Treating Symptoms

13 April 2005



NAACP Calls Bush on Social Security Race Card

One of the more dishonest sales pitches the Bush Administration has made in altering Social Security is the playing of the race card. The fact upon which the deceit if founded is simple enough and not a surprise -- black people in America generally die earlier than white people. By changing Social Security to include private accounts that could be inherited, the Bush administration claims it would help black Americans and improve racial equality. The party of Lincoln, though, is not the party of Bush the Lesser, and this week, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People called the administration on it.

The NAACP's executive chairman, Julian Bond, and interim president as well as general counsel, Dennis Courtland Hayes, properly attacked the treatment of the symptom. The issue, they said, was not how to deal with the financial equity of shorter life expectancy among blacks in America. The issue was the shorter life expectancy itself. While an inheritable account might make some financial difference to some black families, living longer would be a better outcome, which would require reforming the healthcare system more than the retirement system.

Uncle Sam's figures, cited by the administration, show a life expectancy difference of six years: 75 years for a newborn white male, and 69 for a newborn black male. These statistics are not particularly relevant in a discussion of retirement issues. Because of the high infant mortality rate among black Americans (13.3 per 1,000 births) compared to the white population (5.3 per 1,000) and violent death in the teen years, the difference is greater than when one measures the retired populations' time on Social Security. For those who have survived general pre-natal risks, childhood disease, teenage stupidity and the slings and arrows of adulthood, a white male American of 65 can expect to live another 16.6 years. A similarly aged black male can expect another 14.6 years, a two year difference.

The real problem, according to the NAACP and common sense, is the high infant mortality rates and violent deaths in childhood. At 13.3 per 1,000 live births, black Americans have an infant mortality rate worse than many developing countries. Chile's rate is 9.05 (according to the CIA Factbook), South Korea's is 7.18, and Cuba (bastion of Stalinist oppression) has a rate of 6.45 per thousand. And for teens 13-19, the homicide rate for blacks was 53.3 per 100,000 in 2001 according to the Department of Health and Human Services, about 13 times greater than the 3.9 per 100,000 for whites. While this was partially balanced out by the suicide rate in whites exceeding that for teenage blacks (14.2 per 100,000 for whites, 6.9 per 100,000 for blacks), the issue clearly isn't the fairness of inheriting pension accounts and revenues so much as it is living long enough to join the workforce.

The Bush administration has made inroads into the reflex-Democrat opinion of the black community in the US; social conservatism does play in the Baptist churches uptown. The pandering on Social Security, "playing the race card" badly, undoes that.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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