The State Against Blacks

Introduction

For this research paper, the author plan on writing about government effects on the minority group of African Americans. For the source material, the author plan on using the book “The State Against Blacks” by Walter F. Williams. Along with that, the author also plan on using other material to form his argument. Specifically, the author plan on writing about how government policies both hinder and help African Americans, economically and socially. In the book “The State Against Blacks”, the author proposes that in today's America African American's biggest challenges are government regulations, not discrimination like others still believe. The author will go in depth on this subject, examining the positives and negatives of government aid in African American lives. We will also focus on the effects that racism still does play in the lives of African Americans, and the effort that government puts in today to stop it.

Williams, an economist at George Mason University, is contrasting being black and poor in the 1940s and 50s with current experience. It is a theme that recurs in his short and emphatic volume of reminiscences. He received his PhD in 1792 at UCLA, who was one of the best departments, and probably became libertarian through exposure to strict teachers that encouraged him to think through his mind and not learned through his heart. During that time, he has learnt to evaluate the effects of public policy, not their intentions (Walter, pp. 1-2). In the next section, the author will examine some important points from the book “The State Against Blacks”.

Discussion & Analysis

In this book the author talks about the racial discrimination of African-American in United States. The State Against Blacks is a broad, blunderbuss attack on almost all government efforts to provide for the general welfare and to protect the public interest—two goals most Americans who ever have had an elementary course in their nation's history would recognize as minimal requirements for American democracy (Breitman, pp. 23-27).

In the book “The State against Blacks” Williams has presented a discussion of the meaning of discrimination. Taking a lead from an earlier work, by Thomas Sowell, William attempts to explain why objective evidence of racial differences in economic and social status should not lead inexorably to the conclusion that racial discrimination is the cause. He presents five propositions expressing widely held perspectives on race and socioeconomic status and then challenges them for their assumption that “there are collective forces that seek to deny blacks socio-economic opportunity which must be offset by some other force in order to give blacks equal chances” (Walter, pp. 1-2). He continues the argument with a discussion of racial terminology that broadly criticizes contemporary notions of institutional racism. U.S. history is marked by instances of racial inequality. For the first 89 years of the nation's history, the practice of slavery was completely legal in many parts of the country. Black slaves with few or no legal rights toiled in the fields of their masters, facing harsh punishment if ...