Posted on 09/06/2017 7:19:02 AM PDT by Kaslin
Many blacks and their white liberal allies demand the removal of statues of Confederate generals and the Confederate battle flag, and they are working up steam to destroy the images of Gens. Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee and President Jefferson Davis from Stone Mountain in Georgia. Allow me to speculate as to the whys of this statue removal craze, which we might call statucide.
To understand it, we need a review of the promises black and white liberals have been making for decades. In 1940, the black poverty rate was 87 percent. By 1960, it had fallen to 47 percent. During that interval, blacks were politically impotent. There were no anti-poverty programs or affirmative action programs. Nonetheless, this poverty reduction exceeded that in any other 20-year interval. But the black leadership argued that more was necessary. They said that broad advancement could not be made unless blacks gained political power.
Fifty years ago, there were fewer than 1,000 black elected officials nationwide. According to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, by 2011 there were roughly 10,500 black elected officials, not to mention a black president. But what were the fruits of greater political power? The greatest black poverty, poorest education, highest crime rates and greatest family instability are in cities such as Detroit, St. Louis, Oakland, Memphis, Birmingham, Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Buffalo. The most common characteristic of these predominantly black cities is that for decades, all of them have been run by Democratic and presumably liberal politicians. Plus, in most cases, blacks have been mayors, chiefs of police, school superintendents and principals and have dominated city councils.
During the 1960s, black and white liberals called for more money to be spent on anti-poverty programs. Since the Lyndon Johnson administration's War on Poverty programs, U.S. taxpayers have forked over $22 trillion for anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, that's three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution. Despite that spending, the socio-economic condition for many blacks has worsened. In 1940, 86 percent of black children were born inside marriage, and the black illegitimacy rate was about 15 percent. Today, only 35 percent of black children are born inside marriage, and the illegitimacy rate hovers around 75 percent.
The visions of black civil rights leaders and their white liberal allies didn't quite pan out. Greater political power and massive anti-poverty spending produced little. The failure of political power and the failure of massive welfare spending to produce nirvana led to the expectation that if only there were a black president, everything would become better for blacks. I cannot think of a single black socio-economic statistic that improved during the two terms of the Barack Obama administration. Some have become tragically worse, such as the black homicide victimization rate. For example, on average in Chicago, one person is shot every two hours, 15 minutes, and a person is murdered every 12 1/2 hours.
So more political power hasn't worked. Massive poverty spending hasn't worked. Electing a black president hasn't worked. What should black leaders and their white liberal allies now turn their attention to in order to improve the socio-economic condition for blacks? It appears to be nearly unanimous that attention should be turned to the removal of Confederate statues. It's not only Confederate statue removal but Confederate names of schools and streets. Even the Council on American-Islamic Relations agrees. It just passed a resolution calling for the removal of all Confederate memorials, flags, street names and symbols from public spaces and property.
By the way, does the statue of Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman qualify for removal? He once explained his reluctance to enlist former slaves, writing, "I am honest in my belief that it is not fair to our men to count negroes as equals ... (but) is not a negro as good as a white man to stop a bullet?" It's difficult to determine where this purging of the nation's history should end.
When is Sheila Jackson-Lee going to change her name?
:: black leaders and their white liberal allies ::
I would rephrase this to: “Patronizing white liberals and their racist black-leadership allies”.
Seems like all the people who are currently using The Race Card (tm), are white.
An important fact was left out of this article- what percentage of blacks are in poverty NOW.
What percentage of blacks are on Welfare? I have NEVER heard that statistic- EVER.
I always hear “well there are more white people than black on welfare” but that is an erroneous comparison- unless the population percentages were the same.
But there are 8 times as many non-black people, and there are certainly not 8 times as many on welfare.
A reasonable estimate using basic math is that AT LEAST half of all blacks are on welfare.
The problem is that none of that spending was done to solve the poverty problem. That money was given away, which simply made blacks dependent on the gov't's handouts. But, that was the plan all along, and Johnson clearly stated so. It's the old give-a-fish versus the teach-to-fish issue.
For Liberals, the solution to black poverty is to take money away from the rich and give to the poor. $22 trillion later we know that doesn't work, but blacks are stuck and politicians know it. Their solution: Free cell phones. Their redistribution of income from rich to poor will never work.
Instead of the static view that the only way to increase your share of the pie is to take it away from somebody else, how about this: Grow the size of the pie. Even if your slice size doesn't increase, your standard of living still rises. Quit doing the Penis Envy comparisons and, instead, compare your standard of living (regardless of absolute dollar count) and compare it to all of the other countries of the world.
"Poor" people in this country are better off than virtually all of the other poor people in the world. Indeed, compare your station in life with a poor person in Haiti or dozens of other countries.
The proper policy? Tax cuts for both individuals and corporations and training programs for the poor so they can work their way out of poverty.
..”A reasonable estimate using basic math is that AT LEAST half of all blacks are on welfare”....
But they see it as their vocation..playing the system....and they hand it down from one generation to the other....it’s a ‘conditioned lifestyle’ they are very comfortable with for the most part. They believe they are simply getting what’s due to them.
That’s why they invented “white privilege” to explain those statistics away.
Liberals in a Tizzy?........When are they ever not in a tizzy?.................
Ping for later
The H*ll with them. We owe them nothing more. Democrats own: slavery,KKK and Jim Crow during Reconstruction,institutional racism,all Confederate monuments and the welfare system that puts them back on the Plantation. They choose to be on the wrong end of the socioeconomic ladder. They choose the biggest liberal idiots to rule them. They deserve what they get.
My dog just made a Sheila Jackson-Lee statue in my backyard. I’m now going to remove it.
All that $22 Trillion purchased was a massive expansion of the Deep State, which now has absolutely no interest in ending poverty or dependence on the Federal Government.
black leaders and their white liberal allies ::
I would rephrase this to: “Patronizing white liberals and their racist black-leadership allies”.
Seems like all the people who are currently using The Race Card (tm), are white.
EXACTLY!!!
Interestingly the 22 trillion is roughly equal to the national debt. I always say that deficit spending decouples spending from taxation. If people were taxed for what it actually cost to fund all the programs, a majority of taxpayers would object and they wouldn’t be funded. Deficit spending gives the government its own stash of money to spend any way it wants with minimal interference from the people whose money it actually is, because most of them haven’t been born yet.
I have my own business, so I have to pay quarterly estimated taxes. Every month I set aside in a separate savings account an “escrow” for my quarterly taxes. And it’s a pretty big slice. If everyone in the United States had to pay their taxes this way, there is no way they would tolerate a government as big as it is.
By the way, this is how people get behind on their taxes and run afoul of the IRS. Their business may bring in $10,000 this month, and then they spend all of it. They don’t save any or set it aside for the tax man. Very bad business practice.
Good question.
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