In 1963, Martin Luther King delivered his “I Had a Dream” speech.  At the time, racist barriers substantially impacted the life chances of blacks, the parents and grandparents of today’s black youths. Structural racism in American society was clearly evidenced in arrest statistics, housing availability, educational funding, and hiring decisions.

But in the last few decades, many if not most of these structural barriers have been decisively reduced, not irradicated mind you, but significantly statistically reduced. Increased educational opportunity, improved educational training of supervisory personnel, the expansion of human resource departments, and evolving white attitudes have all had positive impacts on urban policing, the criminal justice system, public schools, universities, and private corporations. Despite these obvious, evident, and calculable changes over the last few decades, social justice advocates nevertheless often interweaved widespread discriminatory policies from the past with anecdotal examples of racist actions in the present in order to claim there is an unbending and unending reign of systemic racism. (READ MORE from Robert Cherry: Demands for Reparations Hide Liberal Failures)

In the spirit of Martin Luther King, Barak Obama did briefly embrace color-blind, meritocratic reforms during the first years of his presidency.  He signaled his approach in his 2004 Democratic Convention speech:

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation … Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.

Like King, Obama sought to use government initiatives to strengthen black individual efforts to become successful.  However, his policies to improve fatherhood, increase occupational successes, and to distinguish between violent and nonviolent crimes were never supported by the left wing of the Democratic Party and were ultimately abandoned.  There was a return to the race-centric policies that stressed black victimization due to continued structural racism.  As a result, the focus on “bias,” with its narrative of racial victimization, continues today to reign supreme among social justice advocates rather than efforts to strengthen individual agency.

Two generations ago, this emphasis made sense. Today, however, investments in human development of black Americans must be given at least equal weight. Indeed, it becomes increasingly clear that the real lives of millions of black people hang in the balance. To tell black people that all their woes stem from a failure of whites to treat them equally while avoiding helping black people become more effective, productive, and virtuous members of society, is to take the easy path. While comforting, it is nonetheless tragically misleading. For young black men, it is hard not to be demoralized by what seem to be incessant stories of black victimization, most notably the specter of unarmed black men being killed by police. While these examples are increasingly atypical, they serve to deflect attention away from the personal deficits that have a much more profound impact on black wellbeing. (READ MORE: Declining Black Voter Turnout: Apathy, Not Voter Suppression)

Here we are, more than a half century past the heyday of the civil rights movement, and the self-appointed guardians of the interests of black America have no realistic programs to move more poor blacks to the stable middle class. Instead, they decry “white supremacy” and offer a snarl, a scold, or a bill of indictments.  No meaningful policies to improve the educational skills or behaviors of ten-year-old black children.  No meaningful policies to stem the gun culture among disconnected urban black youth.

In contrast, black immigrant communities have been more successful with incomes substantially higher than the black community that descended from slavery.  Many of the groups, particularly Nigerian immigrants, have family incomes comparable if not superior to white Americans.  Though only 10 percent of the black population, immigrant youth comprise 40 percent of Ivy League blacks.  These outcomes strongly suggest that factors other than contemporary racism explain the weak performance on a host of measures of black descendants of American slavery.

Most importantly, we must find ways to strengthen black families.  This includes stressing the success sequence among young blacks: first finishing school, then gaining fulltime employment, then marrying, and only then having children. (READ MORE: Contrary to Kanye West’s Claims, Jewish Organizations Actively Helped Black Artists)

We must also bring resources into the black family.  Visiting nursing programs offer support and guidance to new mothers; and subsequent in-house programs help develop school readiness among their toddlers.  Once in school, house visits can help reduce the excessive absenteeism that has become a major problem in urban schools.  In addition, President Obama’s training initiatives should be a centerpiece of educational offerings rather than the disastrous four-year college-for-all strategy promoted by liberals.  Stackable certificate programs may be the best alternative for many high school students by providing them educational successes that they can build upon.  These are the necessary approaches if we are to fulfill King’s aspirations for black communities.

Robert Cherry is an American Enterprise Institute affiliate and author of The State of the Black Family: Sixty Years of Tragedy and Failures – And New Initiatives Offering Hope.