Personalized Head Start

Bill Bennett’s recent artless statement about Blacks can be paraphrased as: “Some people are born with an innate tendency toward criminal behavior”.  He singled out Blacks, probably because Black commentators themselves are shocked at the statistics:

• According to William Raspberry, "In one recent year, just under half of all young black men in the District of Columbia were in prison, on parole or probation, awaiting trial or sentencing, or being sought on a warrant. In Baltimore, one in five black men aged 20 to 30 was in custody."
• Larry Elder asks why "a small percentage of America's population -- 13 percent -- blacks account for 37.2 percent of all those arrested for violent crimes, 54.4 percent of all robbery arrestees, and are the known offenders in 51.3 percent of all murders? The murder rate in the city of New Orleans stands at over 7.5 times the national average, and authorities convict only one in four arrested for homicide."
• According to the U.S. Justice Dept, 5% of Black males nationwide are currently in jail, compared with 0.7% of White males.

Whereas discussing racial groups is fair game (Blacks advocate for themselves through the NAACP and Congressional Black Caucus), it obscures the fact that plenty of White people are in jail, too (because over 50% of the U.S. population is White, compared with 13% Black).

What’s really at stake are two questions that cut to the core of American values.  First, are some people (regardless of race) born with innate tendencies, and second, what should we do about it if they were?

Americans tend to believe that the Declaration of Independence's statement – all men are created equal – implies we are all born with equal capabilities.  But Thomas Jefferson certainly didn’t believe that interpretation.  As Abraham Lincoln later wrote: "I think the authors of [the Declaration] intended to include all men [as equal under the law], but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity".

The differences between humans are accounted for by the 1% difference in our DNA.  It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it actually translates to millions of genetic differences (since we all have three billion genetic “letters” in our code).  Methods to correlate genetic differences with specific outcomes (e.g. “is your IQ greater than 120?” or “have you ever been in jail?”) are becoming less expensive every day.  Scientists have already found genetic variations that can be linked to greater risk-taking, for example.

Liberals tend to believe we are all born with equal capabilities, and explain away group differences using commonsense explanations, which feel good, but are not based on evidence.  Why do Blacks have a higher crime rate?  Because of a history of racism, as well as poverty and bad neighborhoods, they explain.  Why do Blacks score fifteen percent lower on IQ tests?  Because they have bad schools and fewer opportunities, they say. These commonsense prejudices are never backed up with hard evidence, because they seem self-evident to the advocates.

Liberals tend to ignore arguments that refute their claims, such as: Why do Asian immigrants, who are often born in poverty, have such high IQs and low crime rates?  Why are some Black people from tough backgrounds (such as Bill Cosby) so successful?  Why are Japanese-Americans – who were interred during WWII – now so successful?  Why do programs such as Head Start have no measurable long-term effects?

The root cause for Black crime is the shift (over the last 50 years) from the Industrial Age – when low-skill, high-wage jobs were abundant – to the modern Information Age, where highly-skilled information workers and technocrats are most prized.  No wonder Black males are frustrated, and then despondent (or violent).  There are no more high-paying, low skills jobs.  Their dignity and self-esteem was taken away.

Conservatives such as Bennett tend to believe that we are not all equal in our abilities.  But their reaction is one of fatalism (as Barbara Bush might say, they are “underprivileged anyway”).  So Conservatives want to reduce funding for Head Start, and eliminate Affirmative Action, since they can’t overcome inborn differences.

It’s hard to know who to fault more, the dead-wrong Liberal whose heart is in the right place, or the Conservative who diagnoses the problem correctly, yet lets the patient die. Liberals seem to have forgotten that the Enlightenment ever occurred, and so rely on "received wisdom" and enforced orthodoxy.  They should start consulting dispassionate evidence from scientific, well-designed studies, instead of imposing their own well-intentioned viewpoints.

Not all Blacks needs help.  Whites, Latinos and Asians also need help.  So it’s not a racial issue, and government intervention should be tailored to help those people with needs, not to Blacks or any other specific racial group.

Once those people have been identified who can be helped by intervention, the government should establish a lifelong Head Start program for those in need.  Conservatives have pointed out that Head Start programs have no long-term effects after they stop.  So they should never stop.  Those in need should be given a high-level of assistance until they are through their college years.

Yes, the program would be expensive.  Perhaps Blacks would disproportionately benefit.  But this is the only way to bring fairness into society.  We are all created morally equal.  Let’s help those in need with targeted intervention – a “Personalized Head Start”.