WSJ Contributor: Blacks Progressed Faster ‘When Whites Were Still Lynching’

Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley in shown speaking in a screenshot from a September 2014 ReasonTV interview.
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

A Wall Street Journal contributor published a column on Tuesday in which he argued that blacks made faster progress “at a time when whites were still lynching” them.

Jason Riley, who is black, accused liberals of lacking historical context when talking about racism in America.

“History shows that faster black progress was occurring at a time when whites were still lynching blacks, not merely singing about it,” Riley wrote, referring to a recent incident in which several white University of Oklahoma fraternity students were recorded on video singing a racist chant about lynching.

“Liberals want blacks to ignore the lessons of this pre-Civil Rights era, which threaten the current relevance of groups like the NAACP and call into question the Democratic Party’s belief that there is a federal solution to every black problem,” Riley wrote

He went on to blame the problems of “black America” on “post-Civil Rights era social pathology and misguided government interventions.”

“The problem isn’t the attitudes and behaviors of the boys on the bus so much as those of the boys in the ’hood,” he wrote.

h/t Media Matters

Latest Livewire

Notable Replies

  1. Avatar for caltg caltg says:

    There was a time when the Wall Street Journal was a respectable newspaper. Now, not so much.

  2. Avatar for darcy darcy says:

    “misguided government interventions.”

    Like the Civil Rights Act? Amazing.

  3. You mean when there were easy to solve problems like lynching, it was easier to solve those problems? It’s a lot easier to get folks to agree that extrajudicial killing and mob rule is a bad thing than to agree that unbalanced criminal sentences for minorities vs. whites contributes to economic disadvantage. Fuckin twit.

  4. How far does he want to go back? 3/5 of a vote?

  5. What ‘pull themselves up by their lynch straps’?!?! Is there a CO2 leak in the building?

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

83 more replies

Participants

Avatar for pluckyinky Avatar for jw1 Avatar for caterpillar Avatar for lochsabill Avatar for brooklyndweller Avatar for cmb Avatar for krusher Avatar for steviedee111 Avatar for tani Avatar for meangreen Avatar for mantan Avatar for chuck_voellinger Avatar for sonsofares Avatar for bigbraxstone Avatar for musgrove Avatar for oregonblue Avatar for barblzz Avatar for serendipitoussomnambulist Avatar for mrf Avatar for khaaannn Avatar for emilianoelmexicano Avatar for dommyluc Avatar for misterneutron Avatar for bmekeel

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: