Wall Street Journal opinion columnist Jason Riley denounced social justice efforts in his speech at University Chapel on Oct. 24, labeling measures like welfare programs and slavery reparations as ineffective.

“Inequality today between different racial and ethnic groups in the US has less to do with discrimination and far more to do with cultural attitudes, behaviors and habits,” Riley said.

Riley joined the Wall Street Journal in 1994, and his column “Upward Mobility” has run in the journal for the past eight years. Riley is a prominent voice in the black conservatism movement and writes opinion pieces on race, politics, economics and social inequality. He is also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a public policy think tank.

His talk, titled “The Trouble with Social Justice,” was hosted by The Spectator and funded by the Southmayd Center for American Ideals.

Riley spoke to an audience composed mostly of students and members of the Lexington community. He criticized numerous aspects of progressivism and public institutions, including higher education.

“To say that higher education has lost its way would be a tremendous understatement because students are being taught what to think and not how to think,” Riley said.

Riley differentiated between the definitions of traditional justice and social justice, defining traditional justice as an impartial process without guaranteed results. He said social justice is the opposite of this, calling it rules and standards that can be set aside in hopes of achieving certain results.

He added that he thinks social justice advocates believe processes should be rigged, if necessary, to achieve the desired result.

According to the National Society of Social Workers, the definition of social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities.

Riley said progressives expect to see equal representation among groups in test scores, graduation rates, professional occupations and criminal behavior. But he views “disparities among different races” as “practically inevitable.”

“Different groups often have different cultures, behaviors, different attitudes and habits, which is why people do not advance at the same rate,” Riley said.

As an example, Riley attributed the low performance of black children in New York City Public Schools to “a black subculture that rejects attitudes and behaviors that are conducive to success.”

“Black kids read half as many books and watch twice as much television as their white counterparts do,” he said.

The Phi found no scholarly research that supports his statement. The statistic is found in opinions columns and reviews.

Riley said social justice won’t increase black students’ academic success and upward economic mobility.

“Even if we could eradicate racism, it is by no means certain that this would have a huge impact on the economic well-being of black people,” he said.

Instead, he endorsed charter schools as a solution.

“I would turn education into a true marketplace and make the schools compete for kids, instead of just assigning them to a school,” he said.

Riley said the social justice movement creates policies that are unhelpful and even detrimental to the groups social justice advocates are trying to benefit.

As an example, Riley said welfare programs enable laziness and cause families to rely on government subsidies instead of working.

But a study performed by the University of Michigan found that students who received welfare on a long-term basis showed greater gains in academic performance and standardized test scores than students of similar economic status who did not.

Public housing works is also unhelpful to the groups it is designed for, Riley said.

“The median time a family spends in New York City housing today is almost 20 years,” he said, “Housing intended to help families through a rough patch has become a multi-generational trap.”

The median time for a family living in New York City Public housing is 15 years, according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. However, that is not representative of the national average time families spend in public housing, which is about four years.

Throughout the talk, Riley cited statistics of singular instances, but failed to put the statistics in context.

For example, he said, “In 2014, the poorest county in the US was located in Kentucky, with a population that was 99% white.” This statistic on its own says nothing about the behaviors of cultural groups, the social justice movement or the economic consequences of racism.

Other statistics seemed unrelated to Riley’s argument entirely, such as when he said, “The per-capita income gap today between eastern Europeans and western Europeans, two sets of white people, is larger than the black and white gap in the US.”

Comparing the data of many different countries in a broad geographical area with the United States’ economic inequality does not illuminate any causes of that inequality.

Riley encouraged his audience to rethink the role of racism in America’s social realities.

“To what extent does past or present racism explain our ongoing racial disparities? To what extent are other factors at play?” he asked as he ended his speech.