New York's Democrat Governor Treats Black Americans As Inferior

Scenario: The Jones family lives in apartment 3A in an inner-city neighborhood, populated by non-whites. On a Friday night, they hear a child in 3B screaming his head off, begging the attacker not to hit him again. But the yelling and crying escalate. Mrs. Jones calls the city’s child services unit, alerting them to this dire situation. She does not leave her name for fear of reprisal.

New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul says Mrs. Jones is the problem, not the abused child. Indeed, she believes Jones is fomenting racism. That is why she recently signed a law making anonymous tips to the Administration for Children’s Services illegal. She says what Mrs. Jones did helps drive “inexcusable racial disparities that disproportionately impact Black and Brown families by leading to unnecessary interactions with child welfare services.”

It does not matter to Hochul that black children are more than three times as likely to die of abuse and neglect than white children. Nor does it matter to her that the data show that anonymous tips are very reliable and lead to more children being saved. Even more bizarre, it does not matter to her that those who leave anonymous tips about minority children being endangered are typically of the same racial and ethnic group. To be blunt, Whitey does not live in 3B.

Hochul’s mindset is the problem, and it is one that is shared by left-wing theorists and activists across the country. They believe that racial disparities are a function of discrimination, though they make an exception when it comes to sports: there is no problem with having an all-black basketball team. But when it comes to academic achievement, if blacks do poorly vis-a-vis whites and Asians, instead of helping them do better, they attack the test. They do so because they sincerely don’t believe blacks can do better.

Oregon led all states in developing “equity education.” Because academic achievement standards, namely testing, revealed racial disparities, the state declared war on testing. A few years ago, it suspended the graduation requirement for math, reading, and writing until the 2027-2028 academic year. It did so in the name of “equity.”

“Equity,” however, means fairness, and it is manifestly unfair to blacks that their white liberal teachers and administrators have totally given up on them, choosing to kill the test rather than helping them pass it. Black parents, we have seen from other studies, resolutely believe in testing, otherwise, they say, how do they know if their child is succeeding or not.

New York City has embraced “equity education.” Educators did away with Regents exams as a condition of receiving a diploma, choosing instead to evaluate students on such attributes as “cultural competence,” whatever that means. They have made it almost impossible for students to fail.

Students who are chronically absent obviously do not do well in school, but that doesn’t bother white liberals such as former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. What bothered him was teachers keeping tabs on attendance; blacks were more likely to be absent than whites.

De Blasio “solved” this problem by eliminating “seat time” as a requirement to pass. His black successor, Mayor Eric Adams, made attendance optional, proving that black liberals have also given up on black students. The result: four in ten low-income and minority students are chronically absent. Many can’t read, write or do arithmetic.

Those who run Catholic schools and charter schools place demands on their students, regardless of race or class. They succeed because they treat blacks as equals. Something novel.

When I taught in a Catholic elementary school in Spanish Harlem, a public school teacher who occasionally taught remedial subjects to struggling students took issue with me for rejecting a homework assignment from one of my students because the paper she turned in was ripped from a coiled-ring loose-leaf binder. The jagged edges, I said, were unacceptable.

The teacher told me that we can’t expect anything different from these students because they come from a bad neighborhood. I know about the neighborhood, I replied—I spend more time in it than you do, I said. Then I asked her if she would accept such a sloppy homework assignment from a white student in a middle-class neighborhood. She just stared at me.

This teacher, and legions like her, would bristle at the mere suggestion that they are racists. But their refusal to hold blacks to the same standards as everyone else, demanding proficiency, is demonstrably racist in effect, if not intent.

The same is true of Hochul. Her major concern is the appearance of racial disparities, not the underlying reasons for them. In this case, it means more black kids will be beaten and abused now that anonymous tips are rejected.

Low expectations breed low demands, which yields low performance. When they are selectively employed on the basis of race, it smacks of racism. If only Hochul and her ilk treated blacks as equals, and not as inferior, we would have a shot at achieving real racial equality.

William Donohue PhD is president of the Catholic League.