model. there are a lot of small programs that work, everyone has a favorite one. i think that the '60s in terms of the hope that occurred once over legal segregation was removed, i think was a bit of an illusion. remember in 1964 a few days after civil rights 64 passed which was public accommodation, you had race riots in major cities, new york, philadelphia, rochester and also towns in new jersey. after civil rights 65 had you watts occur. so there were a lot more issues and complexities. the framework for dealing with over illegal segregation would

become very, very different than what we have today and the problems surfaced immediately in the 1960s. that's a start of that. i also think that -- >> give us -- give us some specific -- is the lack of accountability in the bureaucracy? could something work if it were structured in a different way? is there anything that you look back on and say, yeah, that helped and we should learn from that? >> certainly some people were helped, as the previous panel indicated, whether it was pittsburgh or any other place, that there were some people who trick eled throu trickled through this. but i think we're always going to come back to the building blocks of society, and this predates education which are the family, community, and the religious organization. and they're seriously frayed within the black community. what i concentrate on in the book, and i think everybody in

here would agree with me, is how to move a mass of black america into the economic mainstream. you know, we have several categories of black, this is not just black america one monolith. there's black elite that success compelled in every aspect of life. and white america from even the early 19th century white psyche had room for a black elite. then have a middle class. one of the problems with the middle class is that it has a very fragile asset base. and i'd like to talk a lot later about the private sector because there needs to be a movement, major movement in terms of the private sector before the poverty, the underclass that we know, as well as the income and asset gap of the middle class. >> okay. so those are some things we want to leave on the table, especially the private sector which i think understands itself

to have been under tremendous pressure all those years so i'll be interested on how you want to expand on that. let me turn to dr. gooden, and this will be, i think, a little bit of a breath of fresh air considering the context that we've been involved insofar this morning. susan as been looking at three admittedly small programs that harken back to some of the values that jason riley was talking about earlier in the early 20th century and i would love for you, susan, to tell us about those programs. fug disclosure one of them is represented here and is going to be on display at the end of this program this morning. tell us about those programs, what you found they were accomplishing, and how you see their effectiveness. what do you trace it to?

>> well, thank you howard. first i'd like to thank the manhattan institute and it is a privilege to be part of this panel this morning, i just want to make one slight correction. in your introduction howard mentioned i'm the president of the american society of public administration, i'm actually the immediate past president so in case i get run out on a rail, i want to make sure the current president doesn't get the hate mail. i want to make sure it comes directly to me. just a little bit about the programs and as howard mentioned these were three very fascinate prague grams. there were two parts to the study. so we looked at three nonprofit organizations that are led by after fan americans. one is the mama foundation for the arts which is in harlem. the other is a new jersey orators in ellow wus, the expectative director is here now. and the third is the youth, which is outside of chicago, illinois, in glenwood. each of these programs had three areas of focus. so for the mama foundation was on the preservation of gospel

music and vocal talent. for the new jersey or rattors it was on speaking skills and performance. and for reclaim of youth it was more on general college preparation and life skills. and so we did, in year one, which was summer of 2015, we went out to all the -- all the high schools, the senior high schools in that area and we surveyed three groups of students. we surveyed those that had participated in one of the african-american led programs. we surveyed students that had not been in any of those programs. and then we surveyed students that he had been in some sort of afterschool program but not one of the three. and we looked at four dimensions. we looked at academic performance, deefient behavior, family and social support, and self-esteem and resiliency. and when we looked at these and

compared it over the four groups, there was 700 students included in total, we found that the first takeaway was being involved with something after school was certainly better than nothing at all. so we think there are two things going on there. one is the positive impact of doing the afterschool program, whether it's basketball or one of the african-american led programs, and also the protection against perhaps doing more negative things during that time. but we also found was that the african-american led programs outperformed the other programs. and these were a wide array of programs on a number of issues as well. particularly in terms of overall academic performance, and that was grades. and also in terms of just self-esteem and resiliency. so self-confidence, confidence in their ability, resiliency and ability to navigate conflict, they outperformed the other two groups. so then fast forward. this past spring the summer of 2017, so the students that grad

waited, a -- graduated. and really the kwe was where are they now. let's see where they are now. so we did follow-up phone interviews with all of the students had participated in the african-american led programs as many as we could get and we got about 79% of them altogether. and we found that close to 88% of them are attending college or have attended college in the past year. many of them are doing it in combination with work gnat compares with an attendance rate of about 40% overall, 35% to 40% overall. we also found that about three-quarters of them, or 72% rate thard experience with african-american led organization as very eekt fivtive and they cite the that as being effective in being able to navigate life. two things that we think associate with that. one is i think the promotion of

old-school values. think we've had some discussion of that as well. >> i got slow you down. you can't just drop that phrase and not explain it. >> yes. >> old school values. we've got a panel here called culture and family. what the heck is old school values? >> old school values say term that really references respect for others, respect for elders in the community, respect for self. it also represents being able to pull out the best in someone, that the best in someone is not predetermined by an s.a.t. score or their grade point average to date. but the idea that as long as there's a desire to learn and a desire do well, that with the appropriate amount of support, this student can excel. and so i think the closest term but it's not exactly that term is tough love, but i don't think that still doesn't quite capture it. because there's a sense of

compassion but there's also a sense of expectations and responsibility that go along with that. >> it sounds like what you're saying is that despite the hand ringing or notwithstanding the hand ringing about culture and family, that there is some residue of this upward mobility culture that we were hearing about as having been vanquished somehow by government. >> absolutely. i would say it's larger than residue. i think you will find this. i think this is one of the things. first of all, i think we saw throughout the programs that mentors in the program and leaders in the program are able to impart to you an ability to excel while being black from someone who has had that experience first hand. i think that's a very powerful thing that these programs are able to do. i think the students that are receiving of this information are getting it from very trusted sources. and i think that that is also one of the features or one of

the factors that makes it successful. >> excel while being black, that's a very powerful phrase. >> yes. so, you know, essentially, and i think this gets back to some of the points in the earlier panel, there have been successful african americans and remain successful african americans. i think what happens suspect that the narrative is dominated by those who are not as successful, by those who are struggling, and i think part of it is that success in the african american community largely becomes invisible. and i think one of the things that each these three programs does is it increases the visibility of african american success and they're able to convey that to the youth that are being served. >> visible for the students themselves? >> yes. and i should mention that the students -- the students served by the programs are not all african american, they're open to students of all races, but they are african-american led

