Blacks Prospered Under Reagan

It's an article of faith among liberal journalists that Ronald Reagan's economic policies were bad for African-Americans - though, in fact, government statistics show that nothing could be further from the truth.

"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."

Even in less hysterical forums, Reagan is being trashed as anti-black. A Thursday headline on Newsday's op-ed pages reads: "Some blacks in D.C. say he was a 'racist' and see him as the cause for a lot of suffering in the '80s."

However, a quick look at the numbers tells a completely different story.

"Under Reagan, black adult unemployment fell faster than did white unemployment," noted 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."

Media reports on the 1990 Census support Elder's claims.

"A set of minority economic profiles released by the Census Bureau show that black households had a median income of $19,758 at the time of the 1990 census, up 84% from 1980," noted the Associated Press in July 1992. "During that period, white median household incomes climbed 68%."

Even the New York Times had to grudgingly admit that the 1990 Census showed poverty tumbling under Reagan.

"Last year, the [Census] bureau said, 12.8 percent of Americans had income below the official poverty level, which was $12,675 for a family of four. The poverty rate for 1989 was the lowest in the 1980s but was higher than for any year in the 1970s. The rate was 13 percent in 1988 and 13.4 percent in 1987."

And the good news for African-Americans didn't end there.

According to a 1990 report in the San Francisco Chronicle:

"High school graduation rates among black students rose substantially during the 1980s, narrowing an education gap with whites, according to a new federal study on U.S. school enrollments.

"About 75 percent of blacks ages 18 to 24 in 1988 reported that they were high school graduates. Ten years earlier, only 68 percent of blacks in this age group reported that they had high school diplomas. The proportion of whites who say they graduated from high school has held at about 82 percent."

Still, as Elder laments in his book "Ten Things You Can't Say in America," the media campaign painting Reagan as bad for blacks has been largely successful.

"Blacks simply do not know that blacks prospered greatly under Reagan," he contended. "Want to start a fight? Walk into a black barbershop and praise Ronald Reagan."

Editor's note: