WALL STREET JOURNAL
by William McGurn
June 1, 2015

New evidence shows minorities now do better in the American South

Of all the “solutions” for post-riot Baltimore, the best—at least for African-Americans trapped in poverty—appears to be the one that attracts the least notice: Find a new town to call home. The message comes via two new studies of upward mobility. The first is from Harvard’s The Equality of Opportunity Project. It finds that a poor child whose family leaves a bad neighborhood for a good one will have better long-term economic prospects. The other, by Joel Kotkin’s Center for Opportunity Urbanism, measures (by median household income, self-employment, housing affordability and population growth) the best and worst cities for America’s racial minorities. Its finding puts self-styled progressives to shame: Of the top 15 cities for African-Americans today, 13 are in the former Confederacy. READ MORE