and freeh predominantly they serve african-american youth. >> are these government supported in someway? >> they are not government-supported programs directly. some of them may vin formal ties to school systems and that sort of thing, but these are grassroots organizations. they're nonprofit organizations largely often times they're being supported by volunteers in the community. people who know the individuals and very much respect the individuals who are leading the programs and leading the training. and so just to sort of finish and answer the where are they now, in addition to them evaluating their programs as being effective, we're seeing that large numbers, again, close to 88% are enrolled in college. now, the not so great news is the amount of student debt that these students are reporting. and of course we know that this is an issue that's a national issue. over 52% had already taken out student loans exceeding $5,000

and 17.4% had taken out loans just in the first year between 20 and $29,000. >> that leads back to what gene was saying about the fragile nature of the african-american middle class and limited asset base one could say. but let me turn to dr. bradley and susan gooden talked about free programs, gospel for teens, reclaim a youth and at least two of those have links to the african-american church. i know new jersey started in a church basement, the mama foundation newspaper harlem they put on great shows, i recommend that you go hear them. gospel for teens is clearly putting forward a religious tradition explicitly and i suspect that the members of reclaim youth may know each other from church that wouldn't surprise me. dr. bradley, we have always heard about the black church as

the van guard of self-improvement, upward mobility, community cohesion. is it still that today? >> absolutely. and, again, thank you for having me. i'm delight and honored to be on the panel. the black church historically has provided people with two things mainly. one is hope, that in the midst of lives that are challenging and seemingly insurmountable, you can do it, right. so there's a lot of hope, a lot of encouragement. and secondly is a community where there is accountability and expectation. and whether you have hope and accountability, you often have success. the other -- the other contribution of the black church historically is the cultivation of the soft skills that make people successful in the marketplace. >> soft skills in church? you got help me here.

>> absolutely. issues like respect, respecting your elders, respect your employers, saying please, saying thank you. dressing well. i was born and raised in the black church and so when you are a child you see older men and you see well i need to be like them. they're successful, i need to do what they do, i need to dress like they do, i need to talk like they do, i need to model myself after them. so you have those sort of soft skills that are the, you know, real engine prov gress within the marketplace. you have a challenge, though, is there has to be some market opportunity, right. and so when you look at the reason there were riots in watts, the reason there were riots in detroit, is the economic opportunities had started to decline by the time weapon got to mid to late 1960. had you this great migration up to the north and the jobs have started to already disappear, right. and so with the great soft sales, with that's great programs, the family, the church, you also have to have

real economic opportunity where people can begin to see that they can make a difference in their community in terms of employment, that they can make things that the market needs. we also i think sometimes forget that the basis of family is employment and jobs. i'll give you a great example. the church i'm currently serving in harlem right now we have a lot of ex-offenders. this is what happened. when they come out, had they get a job, then they get married. then they want to take care of their children, then they actually want to plug in to the community because now they have employment. they're a part of the marketplace, they are a part of the community. so we have to have both of these things or you have to have the soft skills development, but you also have to have an economic and real market opportunities that often are undermined by all sorts of good, well-intended programs that remove the low-skill labor market from the

proximity where people need the jobs the most. >> tell me a little bit more about that. >> there's this term called spacial mismatch. i first learned about this from william wilson in the book -- but they live very far from the places that have those low-skilled job opportunities, right. so there's a mismatch socially. and i see this on the subway. if you take the subway in the morning here, there's a big difference between who's on at 5:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. 5:00 a.m. it's mostly black and hispanic men. at 9:00 a.m. it's middle class, people like me. and what's happening, you have -- you have these black men from the bronx and queens coming way out into the city for low-skill labor sorts of jobs. the professionals come in later.

so there's this -- there's this mismatch where the people that nee need the opportunities don't live near where the entry points are. if you look at philadelphia, detroit, d.c., where you have low-skill labor, economic depression, there aren't a lot of job opportunities. >> i thought maybe we were going to talk about minimum wage too? >> well, yeah, we could. but there's not even jobs that allow them to have a minimum wage job. i mean, if you go -- >> i was going to play it the other way. has the minimum wage removed the jobs from their immediate neighborhood? >> well, i mean, you have the minimum wage, you have osha regulations, you have all sorts of various entry in terms of small businesses. a few years ago i wrote this piece called let the husband letters hustle. and if you go into any black community, anywhere of color in the world you're going to find

people that are naturally entrepreneurial. and the question is why isn't that entrepreneurial spirit isn't given a place to cultivate and grow. >> we're not talking about criminal behavior. >> absolutely prt right. they see opportunity and they want to meet the real need. so there are lots of issues that actually undermine those economic opportunities for people, and that has to happen also with the context of virtue and moral and character formation as well. >> so we have an interesting issue on the table here empolice sitl -- implicitly. is it necessary to get jobs sore there something wrong with the economic marketplace which is not serving the poor. gene, with you are the first twoun raise the private sector as somehow problematic. why don't you expand on that. >> okay. let's start with the private sector. and one of the things -- studies that's very interesting now, we're talking about a different segment of the population.

we're talk big black college students and what they major in. georgetown study 40% of the college majors of black students are essentially community activists or social work, very low-paying jobs. the next category in terms of finance or engineering or s.t.e.m. or computer work is all clustered around 5% to 7%. these are college graduates all of a sudden baking in ann come gap. so you move down the scale in terms of where the pipeline is from high school to college. almost 60% of black students need remedial work. when you talk about specialized skills, for example, the united kneei negro fund had four categories, reading, english, math and science and they said, okay,

what category of black person was ready in three of those four categories? and there were only 10%. hiss panics w-- hispanics was 2 foir% and white at 50%. so you're moving down the line in terms of we know what the capabilities of -- in terms of the new york city school systems are in terms of math skills by the third to eighth grade. and, again, back into -- back into the family. what does the family mean? in terms of simplistic terms, we're talking about extra income, love a, attention and discipline. and what we're trying now, we're dumping those kids with the statistic being between 65 and 70% of all black children under 18 are raised in single parent homes. you're dumping those kids into the school system with these small programs and then trying

