Some find it strange and sinister that the Chinese, who are just 5 percent of the population of Indonesia own an estimated 80 percent of the capital of the country. But it is neither strange nor sinister.
The Chinese did not come in and take over the commerce and industry of Indonesia. The Chinese created most of that commerce and industry. It is no more strange that most of the capital in the country belongs to the Chinese than it is that most of the feathers in the world belong to birds. That is where feathers originate.
What is strange—and what may ultimately be sinister in its effects—is the blind dogma that any deviation from an even distribution of income, wealth, occupations or honors is both odd and a sign of something nefarious going on. In reality, such “disparate” statistics are common around the world and have been common in centuries past.
People from India once had a similar predominance in the businesses of much of East Africa—not because they took over these businesses but because they created them. So did the Jews in prewar Poland, the Germans in southern Brazil, the Ibos in northern Nigeria, the Italians in Buenos Aires, the Lebanese in West Africa…and on and on.
If we want to understand why the majority populations of these various places did not have the same entrepreneurship as these minorities, then we can talk about history and culture. But, if we are ignorant of such things, then we can at least avoid misleading everyone with romantic hogwash about “the dispossessed.”
President Suharto and his family have used the power of government to create lucrative monopolies for themselves, as well as raking off graft from legitimate businesses. But it is very doubtful that the president's heavy-handed military forces are letting the masses burn and loot the Suharto enterprises.
In short, those who caused the present economic crisis in Indonesia are suffering few, if any, consequences while those who built up much of this country are scapegoats being treated as if they had torn it down. Politics has a way of turning everything upside down.
The economic crisis in Indonesia was created by the government's austerity program, which was imposed by the International Monetary Fund as a condition for giving a multibillion-dollar bailout. These IMF officials are thousands of miles away from the riots, in Washington, D.C.
The ultimate beneficiaries of the bailout are the international financiers who put big bucks into risky investments in Indonesia, secure in the knowledge that IMF bureaucrats would bail them out if things turned bad.
Why is the IMF so generous with money supplied by American and other taxpayers? Precisely because it is other people's money—and because handing out that money allows the IMF to wield global power and impose their pet notions on governments that are desperate for the bailout.
When you see rioting in Indonesia, you are seeing your tax dollars at work.
You are also seeing what can happen when a corrupt president is above the law.
BLACKS AND BOOTSTRAPS
One of the things I have been falsely accused of many times over the years is advising blacks to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps. But you can look through the 21 books, dozens of articles and hundreds of newspaper columns I have written without finding any such statement. That is because I am not in the business of giving advice to individuals and groups, but rather in the business of discussing public policy and trying to show where one policy is better than another.
It is considered the height of callousness to tell blacks to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps. But the cold historical fact is that most blacks did lift themselves out of poverty by their own bootstraps—before their political rescuers arrived on the scene with civil rights legislation in the 1960s or affirmative action policies in the 1970s.
As of 1940, 87 percent of black families lived below the official poverty line. This fell to 47 percent by 1960, without any major federal legislation on civil rights and before the rise and expansion of the welfare state under the Great Society programs of President Lyndon Johnson.
This decline in the poverty rate among blacks continued during the 1960s, dropping from 47 percent to 30 percent. But even this continuation of a trend already begun long before cannot all be attributed automatically to the new government programs. Moreover, the first decade of affirmative action—the 1970s—ended with the poverty rate among black families at 29 percent. Even if that one percent decline was due to affirmative action, it was not much.
The fact that an entirely different picture has been cultivated and spread throughout the media cannot change the historical facts. What it can do—and has done—is make blacks look like passive recipients of government beneficence, causing many whites to wonder why blacks can't advance on their own, like other groups. Worse, it has convinced many blacks themselves that their economic progress depends on government programs in general and affirmative action in particular.
It is undoubtedly true that the careers of black “leaders,” politicians and community activists depend heavily on government programs. It is their ability to lobby for government goodies that keeps such people in business and in the limelight. It was the breakdown of restrictions on black voting in the South that caused a rapidly rising number of black elected officials.
Even today, it is the politicizing of racial hype that enables many black public figures to remain public figures and to extort money and concessions from private businesses by threatening to call them racists or organize boycotts if they don't pony up. There is no question that the 1960s marked the decisive upturn in opportunity for race hustlers.
At one time, the aspirations of black leaders and the well-being of the black population at large coincided, since both were striving to end Jim Crow laws and other racial barriers. But such coincidences do not last, either among blacks or among other racial or ethnic groups in the United States or in other countries.
