Description
Black Americans continue to lag in the back of on many measures of social and economic well-being. Conventional wisdom holds that these inequalities can only be eliminated by eradicating racism and providing well-funded social programs. In Race, Wrongs, and Remedies, Amy L. Wax applies concepts from the law of remedies to show that the conventional wisdom is flawed. She argues that effectively addressing today’s persistent racial disparities requires dispelling the confusion surrounding blacks’ own role in achieving equality.
The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that discrimination against blacks has dramatically abated. An important factors now impeding black progress are behavioral: low educational attainment, poor socialization and work habits, drug use, criminality, paternal abandonment, and non-marital childbearing. Despite the fact that these maladaptive patterns are in large part the outgrowth of past discrimination and oppression, they now in large part withstand correction by government programs or outdoor interventions. Wax asserts that the black community will have to solve these problems from within. Self-help, changed habits, and a new cultural outlook are, in truth, the only effective tactics for getting rid of the present vestiges of our nation’s racist past.
Published in cooperation with the Hoover Institution