Lagging non-white achievement is such a preoccupation that in 2007,4,000 educators and experts attended an “Achievement Gap Summit” heldin Sacramento. They attended no fewer than 125 panels on how to helpblacks and Hispanics do as well as whites and Asians. There are about16,000 school districts in the United States, and not one has figuredout how to do that—but we all keep pretending it’s possible.
The media love disaster. One can hardly sit through a half hour ofcable news without hearing dire prophecies of “climate change” andother ecotastrophes. And over the past year, television pundits havewarned incessantly that without massive Wall Street bailouts andcompulsory Swine Flu vaccinations, the sky just might fall. This allcomes on the heels of years of talk of terrorist attacks and thepotential for the African AIDs epidemic to infect the middle class.
Not all of this is hysteria, of course, and without question theUnited States faces real economic and security challenges. But the mostobvious, perilous, and, most importantly, preventable catastrophelooming on America’s horizon is one that the media and political classrefuse to talk about.
In his famous speech of April 20, 1968, the British statesman Enoch Powellsaid, “The discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidableevils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessaryoccupation for the politician.”
One great, avoidable evil we face is the declining quality of the American work force.
The Census Bureau tells us that if immigration continues at itscurrent rate of nearly two million people a year, whites will become aminority of the under-18 child population in just 14 years—in 2023—andwill become a minority of the working population just 16 years later.The greatest increase will be in Hispanics, who are now dropping out ofhigh school at higher rates than blacks, doing little better thanblacks when they manage to stay in school, and are the group leastlikely to go to college. Demographers are beginning to warn that aswell-educated, white baby boomers retire and are replaced by poorlyeducated blacks and Hispanics, the productivity gains of the lastseveral hundred years will be reversed, and the United States could gointo a tailspin.