to supplement what is missing in the family. so the tough love part actually should be started much, much earlier. >> let me just jump in, gene, and say, okay, you're making two points. one is again returning to the family and the need for preparation, but let's go to that college majors point, right spot when people say private sector, i suspect they think you're going to go somewhere as followings. there needs to be more hiring, silicon valley doesn't represent enough african americans. the media, as we heard from the question before doesn't do a good enough job reaching out to the african american community. you're saying something else. >> absolutely. >> you're saying that the job skills that are available in the marketplace are not being chosen by african americans. now we have two african americans college professors here, so let's test that. >> i can make one more point? >> no, i'm going right to susan in the is tough love, man. >> well, first of all, i think this goes back to the point you

asked about earlier about what does it mean it excel while being black. i think part of it is realizing that -- and understanding that racism and structural racism is part of the reality in america and i think, you know, there are lots of evidence to suggest that. and so that's part of the status quo. when we look at majors, part of that is -- backs back to opportunity. so if you look at, for example, the offering of ap courses. so students who get into the most selective universities and are able to major in s.t.e.m. fields and the like often times have taken ap courses as part of that, as part of making them attractive to university "x" or "y." but if we look at that, on the offering of ap courses there are disproportionately fewer of them that are offered in majority minority schools, particularly

majority african american schools. when we look at that opportunity piece. so i think that's why we have to think about what is the role of individual responsibility, but then what is the role of structural opportunity that is afforded through the public sector. and even through the private sector. one of my favorite programs that i like to watch from time to time is this program called undercover bos boss, it comes on msnbc. think one of the things that happens there is that at the end of the show, i don't know how many people seen it but at the end of the show the ceo has established some sort of rapport with the frontline worker and says i'm going to give you $15,000 for college education of your child or to buy a home or whatever. so there's this recognition implicit in that that there's some sort of recognition that just doing this job that you're able to do and that you're showing up for and that you're doing day in and day out is not going to in and of itself get you to where you need to be, otherwise there wouldn't be this allocation of resources. but what's happened is that empa thip has taken place as part of

that. and i think one of the things that's really missing in american society today is that we have lost that ability to empathize. and i think came up on the preceding panel when mark made the -- talked about on the cable news network it's cheaper to have people talking at each other rather than having people going out to communities and learning about each other. and i think once we can restore empathy, i think that goes a long way to fostering wanting to have the best for human zbliend aga -- kind. >> again, we see in your remarks the preparation for the marketplace with a sense of opportunity denied by the powers that are be, if you will. what do you see at kings college here in new york? do you see that choice of majors or prospects in life as being the reflection of opportunity denied or bad choices? >> right.

it's actually, in my experience as a professor, neither of those things. it has more to do with exposure. here's what i mean. i was just having that conversation with an african-american student last night after i gave an exam about her career. she's a senior. >> what course was this? >> this was a course called christianity in society, it's a course on christian social thought in the west. and we were simply talking about her future. and what i was doing for her was giving her suggestions and expanding her imagination for what she could do. her imagination was law school, right. and i said, well what about this and this and that and this and this? and she had never -- i mean, those sorts of opportunities -- >> what were some of the this and thats? >> start a business, right? be a job creator. why don't you go and not simply work for an office, start your

own. be preernial. she has fantastic gifts. this to me is the elephant in the room is that the black middling class left. and when the black middle class left urban america, they took with them the moral vocational imagination for what you could do. right? so, for example, in the black church you've always had black doctors and lawyers and engineers and scientists and things like that. but what happened? when the black middle class left, sort of black flight we don't talk too much about, when all the professionals left and moved to the suburbs, which haent wasn wasn't a bad thing. i was a beneficiary of that when my own parents moved from the inner city of atlanta out into the suburbs of atlanta, they took all of their professional values, those soft skills, those virtues with them and what was left in the inner city atlanta

was people for whom their frame of reference was limited spot in the black church had you this. had you kids who would grow up and see a black doctor, lawyer, engineer and say but one day i could do that, right? and they had an entire community who would then invest in this child to make sure that he or she could get there. a lot of that's been lost. so what we've done, we've then -- now we've relied on some government institutions to try to provide a surrogate context for those sorts of things, right? >> right. >> we've created a lot of nonprofits to create a surrogate opportunity for some of those things, but that's what the black church has always done is provided that. and i had a fantastic opportunity to mentor this man who was -- i absolutely headed to prison. what'd you i do? i took him, put him under my wing. i took him to my family's house

in atlanta. we drove around atlanta. i said african americans live here and his eyes popped out of his head. and just him seeing something different just changed his imagination. he didn't need a program. he didn't need a grant. he didn't need any of those. he just needed to see something different and it changed his whole vision of how he wanted to live as a black man and those are the sorts of opportunities we need to -- we also need to infuse. more imagination, right. programming alone, in my opinion, doesn't do that. it really takes that personal one on one contact to infuse a sense of i believe in you and here are some of your options and then to push people in some of those directions. >> you talked about excelling while being black and saw it linked to the programs. if we did think there was a

spark in the kinds prov graof g that you studied, well they're just tiny, they're only helping a few hundred kids. we should be te pressed about that because they're so small. how should we think? i wonder how all the panelists think about this. if we're talking about changing norms, which is the hardest thing to change, much easier to cut a check, hard to change norms, how do we get it -- there's always this talk about getting it to scale. should we worry about that? how do you think about it? how's everybody think about it? >> well, i think, first of all, i think we have to avoid setting up sort of false dichotomies. i think it is -- i completely agree that it is often times when we look and ask individuals who have been successful perhaps coming out of very difficult environments they will sometimes mention a teacher, a program, a

family member, someone who has invested in them. and i think that can come from -- it is can come from a relative, it can come from a program, a school system, wherever it comes from i think it's great and we need more of it. i don't think we want to close off one avenue and say it only can come from the family or it only can come from the government or it can only come from a nonprofit organization. we want it to come from all of these and we want it to be mutually reinforce. because there's certainly sufficient work to be done in that regard. in terms of scaling out, i've been a bit skeptical of that, this program works how do we take it to scale and replicate it? because i think often times these are built on relationships and a lot of those relationships are community and contextually based. i know we spent a lot of time on this panel talking about urban african americans. my background happens to be a grew up in a very rural area in

a rural community. >> where it was? >> bassett, virginia, so very small area outside of martinsville, virginia, outside of roanoke, virginia. >> and check out her grandfather's cd of rural blues virginia. >> that's right. country roots rural revived. so i think that looking at -- thinking about these are only urban issues. again, i don't know that a mod thael works in an urban community is going to work in a rural community. i don't think we should be on the chase for a miracle silver bullet. i think we should be looking for what is going to work in this context and how do we get more of that success rather than trying to say let's find a one size fits all. >> and that gets me to gene. in your book you have a wonderful -- i almost want to call it a pair -- parable in

rural mississippi. this didn't work out too well but you found a mixed message in it that i think you feel applies today. >> yeah. in terms of mount bayou, it was probably the most important all-black community in america. -- mentioned among the philanthropists today, but it was very, very key. it was a black community about 20 miles from where i grew up and i've done studies there, have had kids through fellowship programs, research programs there, et cetera. it was started as a cotton community, and it thrived for a little while, but the -- we always get back to economics, the roller coaster economic world of cotton basically destroyed it because there's no way to a self-contained, self-sufficient ethnic economy within -- within the mainstream.

