Hoover Institution Senior Fellow describes Black Lives Matter as a“distraction” from the real issues facing the Black community

photo by Boyd Loving

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, a reader asked ,”How would/should movements like BLM stop the violence in inner city communities? What should local municipalities (black-run or not) do to stem the violence? One way could be to allocate more resources to education, to allocate resources to community programs, to allocate resources to places like Planned Parenthood, etc. — all things that many commentators and authors on this blog would be against. So what do you experts think?”

The Ridgewood decided to ask a  expert  Shelby Steele is the Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He specializes in the study of race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action. He was appointed a Hoover fellow in 1994.

The Ridgewood blog complied these quotes from several interviews .

Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Shelby Steele describes the current Black Lives Matter and other racial protest saying they are a “distraction” from the real issues facing the Black community.

Steele contrasted what he described as the great moral causes of the 1960s—civil rights for Blacks, equal opportunities for women and the Viet Nam War—with the racial unrest of today. His view is the protesters really don’t know what they want and what they stand for. He believes there has been significant progress over the last 60 years in the civil rights and women’s opportunities areas. There’s still more to be done.

Steele said that during the 1960s non-violent protests marchers dressed in their Sunday best and organizers insisted that people were polite or they were asked to leave.

He readily identified the No. 1 “authentic challenge—the absolute collapse of the Black family. There’s no hope if Black America does not address this problem.”

The collapse of the Black family stems directly from the Great Society social programs that began in the 1960s. There’s been multiple generations of Black children raised without a father in the house.

Bob Woodson, established the Woodson Center in Washington D.C. in 1991 to help under-served communities help themselves. In an interview, he pointed out that throughout centuries of slavery and then after the civil war Black children were raised by intact families with a mom and a dad. That was true for 70 percent of Black children through the 1950s and into the 1960s. Today 75% of Black babies are born out of wedlock.

When asked about the Left and its appeal to Black voters, he said that they needed the Blacks to be “victims” so they can expand the government programs. He suggested the way to have productive conversations with Black leaders was to acknowledge the centuries of suffering and recognize their talent for survival in awful conditions. The Civil Rights movement “transformed the moral character of Western Civilization.”

Steele said the Black community needs to focus on intact families and education. If a 4th grader cannot read, he or she has an extremely limited future. Steele said his grandfather was born a slave and he would not take reparations if they were offered.