Every sane person in the country has denounced the violence and bigotry displayed in Charlottesville over the weekend weekend, and President Trump has done so forcefully and repeatedly. I’ve been in the conservative movement for more than 30 years and have never once met or associated with a white supremacist. I don’t know who David Duke is, nor do I know any member of a racist group. If they did show up at any conservative meeting, they would be unceremoniously tossed out.
Conservatives stand for equality of opportunity, equal justice under the law, and a colorblind society. We also believe in results, not intentions. Liberals tend to have horrible results with their good intentions when it comes to economic policy, especially as it pertains to black Americans. Polls show consistently that what blacks care most about today is jobs and economic opportunity.
Barack Obama, our first black president, won well over 90 percent of the black vote, yet from an economic perspective he delivered poor results. Black incomes from 2009 to 2014 fell more for blacks than any other racial or ethnic group. Just as an example of good intentions run amok: policies like raising the minimum wage increases had a statistically significant negative effect on black teenage labor force participation rates.
{mosads}I would argue that two factors hold back economic progress for blacks: a lack of jobs in inner cities and poor educational opportunities. On both of these, Trump is delivering positive results. The black unemployment rate has fallen by a full percentage point in the last year, black labor force participation is up, and the number of black Americans with a job has risen by 600,000 from last year. Preliminary data show black wages and incomes up since the election.
It’s early for sure, but so far Trump has done more for black economic progress in six months than Obama did in eight years. The other issue that is critically important to black and Hispanic economic progress is good schools. No president has done more to advance school choice so that every child can attend a quality school public or private. In cities like Washington D.C. and Milwaukee, 90 percent of the children who benefit from these programs are black.
Trump wants to increase these vouchers and scholarships more black children. The idea is that good schools should be available to all children regardless of race or income. As the black parents I spoke to who participate in these scholarship programs have told me, “Why does Barack Obama get to send his kids to private schools, but not us?” Good question and one that no liberal has ever been able to answer.
Amazingly, the people who oppose the school choice program for black Americans that Trump is advancing are liberal elites. The same people who denounce Trump for what happened in Charlottesville, hypocritically oppose Trump’s ideas for better school options for black children. School choice is arguably the civil rights issue of our time and liberals side with teachers unions not African American children.
So is Trump a racist who doesn’t care about the future of black Americans? He is creating jobs, higher incomes and trying to give a better education to every disadvantaged child in America. That is a pretty darn good civil rights record.
Stephen Moore is the distinguished visiting fellow for the Project for Economic Growth at The Heritage Foundation and a senior economic analyst at CNN. He served as an economic advisor to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.