Black on Black Politics

Black on Black Politics

Thomas Sowell: Old rhetoric in new times

When push comes to shove, the teachers' unions mean more to Democrats than the future of the next generation of blacks.

It is the same story, though not as widely known, when it comes to the environmentalists' restrictions against building, which push housing prices out of sight. These skyrocketing apartment rents and home prices are in turn pushing more and more blacks out of northern California communities controlled by liberal Democrats. Politically, green trumps black.

Another constituency whose interests trump those of blacks are groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, whose ideology favors the kinds of liberal judges who make it hard to control disruptive students in school or to keep violent criminals behind bars.

A handful of hoodlums can prevent a whole class from learning and a handful of criminals can make a ghetto neighborhood a hell to live in. But what the ACLU wants trumps what blacks need.