it has to be integrated, we have to get back in terms of the integration and the assimilation is possible. in terms of mount buayou, it wa crushed. when the prices of cotton went down there was no infrastructure around it to compete to support it. mount bayou becomes for me the example of the impossibility of a self-sufficient economic -- economic community. one of the things -- >> but there's that beautiful picture of the stepping stones. >> oh, i should have brought. >> so there was -- what we're talking about scale, it attorneys out mount bayou, you can't scale, you can't have mississippi become a black economy state. but you found a kernel in there that maybe can be scaled, and i'll get back to that issue when i talk to you about bradley. >> this is getting back to the previous panel in terms of do you have to start with an

integrated school system at the beginning. and i agree, the real core question is where does the skill set come from? where does the knowledge come from, where does the apple bition co -- ambition come from. and at a certain point the black student has to be exposed to the white student and the white stud debt has to be exposed to the black student. the ideal place for this obviously is the university. there's no residential segregation involved or busing involved. i think that -- what concerns me in terms of where we are today is the separatism on campus, the ability to interact one on one, person to person, disagreement, discussion about core topics that even aren't race related. could be economics, could be historical aspects, et cetera. i think that's gone. we're using institutional crutches now in terms of circumventing the frank discussion. could be the government.

it could be a group identity. it could be an interventionist organization that gets involved. we need to have more one on one discussions in terms of those people. and university is the proper place. even when you move into a corporation, this funnel in terms of the black -- the black race role is very destructive in terms of even at a corporation to be put in the diversity section. you need to be discussing what is important with -- in terms of making that corporation or your business successful as opposed to the ancillary issues. i think we're a little bit behind in that. when we talk about racism, i think we should basically start defining what it could be. it could be a slur, it could be discrimination, it could be violence, and it could be exclusion. we can't yours the term racism as an umbrella topic anymore. >> right spot let me just push back a little bit on

dr. bradley. it was kind of a friendly disagreement here, right, where susan is saying you can't just look to one on one because that isn't going to do it. and then we get to the issue of how you change norms. is one on one, if everybody did something and took the ex-offender on the tour of what part of atlanta was it? >> southwest atlanta, cascade area. >> right. and said, whoa, this is really great, but that doesn't sound scaleable, right. so how do you think about this changing of norms toward ambition toward the kind of things that you're doing with your student that you were talking about? >> it sully is saleable, it just doesn't need to be in a program. we don't need to programize it, we also don't need to federalize it. what happened to the idea of actually caring about your neighbor and actually wanting your neighbor to thrive and flourish and succeed. maybe what needs to be scaled is

us caring about other people other than ourselves, maybe that's the core problem and maybe there's too much narcissism and too much individualism and too much consumerism and materialism. maybe those are the reasons we don't really care about our neighbors anymore. what we need, i would argue, are more local solutions. we need people who know their own issues and their own communities who built partnerships with people who have solutions to those issues. and, to let local communities do that on their own terms and leave them alone. they don't need someone to pa parachute in from d.c. or from their state house to sort of direct the program but to let local people lead local solutions, because that's the context where people are actually known, where real needs are actually met, and they're met effectively and they're met effectively in the long run because the best information about that area is being met by

the people who know the area the best. part of our problem, i would argue, is that we actually don't encourage sort of local imagination for local solutions. and so we need more small programs. >> see, now that's a really fascinating kind of sumo remark, i think, because the disappointment that we began this discussion with about the federal programs, the green shoots of hope that susan brought to our attention, now we circle back and you're telling us that the federal programs may actually have suffocated the local imagination, to use your term. but in terms of caring for our neighbors, i guess you really do teach western christian thought, right? >> yes, right. there's a lot of competition and we want local communities to be empowered to take ownership of the issues and problems in their own communities and not simply be dependent on a federal

solution matetism. >> we-- matrix. >> we're going to have an inspiring q&a session. shoot, yes, the young woman right in the middle there, wait for the microphone, tell us who he are and tell us who you want to direct your question to. >> hi, i'm rachel adkins i'm an graduate student here in the city. i guess whoever would like to take the question is fine. as i'm listening, one of the things that keeps ringing in my ear is something that i think one of my professors would probably want to maybe rebut, i guess, for lack of a better word. and a lot of his work he looks at comparings with black and white families or individuals who have the same level of education, who have the same family structure, et cetera, et cetera, so a lot of these variables that you've been talking about and still seeing large disparities and outcomes

particularly in wealth to mr. dattel's point about the fragile litty of assets in the black middle class. so my question to you is if not structural issues then what when we've already accounted for people who have two parents at home and have, you know, college educated parents or they themselves are college educate and we're still seeing these huge multiples of differences between their outcomes in especially wealth? >> huge say very keep phrase there. gene have that -- >> a great day to back that up. that is if you work hard and live by the rules, if you will, as bill clinton once put it, you're still likely to have a big gap there. >> i think it's a great question and i think that one of the things in the black community that i've noticed, this is historically based, is the

deimfa sis dei deemphasis in the category that i mentioned. the higher paying jobs were not looked at carefully within the black community. there's a real dichotomy here in terms of what i call the occupational shift that has not occurred within the black community. part of it is this -- it's not a demon nyzatio demonetization, but it's a clear lack of interest. >> well, that's a very powerful reply and i is suspect your professor would want to take strong issue with that. but so be it. okay. other questions? yes, in the back, the gentleman, yeah, wait for the microphone and tell us who you are. >> jesse russell and i'm actually from nashville, tennessee. many of you probably refer to this as segregation, but i tend to refer to it as educational

