Ramblings' Journal

Jesse Jackson continues to vilify Reagan, though stats show true story

Even though black Americans prospered significantly under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, Rev. Jesse "The Gypsy" Jackson continues to spread the mantra of "Republican bad! Democrat good!"

"As he left office, a Lou Harris poll found nearly 80 percent of blacks considered his administration oppressive," CNN correspondent Adaora Udoji noted to the Rev. Jesse Jackson Tuesday night.

Jackson readily concurred, acknowledging that Reagan's relationship with blacks was "very hostile." In an earlier CNN interview Jackson observed, "Reagan believed in states' rights and Jefferson Davis, I believe in the Union and Abraham Lincoln."

Almost universally, and encouraged by the cheerleaders in the mainstream press, Reagan is excoriated as a pseudo-enemy of blacks and other minorities, when nothing could be further from the truth.

According to statistics gathered from a number of sources, including the 1990 US Census, black unemployment fell faster than white unemployment during the Reagan years.

Los Angeles radio host Larry Elder in a 1999 op-ed for the Ethnic News Watch. "Black teenage unemployment fell faster than did white teenage unemployment. And blacks started businesses at a rate faster than that of whites.

"In 1981," Elder continued, "the nation's poverty rate stood at 14 percent. It declined to 11.6 percent in 1988, Reagan's last year in office."

According to Census data, the median income of black households was $19,758 in 1990, up 84% from ten years prior. According to the AP, in the same ten year period, the median income of white households only increased 68%.

Other mainstream media sources, including the vaunted New York Times had to admit that poverty had lessened during the Reagan Administration -- which flies directly in the face of Jackson's claims this week.

In addition, high school graduation rates for black students increased, narrowing the education gap with white students.

All of this happened during the Reagan years; years when, according to Jesse Jackson and other professional peddlers of black victimhood (like the NAACP's Julian Bond, for example), black progress was turned back decades.

I talked about Julian Bond's predeliction for shoe leather yesterday. It seems that Jesse Jackson ought to join him in the "idiot statement" department.

Unfortunately, the members of the Soul Patrol, who thrive on keeping black Americans thinking they are victims of society; coupled with the useful idiots in the mainstream American press, won't let truths like this be heard other than by a miniscule number of Americans.

And after all, if CNN says that we've been victimized, then it must be true, right?

Yassuh. Right, boss. Anything you say.

Posted by mhking at June 10, 2004 03:25 PM