Why are they attacking him? What truth is he pointing out?

Most poverty arises in the first instance from poor adults not working or from having children outside marriage and then failing to support them—but what explains these patterns? Policymakers continue to invent new programs to help poor families and entice more adults to work, but the positive effects are small at best. Why the needy often lead unproductive lives even when opportunity beckons, and even when help is offered, remains deeply mysterious.

Many experts also thought that “social barriers” of some impersonal kind were preventing adults from working—such as racial bias, absence of skills or child care, and so on. But no such clear impediment has been found. True, government benefits can raise income among the poor or help them cope—but none causes them to do much more to help themselves. External impediments are not their main problem.2

Today, the seriously poor are mostly blacks and Hispanics, and the main reason is cultural difference. The great fact is that these groups did not come from Europe. Fifty years after civil rights, their main problem is no longer racial discrimination by white people but rather that they face an individualist culture that they are unprepared for. Their native stance toward life is much more passive than the American norm. In America, they face less hardship than they did where they came from, but also more competition. They now must strive to get ahead in school and the workplace while avoiding crime and personal problems. They also must take much more responsibility for themselves than they did before. In short, they have to become more individualist before they can “make it” in America. They are thus at a disadvantage competing with the European groups—even if they face no mistreatment on racial grounds.

It seems so mild. But he is obviously very fragile…