Is the lack of black progress the legacy of slavery or statism?

Thomas Sowell - the most brilliant economist to not win a Nobel still living (and I doubt if he ever will because he's the "wrong kind" of black man) points out that black economic and social progress was fastest under Jim crow and slowed dramatically once a "liberal" regime arose. He also reminds us that the salvation of liberals inaugurated a massive and ongoing social collapse among blacks - under Jim Crow black children grew up in intact families and we're far less likely to harm each other than under our welfare state. You can read what he has to say here.

He makes a compelling argument but leaves out an important coincidental detail: the drug war was declared at about the same time blacks were liberated. Historically the drug trade had been centered in black neighborhoods and in effect what our Federal government did was start a massive multi trillion dollar war right on top of a people who had just gotten full civil rights.  The economic effects of aggressive prohibition were to drive the ROI on drug manufacture and distribution sky high, drawing a community already familiar and active with the trade in much deeper at a time when penalties became draconian. The rest is catastrophe.

So it's the same alliance of manipulative, centralized eat your peas  liberalism and the piously hateful church ladies that ushered in the first catastrophic prohibition that birthed its demon incubus: the war on drugs.

But that's not surprising: I've always considered Social "democracy" to be borne of a snobbish moral panic over "what's to become if us sophisticates if the lower orders are allowed to do as they please".

Hell it was invented by Prussian aristos in the late 19th century for just that reason. 

But every time another social Democrat is elected President they're  presented as the second coming of Christ. Which might explain the electoral chaos that tends to follow when people find out that instead of Jesus all they got was another blowhard, venal pol and his pack of unprincipled plug uglies manipulating the body politic in the name of their damned "legacy". "I gave you healthcare", "I gave you prosperity", "Happy days are here again because of me. No look at me, I'm the hero! You're the proles. I demand that you worship me!" (Note the petulant stamp of the foot).