Bill de Blasio wants to be seen as a champion for blacks and other minorities. So why is he planning to wage war on them?
De Blasio clinched the Democratic primary for mayor in large part by promoting his inter-racial family and, notably, his son's prominent Afro. His "two cities" mantra is meant to suggest he'll fight for the have-nots — minorities. In a new poll, African-Americans say they back him over Republican nominee Joe Lhota by a whopping 86 percent to 3 percent — that is, near-unanimously.
Yet de Blasio's positions on all the key issues — crime, jobs, education — will hit minorities hard. At the same time, despite his attacks on the "1 percent," he'll leave wealthy New Yorkers relatively unscathed.
Think about it: De Blasio has been front-and-center in the drive to constrain pre-emptive crime-fighting in the city. He rails against "the burdensome impact of overly-aggressive [police] tactics," like stop-and-frisk. As mayor, he'd drop the city's appeal of federal Judge Shira Scheindlin's recent ruling against stop-and-frisk and has already moved to oppose a stay of that ruling.
He also demands an end to "racial profiling" of suspects (though NYPD policy and city law already ban it) and supports the law creating a new inspector general for the department.
The net result of all this: Hamstrung cops. Less pro-active policing. More violent crime. And that will be particularly true in New York's sketchiest neighborhoods, where aggressive policing is most needed.
Who will be the victims of more violent crime? Predominately, blacks and Hispanics. Last year, for example, 96 percent of all shooting victims in New York have been black or Hispanic. And nine out of 10 murder victims are minorities.
A spike in murder, to put it bluntly, means more dead blacks and Hispanics. Whites won't be affected as much.
The same logic holds for de Blasio's stands on education. Wednesday night, the United Federation of Teachers threw its support to de Blasio. That's because it knows he'll back the union over the interests of kids — particularly on core issues like charter schools, which the UFT despises.
But with fewer charters, more kids will remain imprisoned in rotten traditional schools. The tens of thousands of desperate families who routinely get shut out of charter-school lotteries for lack of seats will continue to get shut out.
Who are these families? Hint: New York's public-schools are 69 percent black and Hispanic. Whites disproportionately send their kids to private schools, or find the very best public schools for them. They won't suffer as much.
But hundreds of thousands of black and Hispanic kids trapped in failing city schools, which de Blasio vows to keep open, certainly will.
And to make it more tragic, they're the ones who, collectively, need help most: College-readiness rates among minority graduates, for example, are about half that of whites. And the graduation rate for minority kids is itself about 25 percent lower.
Then there are jobs. De Blasio favors "living wage" laws, higher minimum-wage rates, mandatory paid sick days and other costs to businesses that tend to price entry-level and low-skill employees — largely minorities, especially the young — out of jobs. And his plan to sock the rich with higher taxes will encourage investors to look elsewhere to run businesses.
Upshot? Kids like de Blasio's son Dante (or, rather, kids like Dante whose dads aren't powerful) will be hurt most. And never mind the high unemployment rates among minorities: 13 percent, for example, for blacks nationally, compared to 6.4 percent for whites — and 38 percent for black teens.
Let's face it: Whites, particularly wealthy ones, will have more options if de Blasio becomes mayor and pushes through his plans. If his tax hikes are too high, they'll move out of town. If schools continue to fail, they'll rely on private schools. If crime shoots up, they'll steer clear of the bad areas.
Alas, blacks and Hispanics won't have such easy choices. They'll be hit with more violent crime. They'll be cheated of the kind of educations that whites enjoy at private schools. Their young will lose out on entry-level jobs and perhaps lapse into lives of dependency.
Talk about a tale of two cities.
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