Walter Williams column: The welfare state’s legacy (The decimation of Black America)

The truth is the people who administer the welfare state NEED an “underclass”. They need people to be dependent on government so that THEY remain employed and can amass power. Since the Great Society the underclass and government dependency has only grown. It is one of the great failures of post-New Deal America. Tragic on a colossal scale actually. Yet few advocates of the welfare state seem to understand that they are undermining the people they so often say that they are advocates for.

When people become addicted to government, in one form or another, it’s very hard to ween them off of it. It’s practically (though not hopelessly) impossible. People who want big government know this. This is why there is so much effort to get people on government programs.

Consider if you spent your life getting a government check and you’d come to rely on this check over the years. You’ve made decisions based on this flow of money from taxpayers (and we are talking about regular welfare and corporate welfare). Any disruption of this flow of funds impacts you immediately. Anyone who seeks to reduce this flow of funds is immediately the enemy. Once that frame of mind takes hold, and it has taken hold in large parts of America, the government becomes master. And people vote accordingly.

(From The Richmond Times Dispatch)

The black family structure is not the only retrogression suffered by blacks in the age of racial enlightenment.

In every census from 1890 to 1954, blacks were either just as active as or more so than whites in the labor market. During that earlier period, black teen unemployment was roughly equal to or less than white teen unemployment. As early as 1900, the duration of black unemployment was 15 percent shorter than that of whites; today it’s about 30 percent longer.

Would anyone suggest that during earlier periods, there was less racial discrimination? What goes a long way toward an explanation are the various labor laws and regulations promoted by liberals and their union allies that cut the bottom rungs off the economic ladder and encourage racial discrimination.

Labor unions have a long history of discrimination against blacks. Frederick Douglass wrote about this in his 1874 essay, “’The Folly, Tyranny, and Wickedness of Labor Unions,” and Booker T. Washington did so in his 1913 essay, “The Negro and the Labor Unions.”

To the detriment of their constituents, most of today’s black politicians give unquestioning support to labor laws pushed by unions and white liberal organizations.

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