A Half-Full Kristol

I agree with Education Dude that Bill Kristol erred by not acknowledging in his op-ed the serious disparities between blacks and whites under numerous indicators of well-being. In addition to the education statistics cited by Education Dude, African Americans lag behind whites in income and access to healthcare and are arrested and incarcerated at rates far disproportionate to their size in the general population.

Certainly, a way to reduce this inequality is to explicitly target disadvantaged African Americans with government assistance. But this goal can also be achieved through race-neutral government action. The government can reduce poverty, poor education, and injustice in the legal system in a color-blind way (say by infusing money into inner-city job and education programs and eliminating the crack-cocaine/powder-cocaine sentencing disparity). African Americans will be disproportionately helped by such measures and racial inequality will be reduced. When Kristol speaks of a “results-oriented” approach, I hope he is thinking of such measures.

-Law Dude