Conservative black journalist, Jason L. Riley, was on Book TV last night discussing his new tome, 'Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed'. At Amazon it's currently the #1 bestseller in Government Social Policy, outselling even Glenn Beck's new book, 'Conform'.
Riley's an interesting guy, typical of many black conservatives in that his two-parent upbringing was stable, nurturing, church-going, and it put a high emphasis on study & education. He got through college on his intellect, not on an affirmative action handicap like our slow-witted president. He was hired by The Wall Street Journal as a copy editor in 1994, and over 20 years worked his way up to senior editorial page writer, then to senior editor, and finally to editorial board member. He's a regular commentator on Fox News and has also appeared on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, as well as ABC's World News Tonight.
I haven't read it yet, so I can't even give a cursory synopsis, but the customer reviews at Amazon are overwhelmingly favorable. I can say however that Riley's one-hour interview on Book TV with black journalist April Ryan of the American Urban Radio Network, was typical of what you'd expect when an accomplished black conservative sits opposite a black female liberal journalist, whose world view is 100% weighted by what she and her radio network know urban blacks want to hear...and that seldom includes subjects like self-determination, personal responsibility, or even civic reality. Instead, the American Urban Radio Network pumps the liberal victim entitlement mentality for all it’s worth.
Typical of her logic was the argument that back in the 1990's, 50 crack cocaine users were being convicted for possession and/or trafficking, for every one powder cocaine user (a skewed black vs. white analogy), and since these heavy drug convictions really started to happen under the Clinton administration, well then, can't you see that this was a harsh example of white racism against the black community, Mr. Riley? No, he couldn't see that at all, and he was interrupted several times trying to hammer out the truth.
It was the Congressional Black Caucus, Riley reminded Ms. Ryan, that almost bludgeoned Clinton and the democratic congress at large, into implementing harsh drug sentencing that saw even small time crack dealers imprisoned for 15 years under mandatory federal guidelines. The Congressional Black Caucus was itself being bludgeoned by hundreds of urban black judges, DA's, and police chiefs, who all had to deal firsthand with the fallout from the crack cocaine epidemic on the streets of America’s large cities. It seems incredulous that even today, black journalists rarely ever breech subjects like the carnage transpiring on the streets of Chicago every year, with up to a thousand black teenagers murdering one another for control of the crack trade. Of course to do so during his current tenure, would make the president look pretty bad, wouldn’t it?
Riley points out that only road-to-hell-paved-with-good-intention liberal policies starting in the 1950's, tore the black community apart like the crack cocaine epidemic tore the black community apart. It’s hard to believe that at one point in the past century, 70% of black kids were born into two-parent families. Today, 70% or more of urban blacks are born into single parent families, generally to a welfare mother who herself is the offspring of a welfare mother, etc., going back in some cases as many as five generations.
Five generations of welfare mothers who’ve never worked a day in their lives, who’ve always depended on the public dole for their miserable existence, and who always will until the cycle is finally broken. Small wonder, points out Riley, that “gimme†is the predominant mentality permeating black existence in America today. Blacks have been brainwashed by white liberals into thinking the world owes them, and under no circumstances should they ever have to work to get ahead. So they sit around the public housing flat and smoke crack cocaine instead, that is when they’re not busy murdering one another at a per capita rate at least 10-15 times higher than any other race/ethnic group in America.
That’s 40% of America’s black population, the inner urban poor. Of those black Americans outside the ghettos, people who do have stable jobs, 52% work for government institutions, federal, state, or municipal, and many who work in private industry have those jobs because of government mandated set-asides. Great, that elevated at least 10 million blacks solidly into the American middle class, but what has it done to their self-image? Even if their peers don’t see them as tokens, they see themselves as tokens, and they resent it, a lot. Society is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t.
Riley touched on several other aspects of liberal policy that over 65 years have created nothing more than a different kind of plantation slave. Race-based victimhood entitlements create a polarized society, not a homogenous society. Riley is critical of President Obama and liberal policy in his Wall Street Journal editorials, and he’s suffered all the name-calling and debasement that black conservatives always do when voicing unpleasant truths.
When asked by Ms. Ryan to sum up in one minute what he wants to see happen in the black community, he thought for a second and smiled. “Well†he said, “I’d like to see everyone buying my book.†Mutual laughter. Then his face got somber and he said (I paraphrase him here), “Nothing will change until blacks engage in the very difficult task of self-examination. It’s our own behavior that’s causing most of our problems, and we need to start admitting as much. It’s our violence and race resentment that alienate society at large away from us. That’s the fundamental first step in shedding the yoke of liberal overseers. We need to take responsibility.â€
Amen to that. I’ve rambled on long enough here. I just downloaded the Kindle edition. It’s only $11.
http://www.amazon.com/Please-Stop-Helping-Us-Liberals/dp/1594037256/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405282870&sr=1-1&keywords=jason+l+riley 
