Political analyst Paul Mirengoff challenged the assumptions of a recent Washington Post summary about the problems in Minneapolis, entitled “Minneapolis had progressive policies, but its economy still left black families behind.”

According to WaPo, although “taxes, for decades, have been redistributed from wealthy suburbs to poorer communities [in Minneapolis] to combat inequality … the prosperity fueled by the region’s Fortune 500 companies and progressive policies has not translated into economic equality.” Moreover, “The wealth gap between Minneapolis’s largely white population and the city’s black residents has deepened, producing some of the nation’s widest racial disparities in income, employment and home-ownership.”

WaPo further asserts, “Economists, lawyers and civil rights advocates in the Twin Cities say progressive tax policies could not make up for other aspects of structural racism, such as access to credit or jobs. Some say investments in affordable housing in low-income neighborhoods deepened segregation and poverty. Others argue for better enforcement of federal laws to combat discrimination in lending, employment and housing.”

But Mirengoff offers a different explanation: “It might be that, to a disproportionate degree, African-Americans in Minneapolis aren’t doing the things required to become successful. Things like finishing high school and college, not having children while in the teens, raising children in two-parent homes, avoiding drug use, and abstaining from crime. The Post never considers this possible explanation.”

Of course, WaPo studiously avoids any mention of personal responsibility, as that doesn’t fit the Democrats’ racial victimization narrative. Mirengoff notes, “Post reporter Tracy Jan dismisses [personal responsibility], quoting unnamed ‘civil rights and community leaders in the Twin Cities’ who say that a ‘focus on fixing things perceived to be wrong in the black community,’ instead of ‘fundamentally reshaping underlying inequities in society’ is what’s preventing ‘racial equity.’”

Ah, yes, it’s “systemic racism.” That’s the obstacle to “racial equity.”

Mirengoff concludes, “Jan herself equates the ‘delivering of racial justice’ with the elimination of the disparities in income, employment, and home-ownership she describes. In other words, for Jan there is no racial justice as long as a ‘wealth gap’ exists between Blacks and Whites. It doesn’t matter how much of the gap is explained by differences in behavior. This is an absurd account of ‘racial justice.’ Distributing wealth on the basis of race, without regard to merit, is the opposite of justice — any kind of justice.”

By way of my own conclusion, as I noted in a recent column, let me remind you of who runs Minneapolis: The mayor, all but one (Green Party) member of the city council, the police chief, the county prosecutor, and the U.S. House district representative (radical leftist Ilhan Abdullahi Omar) are all Socialist Democrats. In Minnesota, the governor, the state’s attorney general (radical leftist Keith Ellison), and both U.S. senators are all Democrats.

So what’s the matter with Minneapolis?

That was a rhetorical question, of course. The problem is that the failed policies of the so-called “Great Society” over the last 50-plus years have, in effect, enslaved generations of poor people on urban poverty plantations nationwide. But don’t expect Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer to offer any changes. Their political future is dependent on “black victimization,” which is why Democrats have allowed the recent racial unrest to fester in their states.

So where exactly does the change need to begin? Another rhetorical question…