I was just watching the Congressman on Face the Nation this morning and it was quite touching. A lot of people like to say nothing has changed on racial matters, but Lewis knows differently as he was there in Selma 50 years ago.
As he says if you were there you know how different it is now than then.
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/open-this-is-face-the-nation-february-15/
He went back to Selma recently and was given a hero's welcome-the city has grown so much since then.
When you're talking about racial issues it's possible to err in 1 of 2 ways. Just after Obama's victory in 2008, Stephen Colbert had a hilarious skit where he declared 'racism is over' with confetti with the words 'Racism 1776 to 2008' printed across the screen.
Of course, you can be too glib in minimizing the real problems we still face as witnessing Eric Garner Syndrome.
On the other hand some people are overly pessimistic and I think exaggerate things to the negative. It;s not true that 'nothing has changed' or anything close. This claim is made by some frustrated on the Left with progress but I like what Lewis said today: we will get there.
The problems today are real but not insurmountable-a lot of them are more about what you might call class rather than race. The problem of the Black inner cities is an economic and structural issue as much as anything.
I notice that some on the Right also like to give off a sense that 'nothing has changed' but they have their own reasons for doing this. Sumner I notice tends to scoff at how little racial progress there is as a dig at liberals-'You guys have failed despite all your big ideas.'
His answer is that what Black folks need is what everyone in his opinion needs: structural reforms which amount to lowering regulation on the Job Creators and cutting their taxes.
"He seems to think that all that is ever needed to fix any problem are right wing structural reforms. Maybe Lincoln shouldn't have bothered to free the slaves but just deregulated the cotton business for slave owners and cut their taxes. At some point this would have obviously benefited slaves more than their freedom."
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/02/sumner-on-greeces-new-leftist-government.html
I'm glad to see that an orthodox economist like Tony Yates pushing back on the structural reform bugaboo. It is not the answer for every problem-and sometimes structural reforms might take on a different cast than the usual demand for deregulation and lower taxes.
https://longandvariable.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/greece-acemoglu-and-robinson/
In the case of Greece, he argues that structural reform might paradoxically come in the form of strengthening the government against certain powerful members of the oligopoly over there.
As he says if you were there you know how different it is now than then.
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/open-this-is-face-the-nation-february-15/
He went back to Selma recently and was given a hero's welcome-the city has grown so much since then.
When you're talking about racial issues it's possible to err in 1 of 2 ways. Just after Obama's victory in 2008, Stephen Colbert had a hilarious skit where he declared 'racism is over' with confetti with the words 'Racism 1776 to 2008' printed across the screen.
Of course, you can be too glib in minimizing the real problems we still face as witnessing Eric Garner Syndrome.
On the other hand some people are overly pessimistic and I think exaggerate things to the negative. It;s not true that 'nothing has changed' or anything close. This claim is made by some frustrated on the Left with progress but I like what Lewis said today: we will get there.
The problems today are real but not insurmountable-a lot of them are more about what you might call class rather than race. The problem of the Black inner cities is an economic and structural issue as much as anything.
I notice that some on the Right also like to give off a sense that 'nothing has changed' but they have their own reasons for doing this. Sumner I notice tends to scoff at how little racial progress there is as a dig at liberals-'You guys have failed despite all your big ideas.'
His answer is that what Black folks need is what everyone in his opinion needs: structural reforms which amount to lowering regulation on the Job Creators and cutting their taxes.
"He seems to think that all that is ever needed to fix any problem are right wing structural reforms. Maybe Lincoln shouldn't have bothered to free the slaves but just deregulated the cotton business for slave owners and cut their taxes. At some point this would have obviously benefited slaves more than their freedom."
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/02/sumner-on-greeces-new-leftist-government.html
I'm glad to see that an orthodox economist like Tony Yates pushing back on the structural reform bugaboo. It is not the answer for every problem-and sometimes structural reforms might take on a different cast than the usual demand for deregulation and lower taxes.
https://longandvariable.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/greece-acemoglu-and-robinson/
In the case of Greece, he argues that structural reform might paradoxically come in the form of strengthening the government against certain powerful members of the oligopoly over there.
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