Question:
Bush Slammed for Linking Poverty to Racism
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
October 06, 2005
(CNSNews.com) - President Bush, already under fire from some conservatives for offering a blank check for the rebuilding of the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, faces more heat for linking the poverty in New Orleans to the history of racism in the U.S.
There is no connection between racism and poverty today, said African-American former welfare recipient, turned conservative activist Star Parker in an interview with Cybercast News Service. Either the president doesn't understand today's poverty, or he likes the federal government's role in people's personal lives.
The president's remarks about poverty and racism came in a Sept. 15 nationally televised speech from the flooded city of New Orleans. He had already been battered by liberal critics who alleged that the White House was slow in responding to the Hurricane Katrina-related flooding because New Orleans had a large black and poor population.
The speech allowed Bush to answer his critics. As all of us saw on television, there's also some deep, persistent poverty in this region, as well. That poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action, the president said.
But while Bush may have calmed some of the rhetoric from the political Left, he managed to rile up conservatives like Parker, who is president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education.
Bush's comment in his speech was a tremendous disservice. It morally skews the issue of poverty but when we look at poverty in America today, it is crystal clear that it is related to how you conduct your personal life, Parker said.
She also believes Bush's message will have a tremendous impact because his words lend credibility to the idea that some people can't move into mainstream America like other Americans.
To the contrary, Parker said, anyone can break out of poverty in one generation.
President Bush's decision to invoke the country's historical racism opened the door for the traditional civil right organizations -- which have been part of the problem for the past 40 years -- to establish the rules of the game, Parker explained. They call the shots, they determine the playing field.
It is not racism that caused the kind of poverty so prevalent in New Orleans' 9th Ward, Parker argued, but the liberal policies of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs of the 1960s.
The AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) program directly built into it a means test, which said 'don't work, don't save, don't marry.' It wasn't written that way, but that was the effect of it, Parker, a former single welfare mother, said of the Johnson initiatives.
Welfare programs, with their built-in, single motherhood incentives, destroyed black family structure, according to Parker.
When you look at black America pre-1960 and you look at black households, you find that 78 percent of black homes had two parents. Out-of-wedlock births (single-parent households) were only 22 percent back then. Today, out-of-wedlock births are up to 69 percent in black American households, Parker said.
Welfare is an equal opportunity destroyer. It doesn't care what race you are, she added.
Liberal African American leaders were quick to praise Bush's Sept. 15 speech and the linking of poverty to racism.
I think he is certainly correct. I am pleased he said it, and I just want to see him follow through on it, U.S. Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) told Cybercast News Service during a Congressional Black Caucus legislative conference six days after the president's speech.
U.S. Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) complimented Bush for acknowledging the poverty-racism link. I thought the president gave a very good speech, Scott said.
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) also thanked Bush for his comments.
We are grateful [to the president] for the acknowledgement of what we have expressed, Jackson Lee said at the Congressional Black Caucus event.
But Parker said the best chance to improve the lives of black Americans is through free markets, not government programs, and warned that the traditional liberal civil rights groups are the enemies of capitalism.
Parker said the civil rights establishment has promoted the idea that blacks cannot succeed in the private sector because of racism. As a result, a disproportionate number of African Americans have ended up working for the government.
That public sector economy does a disservice to Black America. Sixty-five percent of working blacks work for government -- in state governments, in city governments, in police departments, in the military, the post office, in government infrastructure, Parker said.
She added that government employment strips workers of their entrepreneurial spirit and lessens their ability to build or transfer wealth. That is a problem if you want a stake in America, Parker said.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page...T20051006a.html
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its amazing how a president like kennedy was assasinated yet bush is still alive.
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its amazing how a president like kennedy was assasinated yet bush is still alive.
you're just drowning in this stuff huh?
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Just another couple years..
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Hum. I spy a little side of targeting in different forms, ways, and peoples. This is somewhat disappointing. Yet I'm a stranger to politics, etc. compared to others.
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There'll always be people praising you and people who will shoot you down like you're a piece of crap. This article provides a very different variety of outlook on personal and/or group(s) aspects of two political views. I guess this kind of clashing on things will never end. As long as someone brings the past up, everything gets digged back up onto the surface again. =| I'm somewhat bitter. Thanks for providing this article. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
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There is no connection between racism and poverty today, said African-American former welfare recipient, turned conservative activist Star Parker in an interview with Cybercast News Service.
Yea I guess, one hundred years(1865-1964) of institutionalized racism that existed in government, abuse (lynchings and scaring blacks from not knowing their place), and keeping a whole race of people in the lower economic and educational ladder in their own country for such a long time doesn't have an affect on that said community at all. Yep once you remove that they'll automatically be on the same level as everyone else without any consequences. 40 years is plenty of time for a community to FULLY recover from that. Yep.
Not to mention 200 years of slavery before that, but that's so cliche at the moment.
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Wow that was the most unintelligent speech ever.
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No, O'Reilly has had far dumber rants on his show. This is about average with Bush's intellegence.
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^^^ I just absolutely love that avatar