red lining that i went through during my formative years in tennessee. what i mean by that, as you grew through the educational system, i found it interesting that the previous panel did not address the competitiveness of america based on the need for the transformation of our educational system. and that what i experienced and i'll get to the question in a minute. what i experienced during that time was the red lining educational red lining that was taking place was that we were trained to go after getting a job by going through high school, going to college and getting a job versus going through high school, college, and creating a job. and that it -- i didn't understand that because i wanted to be a researcher, technology and research. but in nashville, tennessee, nobody really did that. research center was located up in new jersey, which was called bell laboratories, which i

learned about through college professors from stanford. but i couldn't get to new jersey because i was living in tennessee. and the educational system was directing me to manufacturing and things like that that was in tennessee. so i just -- the question that i would raise is this educational transformation with the cultural impact that this panel is talking about, i wonder if you guys would respond to how do we deal with american competitiveness given the educational system the way the culture iss culture is set up here. something needs to change, otherwise we will continue to lose the strong what i would call technological edge that we've had in the united states to compete. >> well, that circles us back to gene's point about college majors. and we have, again, two university faculty members. this is a conventional wisdom that we're falling behind, we're

not competitive and our institutions of higher learning are not doing enough. from within academia, how do you see that, susan? >> so i think one of the main issues is that as a society we're satisfied with leaving too much untapped talent on the table. and i think that's a fundamental problem that we see structurally from day one. so there's a young man, a cousin of my husband's that we became his legal guardians about three years ago. he grew up in one of the worst how's projects in the city of richmond. and so, you know, now easy in our home, he's still in public schools but in a much better public school system. what is going to be his story five or six years from now hopefully when he goes off to college and suspect successful? i don't know that he's going to come back and say it was because of cousin susan and bays he will took me into their home? maybe he will. or is it because i just went

into a school system which in which i was supported? it's going to be difficult to disentangle and i don't think it's necessarily helpful to disentangle was it a different public sector, it was a different home sfliernt how did a all of these things make an impact. what i think happens, regardless of how it happened, we have untapped talent or talent that may have otherwise gone unrecognized that now hopefully is on a path to which he is going to be able to become a very successful young man not just for his own self, but also for society at large. and i think when we -- when we start thinking about that, whether we're looking at private schools, public schools, homes, think we just all as humans have to say we want to maximize the talent that is before us and the youth that's before us and how can we best do that? and if we all get on board with doing that, then i think churches will do their part,

schools will do their part, leaders will do their part, business and industry doll their pa -- will do their part in terms of hiring practices. with you we can't say it's this or that, it's who you can we -- there's so much work do why do we want to close off any avenue to get us there. >> there's a great question that we need something grand. the problem is so big we need the big grand solution. and it gets me back to dr. bradley who said we need local imagination. are you willing to resist the grand solution? >> i am in part because i haven't seen a grand solution work out too well in the long term. this is a fantastic question. we have a lot of untapped talent that i often get herded into things that typically underperform in the marketplace, right. >> that's gene's point too. >> so for example. >> referee: walk around the city and i'll meet a teenager what

doh you goont to college? yeah, yeah. what do you want to major in? criminal justice. why? why would you want to major in n that? there's so many other things, so many wonderful things in the liberal arts. why would you major? literature? major in something that unlocks your imagination for the needs of the marketplace and then go meet that. why don't you major in something beyond what you've heard? but it takes someone actually giving them a larger menu. this is why, you know, some of the magnet high schools are terrible places. they kind of herd minority kids into the arts and music and performing as if it's 1940 and that's what we do, perform for people. so we have these schools where they dance and sing. but we don't have very robust liberal arts educations that expose students to the sorts of things that -- that sort of allowed the people in this room to succeed and flourish in the marketplace. so, we -- we have to give people

more options and more exposure so their minds are actually stirred up to want to do things beyond what they've seen in their immediate context, and that takes the sorts of relationships that you talked about, new friendships, going to take some programming. but those things are going to be local. again, i'm going to go back to this. actually going to take people like us who have the success and the resources to personally put ourselves in front of people and give them that imagination. >> and in some ways, you've summed it all up. the untapped potential that we're reaching for, culture, family, the right majors. the right aspirations. love and empathy. a lot of constructive responses to a very difficult problem. please join me in thanking our panel.

if everyone could be seated, we keep things going here. hi, i'm jason riley of the manhattan institute and i just wanted to introduce our keynote speaker today. ben carson did not need to become the u.s. secretary of housing and urban development to distinguish himself in life. before he took this job, he'd already become a world famous pediatric neurosurgeon. he'd already made medical history by separating twins joined at the head. he'd already been the head of

neurosurgery at johns hopkins hospital. at one point, performing some 500 surgeries a year. which is twice the case load of a typical neurosurgeon. he'd already been awarded the presidential medal of freedom. he'd already established an education scholarship fund for low-income kids. he'd already been a best-selling author. he'd already had a movie made about his life. not bad for a black inner city kid raised in poverty in the 1950s and '60s, i'd say. i became a journalist because it's really all i could do. dr. carson clearly had many other options in life, and i want to thank him for opting to join us today. so, dr. carson. >> thank you very much.

well, thank you, and good morning. it's a real pleasure to be here with you. and i'd like to thank your president and all the talented men and women who work at the manhattan institute. the panelists and the moderators for tackling such an important topic today. and all of you for braving the cold weather and the threats of terrorism. you know, it will take a lot more than a failed bombing to discourage new yorkers. in his 1964 address to graduates of the university of michigan, where i went to medical school, lyndon johnson said, "we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society but upward to the great society. the great society rests on

abundance and liberty for all. it demands an end to poverty and racial injustice to which we are totally committed in our time." those were good sentiments and a grand vision. the question we face today is whether the federal government has succeeded. in making this vision a reality. and what it means to families seeking -- families seeking a good life today. as president johnson created the programs which would ultimately form a welfare industrial complex, daniel patrick moinahan was being raked over the coals for his dire warnings about the future of the black family. his famous report warned that the precarious economic situation of black men in

america could become a national crisis. with social and cultural fallout affecting families for generations. you know, many have heard it said that the black male in america is an endangered species. why do people say that? because in many communities, there are more black males incarcerated than there are in college. because in many of our major cities, the number one cause of death for young black males is homicide. and evyou know, anybody who kno anything about education knows that young black male students, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, they're good students like everyone else. what happens? that peer pressure begins to kick in. they begin to study american history. they notice there's nobody in their textbook who looks like them who really contributed much

to making america great. maybe next year when i take world history. same thing. where do i fit in? what did my ancestors do? and then they come home and turn the tv on. oh. there we are. playing basketball. baseball. football. rapping in those baggy pants, acting a fool on sitcom. you begin to get a very different impression of who you are and what success constitutes. for you. and you think you're going to be the next michael jordan or the next puffy daddy or whatever. but you know, doesn't take long before that doesn't pan out. next thing you know, you're looking at television, 6:00 news, and you see a young man being led away in handcuffs on, trying to shield his face from the cameras, having committed some heinous crime and you say, that's little johnny.

