Why did progress in reducing black-white divides come to a screeching halt in the 1960s? The embrace of an oppositional culture, that deemed such activities as studying in school and obeying the law as “acting white.”
— Heather Mac Donald (@HMDatMI) September 23, 2026
Behavior, not racism, explains lingering racial inequalities;… pic.twitter.com/MtVVbrrNDI
In the black community, you also have the rise of a very virulent oppositional culture embodied by the Panthers that said "It's over. We're no longer going to try to integrate and win the approval of White Society by adopting Bourgeois norms. We are now set up in opposition to it. And that is a recipe for failure. Those Bourgeois norms are not ultimately color coded. They are neutral and they apply to all people and they are a recipe for success. Conservatives have long embraced what is called the "Success formula" or "the success ladder," which says that you have to do three things to basically guarantee that you will not be poor: 1) you graduate from high school, not College; 2) you work in a job, any job, it can be a minimum-wage job full-time; and 3) you do not have children outside of marriage. You wait until you're married before children. Do those three things which are fundamentally about personal responsibility, and you won't be poor because poverty in America today is overwhelmingly linked to single Parenthood.
