Posted on 04/29/2002 4:48:57 PM PDT by Recovering_Democrat
I thought this article might be appropro on the 10th Anniversary of the L.A. Riots. Notice this lady is in Los Angeles. She obviously knows what she's talking about.
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For Los Angeles writer and self-help advocate Star Parker, the work of Booker T. Washington is of more than simply historical interest. A former welfare mother and drug addict turned Christian fundamentalist and conservative Republican activist, Parker sees herself as living a modern version of the life Washington advocated 99 years ago in Up From Slavery. And in Parker's view, the situation of blacks in America has not changed much since Washington's years as a slave. Many of today's blacks remain enslaved, she says, but there is a new master: the government. She maintains that government hurts the poor, through anti-poverty programs that don't work and break up families, schools that don't teach, economic regulations designed to prevent poor people from moving ahead, and laws intended to exclude religious organizations from fully stepping in to help. "We're on a plantation, only this time the government owns it," Parker said. "I'm working on shutting the government poverty plantation down." One of her efforts, her book, Pimps, Whores and Welfare Brats, paints a scathing picture of the anti-poverty establishment and those who fight to keep it in place. "I'm telling you anybody that votes Democratic today is an absolute fool. They want to live on a poverty plantation and have their kids controlled," she said, adding that blacks have long been taken for granted by the Democratic Party. "White, liberal elitists say, ‘Keep them [blacks] ignorant, so they'll stay with us.' The black ones [liberals] – they're whores." Such opinions have made Parker many enemies in the black community. She has been threatened, called an "Uncle Tom" and a "sellout" and often needs a police escort when speaking at college campuses. But Parker sticks to her guns, using her own life as an example of how African Americans can overcome their mistakes. In a debate with a feminist, Parker said, "As a black woman who went down all the roads that you talk about, [I know] it's dead at the end." After graduating from high school still barely able to read, Parker entered a life of drugs and promiscuity. After three abortions and nearly four years on welfare in California, Parker said she woke up and determined to change. Her epiphany came in 1981 while listening to Rev. Frederick Price at the Crenshaw Christian Center in LA preach against welfare. "I went home and evaluated what he had said about God and how God will supply your needs," Parker said. "And I compared God, the creator of the universe, up against this $430 a month I was receiving from welfare. And God just fared better." She returned to college and earned a B.S. in marketing from Woodbury College, a Los Angeles business school. She founded a Christian magazine, Not Forsaking the Assembly. After many of the stores that sold her publication were destroyed in the LA riots in 1992, Parker founded the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education, CURE, an organization designed to fight poverty, which has offices in LA and Washington, DC. The organization concentrates on four areas to help people out of poverty and take control of their own lives – education, social security, welfare and moral accountability. CURE believes that by eliminating the government monopolies of public education and social security, poor people can make their own choices and live better lives. Parker advocates the voucher system, under which school districts would give vouchers equal to the amount of the cost it takes to keep one child in public school, for use at either public or private schools. She accused well off blacks who send their own children to private schools, including members of the Congressional Black Caucus, of hypocrisy when they oppose vouchers for the poor. According to Parker, social security should be privatized so wage earners can invest a portion of their money in mutual funds or money market accounts, which would provide a higher return than social security. Parker said that since social security earnings cannot be inherited in full by a wage earner's children, potential wealth is being confiscated by the government. Children should be able to inherit all of their parents' social security earnings, she said, pointing out that since black men have shorter life expectancies, they are shortchanged the most by social security. Married white women come out the best under the current system, she said. "For every working black male who dies before his 70th birthday, he just left $10,000 for a married white female," Parker said. As for welfare reform, Parker said that each year over $400 billion is spent on anti-poverty programs that don't work. She calls for faith-based charity and a relaxation of labor laws to allow people to enter the work force more easily. In her upcoming book, How the Poor Get Rich, Parker applies Booker T. Washington's principles to her recommendations for escaping welfare slavery. She identifies five steps to getting off welfare and to improving one's life. The first is moral accountability; Parker explained that Washington believed everyone should take responsibility for his or her own life and strive to be self-sufficient. Second, everyone must find a talent, and third, they must develop it. Fourth, save your money and invest it, and finally, get married before you have children, she said. "That's all you have to do." Parker bristled at the thought that she, as a former welfare recipient who has become self-sufficient, is in any way an exceptional case. She insisted that anyone can get off welfare. "There's no such thing as a permanent underclass," Parker stated. "I was on angel dust. Is my pea brain any bigger than their [other welfare recipients] pea brain?" But perhaps it is her call for moral accountability that is Parker's most urgent. She said that African Americans face extinction from abortion, AIDS and other diseases. Their very survival depends on putting a moral guide into their lives, she said. "They're killing us off like flies, 1,452 [black] babies a day are aborted," she claimed. Parker urged African American women to have more children so blacks will maintain their numbers in the face of increasing immigration. She also criticized efforts by homosexual activists to link their experiences with the Civil Rights Movement. Parker said that unless society is governed by a definite moral code, it will lapse into a police state. "It's moral law or martial law. I don't believe we have given moral law a chance." |
| ATTENTION FREEPERS!!!FREEP FOX NEWS TO HIRE STAR PARKER!!!She knows we can help! | ||||||
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and there are email links to Fox included, too- give Star a helping hand. |
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I like Starr Parker. She brings clarity to the problems that black American's face today. But the truth is, black America is very content, existing in the warm and cozy pocket of liberal-socialism. If the black American community, could be properly educated on how disastrous, it is for them to belong to the Democratic Party, we could go a long way, to solving the leftward tilt in America's federal government. fact is, the Democrats have the whole country living under excessive taxation and that is a form of slavery too.
Owl _ Eagle
“Guns before butter.”
It is so refreshing to hear the TRUTH spoken! I was just watching two black leaders (from South Central LA) on O'Reilly on Fox News, dealing with homeless, poverty, etc. They were talking about the fact that so many blacks are born into single parent homes, unwed moms. There is such a problem with drugs and crime. This is all part of the problem. It is truly compassionate conservatism that would help these people with a hand UP, not a hand OUT! Otherwise, they will remain on the welfare plantation.
And who ever said that middle-aged, conservative, white males, wouldn't vote for a balck woman? She sounds just fine to me.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
She ditched her addiction, got off welfare and gave her life to Christ! What kind of example does she think she's setting for the up and coming democratic citizenry! That someone might actually make it out of poverty and actually accomplish something good with their lives...it had to be a set up - it has to be a scam, a sham, a fabrication.
/sarcasm
Way to go, Ms. Parker!!!
She loses it here. I understand the motive, but exactly who decides the size of thir family on collective grounds? That is viewing children as objects rather than people; it's a socialist construct.
An obvious menace to society. (Gotta love her!)
If my wife's FICA payments had been put into First Mattress Bank, they would have been worth several times what I actually got from SSA, even if she'd only started putting them there after we got married.
not even reduced cost or free school lunches. NOTHING from the gov't.
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