what happened? he was such a good boy. same happens -- same thing happens to little johnnys across this nation every single day. and it didn't have to happen. because anybody could have taken that young man by the hand when he was six years old and walked down the streets of manhattan and given him a black history lesson he would have never forgotten. they could have started by pointing to his shoes. saying, you know, it was a black man who invented the automatic shoe lasting machine, which revolutionized the shoe industry throughout the world. and you step on that clean street and you tell him it was charles brooks, a black man, who invented the street sweeper. and down the street comes a big refrigerated truck and it was a black man who invented a refrigeration system. and it comes to a stop at the red light and it was a black man who invented the traffic signal and you can tell him that he also invented the gas mask,

saved lots of lives during the war. and while you're talking about the war, a black woman who invented the underwater canon and you'll see a beautiful black woman walking down the street. a black man did not invent her, but you can use that opportunity to talk about madam c.j. walker, a black woman who invented cosmetic products for women of dark complexion and was the first woman of any ethnicity to become a millionairess on her own efforts in the united states of america. and you walk by the hospital, and you talk about daniel williams, the first successful open heart surgery, had an operative mortality rate less than 1.5% and you look up at the surgical light. thomas edison, you didn't know he was black, did you? well, he wasn't, but his right-hand man, lewis lattimer, invented the filament that made

the lightbulb work for more than two or three days. invented the electric lamp. diagrammed the telephone for alexander graham bell. you know, most people have never even heard of him. you walk past the railroad tracks, andrew beard invented the automatic railroad coupler, spurred on the industrial revolution. elijah mccoy, the automatic lubrication system for locomotive trains. in fact, mccoy had so many inventions, when something new would come out in the industrial realm, people would say, is that a mccoy? is that the real mccoy? you got racist people like david duke talking about the real mccoy, don't even know who they're paying homage to. and i'm just barely scratching the surface. so you can see that young man had no reason not to believe that his ancestors played an important role in the development of this country. and you know, there's been so

much self-hatred promoted amongst black people. and you're going to be in for a real treat when i get finished. you're going to hear a young man say a poem, lord, why did you make me black. it's going to really summarize those sentiments very well. well, you know, many people weren't interested in hearing about all the things that i just talked about, unfortunately. and lyndon johnson's time or even now. but what daniel patrick moynahan has certainly been validated by history. in 1965, more than 75% of african-american children were born to married mothers. that was good. and now, 50 years later, think about it, in 2015, more than 70% of african-american babies were born out of wedlock.

after a half a century and $22 trillion, that massive percentage is flip on its head. this is one of the most tragic statistics in america. it represents so much unrealized human potential, so many families deprived of the educational, moral, and psychological benefits of having a mother and a father. and it leads to a lot of poverty. you know, the brookings institute, many of you may be familiar with, did a study on poverty, a national study, and they concluded that there were three things that a person could do that would reduce their risk of living in poverty to 2% orless. three things. number one, graduate from high school. number two, get marriedment.

number three, wait until you're married to have children. those three things, less than a 2% chance of living in poverty. we should be thinking about those things when we make our policies. it's not to say that single mothers can't be successful. you know, i saw my own mother, by herself, work two to three jobs at a time to make sure that her sons would have a better opportunity than she did. and she would always say to us, you know, there are two roads that you can take. you can take the road where you sit and spend all your time complaining and concentrating about unfairness and prejudice, or you can take the road of opportunity. and you can put your energy in there. and i think she was right, because one of her sons became a

neurosurgeon, and the other one became a rocket scientist. so, i think she may have been on to something. she succeeded against long odds, odds that many families, through no fault of their own, can't beat. this trend is one of many indications that we must rethink the great society. how it can be achieved, whom it benefits, and which institutions are best equipped to fulfill its promise. there are indications that some policies like the so-called man in the house rule for welfare were directly harmful to societal stability. according to roland warren, the former president of the national fatherhood initiative, there are system in place, well meaning as they may be, that incentivize people to make choices that

ultimately do not strengthen the black family. it also didn't help that the war on poverty sometimes conflicted with the war on drugs, which often dealt harshly with nonviolent offenders, taking men away from their families and disproportionately affecting minority communities. and of course there's the issue of dependency itself that our national safety net became a net trapping millions of americans from rising above it. but many researchers point out that other factors, like the sexual revolution, changing social norms, the lack of jobs, have had a far greater impact on families, poverty, and crime than any one governmental policy. which is precisely the point. more harmful than any single government program has been the presumption that the federal

government could manage affairs of human nature in the first place. it was not capable of replacing the institutions which used to nurture and guide americans in their social activities and improvement, like local government, churches, fraternal organizations, and families themselves. these were the scalpels and sutures of civil society. but lyndon johnson's great society brought a sledge hammer to neurosurgery. to a delicate process. of course, countless americans have been saved from hunger, homelessness, sickness, and extreme deprivation by federal programs. material poverty has declined as standards of living, even those who need help, have risen

tremendously. our nation deserves to be proud of such accomplishments. right now, millions of men and women depend on the federal agency that i lead, the department of housing and urban development, for access to safe, affordable housing across the country. government efforts have unquestionably helped many people survive, but as we see from the state of families, generational poverty, and a continuing need for assistance, our efforts have not been sufficient. to let people thrive. and it's vital that our people thrive. we have 330 million people in this country. sounds like a lot. but it's a quarter of what china has, a quarter of what india has, and we have to compete with them in the future, which means we need all of our people to thrive. we need to develop all of our people or by sheer numbers, we will not be able to compete into

the future. it is not charity to pull the rug out from under americans who depend on the programs of the great society. but it is equally uncharitable to pretend that they have flourished under them. so, what do we do? fortunately, we have an answer, which has awaited rediscovery for 50 years in the same speech that lyndon johnson gave at michigan, he said the following. "the solution to these problems does not rest on a massive program in washington, nor can it rely solely on the strained resources of local authority. they require us to create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism between the national capital and the leaders of local communities." that's what he said 50 years ago. the new model. nothing new under the sun, because that's what we're talking about today, but now we need to enact it.