“Leaders” have their own interests and agendas that they push, even when the effects on those for whom they claim to speak are detrimental. That is where we are today. Black leaders have a vested interest in black dependency—on them and on the government that they can try to influence.
Independent blacks who make it on their own are ignored as irrelevant or distracting. That is true not only of individuals, but also of institutions like all-black Dunbar High School in Washington, which for 85 years brought quality education to its students. Dunbar students exceeded national norms on IQ tests, years before the Supreme Court said that separate education was inherently unequal.
Dunbar was located within walking distance of the Supreme Court that essentially declared its existence impossible. Ironically, it was the political maneuvering following the historic desegregation decision of the High Court that ended Dunbar's long career as a quality institution and reduced it to just another failing ghetto school. But there are other quality black schools today—and they are still largely ignored today.
We have now reached the point where virtually everything that serves black “leaders”—dependency, grievance-hunting, racial hype and paranoia—are major disservices to the cause of advancing blacks, at a time when their opportunities have never been better.
“RACISM” IN WORD AND DEED
It has become all too common for some innocuous remark by a public figure to be seized upon and twisted to make it seem “racist,” setting off loud denunciations by those who are in the business of loud denunciations. Meanwhile, actions and policies that do very real and very lasting harm to racial and ethnic minorities not only pass unchallenged, but are often engaged in by politicians who enjoy overwhelming support from minority voters.
There was virtually no comment from black leaders or the media when recently published census data showed that the black population of San Francisco had declined 15 percent between the 1990 census and the 2000 census. In San Mateo County, on the adjoining peninsula, the decline was 20 percent. In once predominantly black East Palo Alto, blacks are now a minority.
All of these are places firmly under the control of liberal
Democrats, so no politically incorrect words are ever likely to be said about blacks in the communities from which they are being forced out. Yet any businessman whose hiring policies had such a “disparate impact” on minority employment would be liable to find himself hauled into court and charged with discrimination.
The point here is not to claim that the substantial reduction of the black population in the San Francisco Bay area is a result of racism. The point is that there is something happening whose net effect is to make it harder for blacks to live in places dominated by Democrats, who receive nine-tenths of their votes.
It is very doubtful that the policies which force blacks out of much of the San Francisco peninsula are racially motivated. The affluent liberal-left types who dominate the region would very likely accept a black family that wanted to buy a house costing half a million dollars and up, or rent an apartment at a couple of grand a month.
Even in the more precious high-end communities on the peninsula, a place could probably be found for those blacks who can afford to buy lots zoned for a minimum size of two acres and requiring room for four parking spaces on their property, in addition to whatever space is taken up by their swimming pools and stables for their horses. It is just that not many blacks are in the market for such housing.
While it is not necessary to charge racism, it is also not simply a happenstance that liberal Democrats are in control in California communities where sky-high housing prices have forced ordinary people—black or white—to move out. The political agenda of California's liberal Democrats has made housing unaffordable at the very time when their words constantly proclaim their desire for “affordable housing.”
There was a time, about 30 years ago, when California's housing prices were not very different from housing prices in the rest of the country. Then a combination of environmental extremists and other liberal-left types became dominant in the state's Democratic Party, leading to innumerable and ingenious restrictions on the building of housing.
That was the point at which coastal California's housing prices left planet Earth and soared into outer space. Now people of average incomes, of whatever race, have to move to communities farther inland to find homes or apartments they can pay for. Some have to move so far inland that you can even find a Republican in office now and then.
Housing is just one of the areas where the black vote goes overwhelmingly to politicians whose policies are harmful to blacks. Even more harmful in the long run are failing public schools in the ghettos, where much of the next generation has its hopes of advancement destroyed before they can even get off the ground.
No group is more in favor of vouchers than blacks—and no one is more opposed to vouchers than the Democrats, including the Congressional Black Caucus. This doesn't mean that Democrats are racist. It is just that they need the support of the teachers' unions, and they are not going to get it if they vote for vouchers, whereas they can count on the votes of blacks regardless.
Under these conditions, who should be surprised that Democrats are ready to sacrifice another generation of black youngsters for the greater good of the teachers' unions?
Urban Renewal, policies artificially forcing up the price of food and many job-destroying policies promoted by Democrats all work against blacks. But these are only deeds, while words seem to be supreme in politics.
SWEEPING SUCCESS UNDER THE RUG
Recently I was surprised to learn of a highly successful black architect whose career began back in the 1920s, and of a black engineer and inventor from even further back, in the 1870s. With all the attention being given to various blacks during “Black History Month” and other such celebrations, it seemed strange to me that so little attention had been paid to these two men.
