Recently former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice added her voice to those who have long been urging the Republican Party to reach out to black voters. Not only is that long overdue, what is also long overdue is putting some serious thought into how to go about doing it.
Too many Republicans seem to think that the way to "reach out" is to offer blacks and other minorities what the Democrats are offering them.
Voters who want what the Democrats offer can get it from the Democrats. Why should they vote for Republicans who act like make-believe Democrats?
Yet there are issues where Republicans have a big advantage over Democrats — if they will use that advantage.
The issue on which Democrats are most vulnerable is school choice. .
There are some charter schools and private schools that have low-income minority youngsters equaling or exceeding national norms, despite the many ghetto public schools where most students are nowhere close to meeting those norms. Because teachers' unions oppose charter schools, most Democrats oppose them, including black Democrats up to and including President Barack Obama.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's recent cutback on funding for charter schools, and creating other obstacles for them, showed a callous disregard for black youngsters, for whom a decent education is their one shot at a better life.
But did you hear any Republican say anything about it?
Minimum wage laws are another disaster for minority young people
There were once years when the unemployment rate for black 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds was under 10 percent. But their unemployment rates have not been under 20 percent in more than half a century and has been more than 40 percent.
Why such great differences between earlier and later times? In the late 1940s, inflation had rendered meaningless the minimum wage set in 1938. Without that encumbrance, black teenagers found it a lot easier to get jobs than after the series of minimum wage escalations that began in the 1950s.
Young people need job experience, at least as much as they need a paycheck. And no neighborhood needs hordes of idle young men hanging around, getting into mischief, if not into crime.
Republicans have failed to explain why the minimum wage laws that Democrats support are counterproductive for blacks.
Are issues like these going to switch the black vote as a whole over into the Republican column at the next election? Of course not. Nor will embracing the Democrats' racial agenda.
But, if Republicans can reduce the 90 percent of the black vote that goes to Democrats to 80 percent, that can be enough to swing a couple of close Congressional elections — as a start.
Even to achieve that, however, will require targeting those particular segments of the black population that are not irrevocably committed to the Democrats.
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.
Too many Republicans seem to think that the way to "reach out" is to offer blacks and other minorities what the Democrats are offering them.
Voters who want what the Democrats offer can get it from the Democrats. Why should they vote for Republicans who act like make-believe Democrats?
Yet there are issues where Republicans have a big advantage over Democrats — if they will use that advantage.
The issue on which Democrats are most vulnerable is school choice. .
There are some charter schools and private schools that have low-income minority youngsters equaling or exceeding national norms, despite the many ghetto public schools where most students are nowhere close to meeting those norms. Because teachers' unions oppose charter schools, most Democrats oppose them, including black Democrats up to and including President Barack Obama.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's recent cutback on funding for charter schools, and creating other obstacles for them, showed a callous disregard for black youngsters, for whom a decent education is their one shot at a better life.
But did you hear any Republican say anything about it?
Minimum wage laws are another disaster for minority young people
There were once years when the unemployment rate for black 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds was under 10 percent. But their unemployment rates have not been under 20 percent in more than half a century and has been more than 40 percent.
Why such great differences between earlier and later times? In the late 1940s, inflation had rendered meaningless the minimum wage set in 1938. Without that encumbrance, black teenagers found it a lot easier to get jobs than after the series of minimum wage escalations that began in the 1950s.
Young people need job experience, at least as much as they need a paycheck. And no neighborhood needs hordes of idle young men hanging around, getting into mischief, if not into crime.
Republicans have failed to explain why the minimum wage laws that Democrats support are counterproductive for blacks.
Are issues like these going to switch the black vote as a whole over into the Republican column at the next election? Of course not. Nor will embracing the Democrats' racial agenda.
But, if Republicans can reduce the 90 percent of the black vote that goes to Democrats to 80 percent, that can be enough to swing a couple of close Congressional elections — as a start.
Even to achieve that, however, will require targeting those particular segments of the black population that are not irrevocably committed to the Democrats.
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.