it applies just as clearly to our current times. the path forward is to return to a cooperative model for social improvement, which promotes local solutions, private enterprise, and the initiative of americans in their own communities, public, private partnerships. we must recognize that a strong economy, strong family, strong values are the key to permanently defeating poverty and that these conditions are fostered primarily by americans themselves in their voluntary associations rather than the federal government. we should, we must continue to do our duty for those who have come to depend on public assistance in many forms, while refocusing this assistance to lead our countrymen back to self-sufficiency and self-determination. we will know we've succeeded when fewer americans need our

service. it will mean something different in every government agency, from more school choice in the department of education to unleashing free enterprise in the department of labor. at h.u.d., it means expanding job training and employment opportunities for those in low-income housing, and in areas where affordable housing is being constructed, it means we need to empower section 3, which said if you're getting h.u.d. money, you need to hire local, low-income people. you need to train them. you need to give them contracts. it's been on the books for 49 years. hardly ever used because people say there is a gap, a skills gap. these people don't know how to weld. they don't know how to lay brick. they don't know cement work. but guess what? we have a brain with frontal lobes, with the ability to think ahead, which means we know a year, two, three ahead of time that we're going to do that, why

not train the people then and have a workforce with skills that will allow them to escape poverty. we can do that. we're focusing on that now. it means founding in vision centers across the country which leverage private sector investment and provide education, training, and counseling to young people climbing upward. and vision centers will become hubs for mentorship, because many studies have shown that low-income children who are mentored finish high school at a much higher rate than those who are not. put people in contact with child care facilities so that those young women who interrupted their education can get their g.e.d. and their associates degree and their bachelor's degree and become self-sufficient, but more importantly, teach that to their children so we can break the ever-growing cycle of dependency. it means providing local health care so that people don't use emergency rooms that cost five times more and don't provide appropriate care so you end up

with all these stage iv diseases that don't need to be there. it means exposing the children to the myriad of jobs, careers, that they'd never heard of that many of them would be so good at. by helping americans in diverse areas of their lives, we can start to fully and permanently raise families from poverty by engaging communities and private enterprise to help families build their own futures, giving them ownership of their futures is the first step towards self-sufficiency that we desire for all americans. envision centers are going to be there to help them at every step, not with big government programs but locally grown and driven solutions. it means reforming fha policies and other forms of government assistance to provide a path to responsible home ownership to as

many americans as possible. this cornerstone of the american dream is a major step to independence and equity passed down through generations. and it's important to note that renters, in general, have a net worth of about $5,000. homeowners, about $200,000. it's a 40-fold difference. we need to concentrate on getting people out of a rental situation, but it has to be done responsibly. because the last time it was not done responsibly, and it doesn't do anybody any good to put them in a home they can't afford. they lose their home, their credit, and their future opportunities. we're looking at responsible ways of being able to do that. it means embracing the president's executive orders to reduce regulatory burden on americans and their businesses, especially those providing jobs and housing to fellow citizens. i can't presume to speak for my fellow secretaries, nor members of congress, but i believe this is the way forward.

not just for black americans but for all americans. when we realize our opportunities and our limitations, when we empower our countrymen to determine their own futures, when we preserve a culture where family, faith, and friendship flourish, and they preserve us in turn, when we ignore the purveyors of division and hatred, and recognize that no divided society can flourish for long, as has been proven by history, and when we recognize that we have a choice in what kind of people we're going to be. are we going to allow ourselves to hate each other because we may have a difference of opinion? or do we choose to sit down with each other and openly communicate and resolve our

issues? that's going to determine whether, indeed, we have a great society. thank you. >> thank you for those remarks, dr. carson. we have a few minutes to open it up to questions to the audience, but i thought i'd start things out. you mentioned there at the end about settling our differences with one another as a society. it's no secret that race relations are pretty frayed right now in this country. how bad do you think things are? and what do you think can be done about it from the perspective of, you know, someone who runs a department of housing and urban development, dealing with housing issues,

dealing with poverty issues and to the extent that that is contributing to the problem. >> well, that's a very good question. you know, what we've seen in recent years is, you know, wedges being driven in our society with reference to race, religion, income, gender, you name it, wedges are being driven. and as i've traveled around the country, i've been to all 50 states, i can tell you that the vast majority of the american people are decent people. quite willing to extend a helping hand to their neighbor. quite willing to sit down and have a discussion. but we have, unfortunately, rabble-rousers. we have those who are trying to convince us that we're enemies with each other. and what we have to do instead is concentrate on what draws us together, not what brings us apart.

any two people are going to have differences. you can take those differences and you can magnify them, or you can look at the things that you have in common. you know, i love the movie "independence day." with will smith. you know, these aliens were coming down. all of a sudden, the palestinians and the jews were best buddies, you know? but you know, the fact of the matter is, we have a lot more in common than we have that separates us, and that's what we're going to have to concentrate on. at the department of housing and urban development, i think rather than talking about a lot of things, we need to show people. we need to show people that we care, so we're creating programs that actually empower people, trying to use the same monies, for instance, to create an escrow that's associated with

each housing unit. and all the routine care for that unit will come from that escrow. so, if there are always holes poked in the screen and holes in the wall and you have to call for it to be fixed, it's coming out of that escrow. but if it isn't, it continues to grow, month over month, year over year. all of a sudden, you start thinking like a homeowner. your toilet's running. i'm not calling the pha. i'm lifting the lid and i'm going to see if i can fix it because i'm saving money. and if you leave public assistance within five to ten years, you get the money for a down payment, because that has been the barrier. a lot of people work very hard, but there's no way they're going to save that. but it also teaches them to think like a homeowner. it teaches them to think a year ahead, five years ahead, ten years ahead, which is how successful people think. they don't think week to week. >> do you think that this racial anxiety is a function of the economic anxiety that americans

have been experiencing in recent years? >> absolutely. you know, economic tension is the source of great dysfunction in anything. you look at marriages. you know, two biggest reasons that marriages break up, economic tension and, you know, other matters. >> you're a government official who's long expressed skepticism of the government and government programs, and feeling that they can play a somewhat limited role in helping people. so, how do you strike that balance at h.u.d. between what the government can do and what people need to do for themselves? >> well, i'm not against the concept of government. i'm against the concept of overriding government. government that tries to interfere with everything that

