Tuesday, March 06, 2018

Medved show on reparations—click bait?

I like Michael Medved show, but he's dropped the ball on today's show which is about slavery, reparations and income disparity. It's beginning to sound like the radio equivalent of on-line click bait. His callers are poorly informed, repeating every meme they’ve seen or heard, and he's not doing much to correct them.

1) Slavery is a bigger industry today than in the 18th century and is still world wide, still primarily Africa and Asia. https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/region/middle-east-north-africa/ CNN estimates 40 million.

2) Reparations--how to hand out wealth for work your ancestors did when the U.S. has a million African immigrants a decade in the late 20th- 21st century who choose this as their country, but only 300,000 Africans came as slaves. Barack Obama would not get any reparations under the plan--no slavery in his background, yet 99% of blacks voted for him.

3) Income disparity between blacks and whites, or blacks and Hispanics virtually disappears if you control for marriage and education. A single mom with 3 children and a high school degree won't match or even come close to the income of a lawyer and doctor and 2 children, but that's who gets thrown in the mix when "households" are factored in these studies of income. Wealthiest households in the United States are not white, but Indian-American and Filipino-American.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Does Oprah get reparations? LeBron James? Justice Clarence Thomas?