Monday, March 09, 2009 Inner cities a snapshot of America's future by Star Parker Blacks are not given enough credit for being trendsetters in America. Blacks started playing the blues, jazz, and R&B, then the rest of America started playing them. Blacks discovered the politics of victimhood, then the rest of America started catching on. Black women got into having babies without marriage. Then white women started getting into it and the incidence of white out-of-wedlock births today -- almost 30 percent -- is higher than the black rate in the 1960's. Blacks bought into dependency and the welfare state. Now the rest of America has bought in. Blacks for years elected politicians championing public policy that destroyed their own communities. Now the rest of America has installed a new political leadership with the perfect formula -- run roughshod over private ownership, disdain traditional values, substitute political power for personal responsibility -- for destroying our country. We can expect the rest of America to reap the same benefits that blacks have enjoyed from this lunacy. In the late 1960's, when President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his war on poverty and seeded welfare-state culture in our inner cities, the majority of black families had married parents living at home. By 1995 only 1 in 3 black homes had married parents. As the black family collapsed, predictable social pathologies escalated: Crime, drugs, promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, fatherless children, abortion, and disdain for education. Not surprisingly, the black poverty rate, almost a quarter of the black population, has remained frozen at twice the national average since the late 1960's. While the press was having a field day criticizing Gov. Bobby Jindal's television remarks following President Obama's address to Congress, too little attention was paid to his personal story. After all, the father of the 37-year-old Louisiana governor was a poor immigrant from India. Not every child of poor immigrants becomes a governor before their 40th birthday. But there is a reason more people from all over the world want to immigrate to the United States than we're willing to let in. They come here for opportunity. Children of poor immigrants getting educated and moving in one generation into the middle class is the story of America. Why, then, when poor immigrant families readily move in one generation into the middle class, does one fourth of black America remain poor, generation after generation? Racism? I don't think so. Black poverty is overwhelmingly a phenomenon of single mother homes. The incidence of poverty in black homes with married parents is around 10 percent, well below the national average. It's what happens when lives get politicized and people are instructed to be helpless. In the case of blacks, it's being taught that America is inherently racist and that their only hope is political protection from white exploitation. Our politicians tell us now that we need to turn the whole country over to them because capitalism has supposedly failed and we need protection from exploitation by the wealthy. Has anyone noticed that the only markets that have failed in America are the ones distorted with major government controls, regulations, subsidies, or taxpayer guarantees? University of Michigan economist Mark Perry recently listed on his blog 16 typical household items -- furniture, kitchen appliances, electronics -- showing how many hours of work, at the average wage, it would take to purchase these items today, compared to 1950. The whole basket of goods takes one fifth the amount of hours of work today to purchase compared to 59 years ago. This is markets and innovation at work. Anyone who is curious where the current left-wing takeover of our economy will lead, with government soon taking 40 cents out of every dollar we produce, should tour through any of America's inner cities.
This article and 100's before and I'm sure 100's after this one, who in the heck is this guy talking to and what the heck does he want me to do about it, write my Congressman?
Great article. Obama brings exactly the mindset and policies that have destroyed our major cities. California too.
This is the P & R forum, in case you didn't notice. You know, the place where you've posted reams of less-than-relevant rubbish. This thread has to do with politics. If you don't like the subject matter, then don't read it and just stay away. Or, how's this for a suggestion: You may prefer to debate the subject matter itself instead of posting stupid shit like you just did. How's that concept work for you? I certainly was not addressing you personally, and I could care less if you write your congressman or not. Chill out and rest your sphincter.
The article is inflammatory and is directed at like minded people who need self re enforcement of small minded views. The article offers no suggestions, solutions, nor is it objective but this is beside the point. My comment "to write my Congressman" was my being flip because it is actual political public policy which causes these conditons to continue.
Hilarious. The writer of the article is a black woman decrying the state of her community. But since she isn't a moonbat drinking the same Kool-Aid as you, she of course must be small-minded. You're quite the simpleton. Right. Public policy. Politics. Ergo, the Politics & Religion thread...You're making progress. Perhaps by the time the Dow reaches 3500 you'll stop sipping the Kool-Aid.
howcome crime exploded when the federal social welfare started? Shouldn't it have gone down? What am I missing here?