we do. that was not how this -- this nation was created. it was created differently. and it worked extraordinarily well. and we went from nowhere to the pinnacle of the world in record time. but then we started thinking that the government is there to solve all of our personal problems. and that's what i don't like, the bureaucratic government. i don't like bureaucracy. bureaucrats are people who think the rules are more important than the goals. and so we're in the process of changing that at h.u.d. and i think it's changing throughout our government. government can be wonderful. but you know, when we look at some of our desperate neighborhoods, when the government can come in and provide the kind of confidence and the kind of foundation that then allows the local government, charities, nonprofits, the faith community to get involved, i've seen it happen in several communities

around this country, you create a thriving neighborhood, something that's wonderful that then draws other businesses in. this is the way it needs to be done. it's a new paradigm, and instead of the government riding in on the white horse with a bucket of money and saying, build this for these people, we have a government coming in and facilitating a relationship of all the involved parties which remains a permanent relationship and provides for sustainment. >> okay. why don't we open it up for a few questions. in the back there. >> thank you very much. i'm francis, manhattan contrarian. so here we are in manhattan where we have 50,000 units of low-income housing, subsidized by h.u.d., 150,000 people live in them. government -- if you measure their value by the value of the place across the street, it's a subsidy per family of $50,000 to $100,000 per year, per family,

and they are all still in poverty and will be for life. what's the plan to get out of this? >> well, thank you. that's one of the reasons that we have the envision centers. you know, in the bible, there's a verse that says, without a vision, the people perish. so, what we've been doing over the last many decades is just throwing money at the problem and not providing a vision. what we want to do is show people what they can do, connect people with opportunities, and right now, we have, right next door to each other, people who need things, people who have opportunities, but they don't know about each other. the envision center app will make it possible to connect those people together and bring the private resources that we need together. and also, helping people to be able to help themselves. we're going to start this

program called time banking where if you have a specific talent -- you may not have a lot of money, but you know how to do something. there's somebody else who doesn't have a lot of money, but they know how to do something. how do we trade those things so that we get things done, we develop relationships, and we improve the environment? these are all things that we're imminently capable of doing, and i'm looking and have already been extremely gratified by the number of people who have been willing to help us as we try to change the paradigm. this country is full of good-hearted people. we're not the people that they portray on the news. that's not who we are. and we just need to rise above that. and i think we'll solve these problems quite effectively or very -- i've already seen it starting to happen.

>> thank you, dr. carson. i was just wondering how you compare the challenges of your present job with separating siamese twins. >> well, i can tell you, pediatric neurosurgery was more difficult. because you were always juggling multiple people's lives, several things going on. but what we're doing now impacts more lives. it's -- it's every bit as important. and i learned a lot of things during my medical career. and one of them was, no matter how talented you are, you're not going to get anything accomplished without a bunch of other people working with you. and you know, we've got a fantastic team at h.u.d. now. people who are truly dedicated to what we're trying to do, and that is to get people out of poverty. and we're measuring success now not how many people we can get

into public housing but how many people we can get out of it. >> right here in the middle. >> hi, i'm steve. the reagan administration, i was at h.u.d. as assistant secretary for policy development and research and we succeeded in getting the president to agree to do housing vouchers instead of building more public housing. what's going on today with housing vouchers and what may be going on in that area? >> well, you know, both programs have their pros and cons. and i like to give people a smorgasbord. i like people have to choices, because for some people, a voucher is perfect. they want to go to such and such place. they don't want to be here. other people, they want to be around the environment they're familiar with, where their family, where their friends

with. but what is important is when we do revamp or build places, particularly in inner cities and places of high poverty concentrations, that we do it the right way. we do it across silos. we do it with medical care in place so that your primary care is handled there. we do it with jobs and job training in place. we do it with food so we don't have food deserts and we don't have people gouging with food. and we provide various types of opportunities for people. we build a complete community, and i love the model where we use mixed income building. i think that works extraordinarily well. i've seen it working all over the country, and you know, people develop a great deal of pride in the place where they live, and because you have the local community with a vested interest and that place

thriving, its does not deteriorate like we see in public housing in the past. >> well, this raises a point we were discussing earlier about segregation and the complaint by some that america is re-segregating. do you see residential housing patterns that bother you? do you see too many blacks clustered together, neighborhoods that are too white? do you think it's the job of the government to sprinkle us around and make sure there's enough diversity out there? >> i think that's a place where the government overreaches. i think if you create the right kind of neighborhoods, like i've seen in several places in our country, and particularly when we do it as a mixed income neighborhood, that problem solves itself. >> i think we have time for one more question. in the back there. yes? straight back. yes. >> hi, dr. carson. i'm a big fan of yours.

i'm with generation opportunity. can you talk about in the new year, looking at what might be happening coming down the pike with regards to welfare reform, whether that's through medicaid reform or, you know, work requirements and things like that? can we expect any movement on that? and what can we do to support that? >> well, i can't give away any secrets because i might have to shoot you. no, but that's really going to be the next push after the tax bill. hopefully it gets passed. i think it's going to get passed. and you know, the interesting thing about the tax bill, people say it's for the rich, but i remind people, look at your 401(k). look at what's happened to it. not rich people. and one of the reasons that we've had the crisis recently is because for the last ten years, 401(k)s didn't do anything.

you've got people trying to retire and they don't have the money that they need. so when we create policies that work for everybody, it's extremely ameliorating to the circumstances of our country, and that's going to be the same principle that is followed with welfare reform. we're looking not to keep people comfortable in poverty but to give them a ladder out of poverty. but unlike self-sufficiency programs in the past, we're not looking to pull the ladder out from somebody as soon as they start climbing it. because other people are watching, and they say, i'm not even going to try. so we have to integrate all the knowledge that we've had over these years and do this in an intelligent way. i think we clearly have the resources, the will, and the compassion to solve these problems. thank you all very much. >> thank you.

i am -- i'm going to turn things back over to my colleague, howard, who's going to finish things up for us. thank you. >> thank you, jason. i think you're going to really enjoy this last part of our program. in 1985, a half dozen african-american professionals in somerset, new jersey, became concerned that the young men and women they knew in their community did not know how to present themselves for the job interviews for which they might otherwise be qualified. and they set about building a program that is now expanded throughout the state that involves hundreds of parents, hundreds of students. it's called the new jersey order. one of those founders is with us today. i hope you'll