Asian Americans And The Myth Of Political Power

The end of the civil rights movement brought along with it great promise for the futures of African Americans. After forty years of government programs, and voter registration drives the results are depressing. The high school dropout rate among blacks is 50% in some cities. 25% of black men are either incarcerated or on parole. Inner cities of Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago,New Orleans and others lead the nation in murder, crime and or urban decay. Quite often issues of urban decay and crime are explained away through an economic prism. The issue is far more basic as I will show.

The decades after the civil rights movement produced great achievements for blacks in all aspects of society. Prior to 1965, fewer than five blacks held elected office in the south. By the 2000 the number had grown to over 8,000 nationwide. There was an 84% increase in the number of black elected officials between 1980 and 2000. The irony is that these gains in the political arena has coincided with a steep decline in black culture. During this same period, out of wedlock births, dropout rates, drug use and incarceration rates all increased.

There is an interesting parallel to involving another minority group. The WSJ journal recently reported that Asians are now the country's best educated, highest earning and fastest growing racial group. Asian Americans are defined as Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Indian Vietnamese and Japanese. They lead all racial groups-including whites- in household wealth, college degrees and median household income. Yet, they have managed to do this without enough elected officials to fill a minivan.  Asians make up approximately 5% of the US population however they are over represented in the area of technology. Take a look at Forbes Magazine's list of the worlds top 100 venture capitalist-19 of them are Asian.  How were these results achieved without government programs, and liberal poverty policies? After all, Asians are not afforded the benefit of affirmative action in college admissions. According to a recent study, Asians often must score higher than whites in order to gain acceptance. Their absence from television and pop culture should not be overlooked-there are no Asian themed reality shows on cable TV.

New York's three nationally ranked specialized high schools: Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn tech are feeders for the nations top colleges. Their rigorous admissions test comes in two parts-math and verbal. 28,000 eighth graders took the exam last fall and those with the highest scores were admitted. Here is an ethnic breakdown of this fall's freshman class: 9 black students, 24 Latinos, 177 whites, and 620 Asian- Americans. Not surprisingly, the left has made attempts to change the testing requirements. The NAACP went as far as to file a formal complaint with the department of education, stating that the test violates the voting rights act of 1964. What does all this mean? It shows that while blacks march, protest and make demands on politicians and government to change our condition, fundamental issues are at the root of our problems. There are no substitutes for good values: Family, education, discipline and hard work will create far better results for blacks than marching to Washington ever could.