We are living a 1968 redux, some claim, replete with mass demonstrations and street looting. Many argue that the report on the violence of that era, authored by the Kerner Commission, still describes America today: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” Whether that conclusion was warranted at the time is an open question in light of the steady economic and social progress of African Americans and the adoption of voting rights and open housing laws that same decade. But today, more than ever, that report no longer describes America: We are literally no longer divided strictly between white and black.
The census inquires specifically about race and has done so historically. In 1970, in the first census following the 1968 protests, America was not only an overwhelmingly white country (87.5%), but virtually the entire racial minority population was African American (11.1%). But the times were, indeed, a’changin’, in the words of Bob Dylan. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 not only reopened the country’s immigration gates, which were essentially closed since 1924, but also was the first of a series of new laws that would vastly diversify the range of immigrants’ countries of origin — including those from East and South Asia, Mexico, Latin America, and Africa. It has, as well, had an impact on America’s black population.
As a result of growing immigration since the mid-1960s, an increasing share of the U.S. black population is American because they chose to emigrate here in the last few decades. According to the Pew Research Center, the United States is home to a record 3.8 million black immigrants — more than 4 times the number in 1980. The fact that black immigrants are voluntarily choosing to emigrate to the U.S., become citizens, and their economic progress since belies the claim that we are stuck in 1968 and that our country is understood to be fundamentally, systemically racist. (Of course, the fact that immigration contradicts that claim would be confusing for the immigration skeptic in the White House.) They surely know of America’s racial history but, on balance, act on the belief that this remains a nation of unparalleled opportunity.
Black immigrants, of which Jamaicans and Haitians were one-third in 2013, make America their home — and they do well. The majority (54%) of black immigrants become U.S. citizens, compared with 47% of all other immigrants. Their economic and social successes are impossible to ignore: Black immigrants’ household incomes and marriage rates are also higher, according to Pew’s research. That some have, without doubt, been subjected to improper action by police has not stopped the flow of additional newcomers. Indeed, the Census Bureau estimates that by 2060, about 16.5% of all black Americans will be immigrants, as newcomers from Nigeria and Ethiopia continue to emigrate. Many more will be the children of immigrants.
This is a clear rebuke to the logic of 1968 and its succeeding ideas today: that the only route to upward mobility for impoverished minorities will come through some ill-defined government assistance that will convert “disadvantaged,” “under-resourced” neighborhoods into healthy ones and that affirmative action is the only path to opportunities.
This is simply not a message that activists such as Al Sharpton want to accept. Their language, from 1968 to today, focuses on black Americans as victims, rather than an oppressed group who have shown they can overcome. Sharpton is, in effect, wishing for a return to 1968, when millions of black Americans had not yet quietly rebuked his victim-based analysis through their life choices and clear successes.
There are plenty of people — Robert Woodson calls them the “racial grievance industry” — who might wish it were still 1968. But it simply isn’t. We must do more to ensure that African Americans, especially those whose roots go back hundreds of years yet still lag, have the opportunities and tools to thrive and are given equal treatment under the law and when approached by police. But pretending that nothing has changed in 50 years will not accomplish that mission.
This piece first appeared at the Washington Examiner
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Howard Husock is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where he directs the Tocqueville Project, and author of the new book, Who Killed Civil Society?
This piece originally appeared in Washington Examiner