The 88th Congress that passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act included but five black legislators-less than 1% of its membership.
The remedy, we are told, must be a reverse racism in which blacks are given special privileges as compensation for the evils of American slavery and the tragic racist policies that followed.
The average black American today was born decades after the last Jim Crow laws were repealed, and government-mandated "Affirmative Action" programs had been around for more than 25 years.
A 1998 study by the liberal Brookings Institution noted that "When education was measured by years of school completed, blacks earned 19 percent less than comparably educated whites." When employers were able to look at actual accomplishments the results flipped.
Black men earned 9 percent more than white men with the same education-that is, the same performance on basic tests.
As a group-despite continuing inequities-American blacks have made considerable progress in some important areas.
In terms of education, 84.2% of blacks over 25 have a high school diploma.
Black Americans' literacy rate in 2019 was 87.1%. In 2020-the year the U.S. Census reported blacks constituted 13.6% of the population-blacks made up "Just under 14%" of U.S. college students.
In 2018, 89% of black teenagers owned a computer, and 94% of each group at least had access to a smartphone at home.
The evidence is overwhelming that most black Americans today are far better off than would likely be the case had their ancestors not been brought here in chains.
On almost every metric-from infant mortality and life expectancy to access to potable water and electricity, income, crime, disease, medical care, government corruption, happiness, and much more-American blacks are measurably better off.
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