Posted on 10/19/2005 3:52:56 PM PDT by Graybeard58
In America, more than two-thirds of black children are born to single mothers, and nearly half of black households are headed by unmarried women. Only about 60 percent of black adults have graduated high school, and just 11 percent have college diplomas. One in 4 black people lives in poverty, and more than 10 percent are unemployed. African-Americans account for 40 percent of HIV/AIDS cases and 44 percent of prison inmates.
These statistics are well known and well hashed out, but the continuing debate in America centers on who is responsible.
In the Millions More (Excuses) March in Washington over the weekend, race-hustlers Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and others blamed these social ills on everything from black slavery, which ended more than 150 years ago, to systemic racism to President Bush. Apparently out of habit, Mr. Farrakhan demanded an apology and reparations for slavery. Black "leaders" urged the hundreds at the march to "mobilize support for progressive social policies," reported The New York Times, as if those policies have ever done anyone much good.
When Lyndon Johnson launched his Great Society in 1964, married couples accounted for 70 percent of black households; today, the wedlock rate among blacks is 48 percent.
Before the nation poured $9 trillion (in constant dollars) into the "War on Poverty," rates of poverty, murder and other violent crimes, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and other social ills among blacks had been dropping for decades.
But in the 1960s, they suddenly and dramatically reversed as government began subsidizing sloth, promiscuity and parental irresponsibility. "(T)he liberal welfare state ... changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life," economist Thomas Sowell has written.
Almost immediately, black families began to disintegrate. Today, the proportion of black couples who have divorced has risen sharply while marriage rates have plummeted.
But some African-Americans are much less likely to suffer from these social ills. On average, they live longer, earn more money, live in nicer neighborhoods, have better mental and physical health, and have children who are well adjusted and behaved.
They have been able to escape the grinding social problems that afflict other blacks simply by living their lives in proper sequence: They got educated, they got married and then they had children.
Yet when black "leaders" agitate for "progressive social policies," they want to restore the full Welfare State of Lyndon Johnson and all the manifest harm it inflicted on African-Americans. Even as they denounce centuries of black slavery, they advocate chaining black people to the government.
Mr. Farrakhan spoke of empowerment, but in promoting destructive government dependency, he and other black leaders seek to doom African-Americans to further misery.
What the downtrodden of all races need is the empowerment of education, of a work ethic, of personal responsibility and of families in which spouses are faithful to each other and devoted to their children.
Empowerment cannot come from the government. It must come from within.
Or by Bill Cosby?
IOW, conservatism_IS_compassion.
What do you find klanish about it?
Don't many of these single mothers also have "men" in the household? They don't marry in order to collect the maximum in government benefits. As the liberals said in Watergate thirty-two years ago, it's all about the money.
I was engaging in sarcasm.The point I was trying to make was that this is the type of thing that Bill Cosby just might agree with and that The Most Ethical Couple In History would say was written by the Klan.
I know a mid thirties couple living together, he has one child and she has two. Together they received a $7,000+ tax "refund" because of the Earned Income Credit. That's $7,000+ that they never paid in.
Government policy encourages this.
OK. Sometimes things just zing right over my head.
That said, it would be good if the unproductive poor could learn how to be the productive rich. Unfortunately, it takes years of investment from childhood to establish productive habits in the child. You can't just give a poor person a sort of Rich Eye For the Poor Guy makeover and expect them to live rich afterwards.
I would suggest teaching people about delayed gratification, which is a concept the vast majority of the poor, regardless of race, do not understand. I fear it is even worse in the next generation.
I know a lot of people who are making good salaries, but "living on the edge", because they refuse to deny themselves anything. The concept of saving for a rainy day is almost non-existent. At least the "on the edge" folks are paying their bills before they dispose of every cent, but the impoverished seem to spend all their money, including what should have gone to necessities, the instant they have it. Putting money aside for food or rent is a foreign concept. No way are they going to save for a down payment on a house, a medical emergency, etc.
Considering that the aggregate savings rate for Americans has been hovering around zero for years now, often drifting into negative territory, I'd say it is a problem not only of the poor.
The Democratic Party failed miserably on behalf of African Americans. And it's so ironic when some of the enlightened like Bill Cosby speak out, and the "Black Leaders" just jump all over him.
Being Conservative isn't really about money. It's about saving the Family. Just maybe some people will wake up and give it a try.
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