[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 106 (Tuesday, June 27, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1333]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


              AMERICAN CHILDREN DESERVE EDUCATIONAL CHOICE

                                 ______


                       HON. THOMAS J. BLILEY, JR.

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, June 27, 1995
  Mr. BLILEY. Mr. Speaker, I commend to the attention of Members the 
following article by Walter Williams which appeared in the June 23, 
1995, Richmond Times Dispatch. I believe Mr. Williams' remarks paint an 
honest portrait of the debate surrounding the critical need for school 
choice.
           [From the Richmond Times Dispatch, June 23, 1995]

           Black Victims of Liberals Want Choice in Education

                          (By Walter Williams)

       The nation's capital provides one of the best examples of 
     the destructiveness of liberal ideas. Washington used to be a 
     thriving city where free persons of color and freed slaves 
     established flourishing family businesses. As early as 1899, 
     the black students of Washington's Paul Lawrence Dunbar High 
     School scored higher than any of the white schools in the 
     District of Columbia. From 1870 to 1955, most Dunbar 
     graduates went to colleges like Oberlin, Harvard, Amherst, 
     Williams, and Wesleyan. Washington was home to a broad, 
     upwardly mobile black middle class.
       All that has changed. According to Philip Murphy's article 
     in Policy Review, Washington has ``the highest per-capita 
     murder and violent-crime rates, the highest percentage of 
     residents on public assistance, the highest-paid school 
     board, the lowest SAT scores, the most single-parent 
     families, and the most lawyers per capita.''
       People are fleeing Washington in droves. During the second 
     half of the 1980s alone, over 157,000--one-fifth of 
     Washington's population--moved. This exodus 
     disproportionately consisted of black households earning 
     between $30,000 and $50,000 a year. Today, Washington's 
     population is 578,000, down from a peak of 800,000.
       To blame racism for Washington's emergence into a 
     bankrupted Third-World-type city requires a lot of 
     imagination. Washington is a city where the mayor is black, 
     the chief of police is black, the school superintendent is 
     black, and most of the city council is black. Can we blame 
     poor revenue sources? According to Murphy, the
      city takes in an astonishing $8,950 in revenue for every 
     man, woman, and child in its jurisdiction. That's to be 
     compared to $4,000 and $3,700 in nearby Maryland and 
     Virginia, respectively. Nonetheless, the city is in 
     receivership. Its bonds have achieved junk status because 
     it manages to spend $1,000 more per person than it 
     receives in revenue.
       Washington's story can be told in varying degrees in other 
     predominantly black cities. The story is a monument to the 
     failure of the liberal ideas of Democrats, black politicians, 
     and civil-rights organizations. Liberals have convinced 
     blacks that we deal with crime not by arresting and locking 
     up criminals but by searching for crime's original causes. 
     This theory gives criminals carte blanche to prey on law-
     abiding citizens. Liberals have convinced blacks that we deal 
     with education fraud by spending more money to create 
     programs that fall just short of lunacy. Liberals don't 
     expose their children to this nonsense--they enroll their 
     children in private schools.
       Victims of the liberals are mostly poor, black people who 
     have few options--such as Sheila Stamps, a widowed mother of 
     five living in a housing project. She complains, ``You can't 
     let the children out by themselves, and the playground is 
     littered with intravenous needles.'' Like most black parents, 
     Ms. Stamps wants school choice, saying: ``Any child in this 
     city should be able to go to the best schools. If they meet 
     the criteria, let them go.'' But her liberal ``benefactors'' 
     say no.
       When black Americans finally come to the full realization 
     of what liberals have done to them, it's going to make last 
     November's political revolution look like a Girl Scout 
     outing.
     

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