Fortunately, the winds of change breeze through the black electorate. A Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies poll showed 63 percent of blacks identifying themselves as Democrats in 2002, down from 74 percent in 2000. An agenda focusing on issues like school choice, ownership and wealth creation is being championed by new black leaders like DC mayor Anthony Williams and Representative Harold Ford.

These developments are not accidental. Blacks are beginning to understand that they need to look to themselves rather than government to solve their problems. Certainly, if growth in government and political power translated into well-being, blacks would be in great shape today. Non-defense related federal government spending, as a percentage of GDP, is now twice what it was in 1964. Today there are 39 black members of Congress, eight times as many as in 1964. More than half of our States, including the District of Columbia, now have cities with black mayors.

Yet, these considerable gains in political power have not translated commensurately into better lives for African Americans. Certainly, a new black middle class has emerged. Black households earning more than $100,000/year have increased tenfold since the 60's. However, these amount to just 6 percent of all black households, and a third of the percentage of white households in this income bracket.

Overall gains by blacks over the last 40 years are, on average, modest or non-existent. Median black incomes are now around 80 percent of those of whites, up from 70 percent 40 years ago. Median black household net worth remains around 17 percent that of whites. Black life expectancy is about 5 years less than whites, a modest improvement from the 60's.

Although there have been impressive quantitative gains in black educational achievement - the number of blacks with high school diplomas and college degrees has tripled - the qualitative picture is more sobering. Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom report in their new book "No Excuses" that the average black student "at the end of high school has academic skills that are about at the eight-grade level."

In important ways, the quality of African American life is not just lagging behind that of whites, but dramatically deteriorating against where we were 40 years ago. Seventy percent of black families were intact then, with fathers and mothers at home. Today, two out of every three black children grow up in fatherless homes.

Seven out of ten black babies are now born to unwed mothers, triple the number in the 60's. Crime and drug use is rampant in the inner cities. Around 50 percent of inner city young black males are both unemployed and not in school. Fifty percent of new AIDS cases are in the black community.

Some claim that these troubling statistics show that blacks need even more government. In a recent article in The American Prospect, Lisbeth Schorr of Harvard says that it will take $125 billion dollars every year for another 25 years ($3,000 per year for every black man, woman, and child) to achieve parity among the races. I would argue exactly the opposite.

In 1965, President Johnson said that the 1964 civil rights act was not enough. Introducing affirmative action, the president declared, "This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity...." Continued...