There has also been a remarkable lack of interest in some academically outstanding black schools, despite much political hand-wringing over the problems of black education. Put bluntly, some kinds of success seem to be swept under the rug, while other minor figures are inflated for the sake of racial breast-beating.
Why?
Let us begin with Paul Williams, a black man who became an architect in southern California in the 1920s, despite warnings from others that there was no market for a black architect. Few of his own people had the money to hire an architect and whites would prefer to hire a white architect. The 1920s were, after all, one of the periods of the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and its spread outside the South. Racism was big.
Nevertheless, Paul Williams studied to become an architect. His first job offers were so meager that he agreed to become an office boy at an architectural firm—with no salary, working just to get experience. Yet, after he started working, the company decided to pay him after all. Obviously, he must have impressed somebody.
Over the decades that followed, Williams impressed many people. Wealthy white businessmen began having him design both their businesses and their homes. So did movie stars like Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, and Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. He also designed churches and other structures, and was part of the team of architects who designed the modernistic theme building at the Los Angeles International Airport.
An even more remarkable black man was Elijah McCoy, born in 1844, the son of escaped slaves. He lived in Canada but somehow made his way to Scotland, where he studied engineering. After returning to North America, McCoy invented a device which allowed machines to be oiled automatically while still running. Before, machinery either had to be shut down to be lubricated—which was costly in terms of lost production—or boys had to risk injury by oiling by hand while the machines were moving.
McCoy's invention was so successful that it had many imitators. None was as good, however, and buyers began to insist on getting “the real McCoy”—adding a new idiom to the language.
Why are these men much less celebrated than other blacks whose achievements were not as great?
What they did was an individual achievement and owed nothing to the civil rights movements or other political activity. More than that, they cast doubt on the whole vision of blacks as being held back solely by white racism and discrimination. Both men encountered prejudice and discrimination, but it didn't stop them.
Much the same story could be told of various black schools which maintained high academic standards, even during the era of Jim Crow, when separate was seldom equal and very few of the supposed “prerequisites” of good education were available. Here again was an achievement that did not follow the script of black protests or other appeals to whites.
Paul Williams was candid enough to say that cultural deficiencies within the black community played a role in the economic and social lags of blacks. In other words, white racism was not the be-all and end-all excuse. Other independent black achievements suggest the same thing. That may be why they are swept under the rug, lest the great ideological bubble burst.
A black attorney once told me that, when he first entered law school, the black students there told him that a certain professor never gave blacks a higher grade than C. But this particular student decided that he just had to have the course that this professor taught and so he took his chances. After he received a grade of B+ he was surprised to find other black students being resentful toward him. He too had burst the bubble.
Egos, careers and massive government programs have all been based on a certain vision of race. Anything which threatens that vision is likely to be ignored or resented. But we need success and the lessons taught by success more than we need any political vision.
SORTING BY RACE
New York City is cracking down on taxi drivers who refuse to pick up black males. The mayor, the media and the intelligentsia are suddenly energized, as if this were some new problem that they just discovered.
As a black male, I have for years either rented a car or had somebody pick me up to drive me to places in New York where I had to go at night, because I was not about to stand around waiting for a taxi to pick me up. There were no problems getting taxis in
the daytime in midtown Manhattan, but night is a different ball game.
Do I resent having to make special arrangements? Of course. Do I blame the cabbies? No.
Given the crime statistics, do I have a right to demand that taxi drivers risk their lives for my convenience? What am I going to say to the widows and orphans of dead cabbies? “Hey, I have to get to the Manhattan Institute to give a talk and don't feel like bothering with Hertz or Avis”? That would be a very hard sell, especially to the widows and orphans of black taxi drivers, who also pass up black males at night.
The tragic irony in all this is that things were not always this way. There was a time when my biggest problem with taxis in New York was being able to afford one. Crime is the real culprit, however much the demagogues may prefer “racism.” Do the cabbies suddenly become racists after sundown?
Professor David Levering Lewis' great book about the 1920s, When Harlem Was In Vogue, refers to taxis available there at night and being hailed by whites from downtown after they emerged from Harlem parties in the wee hours of the morning. That was a different world. The reality was different, not just “perceptions.”
Racial profiling by the government is more troubling, especially when it involves armed police in broad daylight. But nobody judges each person as an individual, no matter how much that pious phrase is used. And race is by no means the only basis for profiling.
People familiar with the stringent security system that you have to pass through going into and out of Israel are amazed when I tell them that my wife and I have been through it four times without ever having our suitcases opened for inspection. For whatever reason, we must not fit the profiles used by Israeli security guards.
Controversial Essays Page 6