Posted on 09/19/2005 2:08:05 PM PDT by rightalien
I didn't find much in President Bush's Katrina speech that surprised me. His recovery plan carries the characteristic stamp of this administration. The difference between conservative compassion and liberal compassion is not the size of government, but how the money is spent.
With massive government programs a given, I certainly opt for the president's preference for tax credits rather than federal grants and management. I also appreciate what appears to be a voucher-like program for displaced children to attend the school of their choice.
But, I was very disappointed with the president's rhetoric about race.
Permitting himself to give credence to the notion that black poverty of recent years in New Orleans reflects racial discrimination and lack of opportunity was anything but an act of compassion toward blacks. He is either uninformed, which of course is troubling, or willing to bury truth for political ends, which is also troubling.
It makes me wonder what Condoleezza Rice must be thinking when she hears the president relate black poverty in the South to discrimination. Our secretary of state, of course, emerged from a neighborhood in the Deep South not distant from where the president spoke Thursday night. Is she the black exception to the rule? Is she, as many black liberals would assert, a turncoat, making it on affirmative action and then turning her back on it?
Politicians who truly care about the black condition in America today need to start reaching for the intestinal fortitude and being honest.
How can racial discrimination be the operative holding blacks down in a city in which at least seven out of 10 residents are black?
New Orleans' convention center, where black residents sat for days in squalor waiting for help (after being directed there by Mayor Ray Nagin), is called the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Ernest Morial was the first black mayor of New Orleans. His son, Marc Morial, also a black former mayor of New Orleans, is now president of the National Urban League.
The chief of police in New Orleans is black, as is the head of the city council. The mayor is black, as is the man who has represented New Orleans in the U.S. House for the last 16 years.
Black presence and power in New Orleans are wide and deep.
The truth about black poverty today, as Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute has aptly put it, is that it is "intricately intertwined with the collapse of the nuclear family in the inner city."
Consider that black households that are headed by married couples have median incomes almost 90 percent that of white households headed by married couples.
The problem in the black community is that far too few black households are headed by married couples.
Black social reality in New Orleans at the moment when the floodwaters started pouring in was fairly typical of black inner-city social reality around the country. Upwards of 70 percent of the households were headed by single parents, mostly women.
When I discuss social statistics with audiences around the country, I invariably hear gasps when I point out that the out-of-wedlock birthrate today among young white women (30 percent) is higher than it was among black women 50 years ago.
There, of course, remain residuals of racism in America today, and it's news to a lot of whites that black families were relatively intact, headed by married couples, in the '40s and '50s. Today's out-of-wedlock black births and single-parent households are triple what they were then.
The collapse of the black family took off when big government programs, particularly welfare, were launched, compliments of black and white liberals, after the civil-rights movement.
A number of years ago, then-Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, in a debate with one of the drafters of President Bill Clinton's big government health-care plan, challenged Clinton's man that government could ever care about his grandchildren the way he himself does. The gentleman assured Gramm that he did indeed care about the senator's grandchildren. Gramm retorted: "OK, then tell me their names."
It is not simply a moral claim, but a well-documented empirical one, that family and education are the keys to success in our free country. Black children don't need politicians of any color who claim to hold the keys to their future. They need parents who know their names. Two of them.
Star Parker is president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education and author of 'Uncle Sam's Plantation.'
(1) Liberals and the media are the real racists
(2) Gov't programs do far more harm than good for blacks
(3) His administration has done more for minorities since Reagan
Interesting perspective.
You surely could make those points, but how do you think that that speech would have been received in the media? It was a political speech and it wasn't to the point, but it what needed to be said to stop the political damage to preserve the larger agenda for all Americans, not just the poor blacks in NO.
Current African American poverty can partly be attributed to discrimination in the past. And part of the problem has to do with other problems too. Solution of the problem cannot be fully governmental but clever stuff can be done by the government. If you would like to have a real discussion on this issue without me getting kicked out from the forum I can give you my email address. Because some of my views would not be popular on this forum and some of my views on the other hand would be popular.
People aren't on welfare because they are poor, they are poor because they are on welfare.
I suspect that his RACE RHETORIC is the real cause for his diminishing poll numbers with Conservatives.
Oh, yuck.
I agree that a lot of the President's speech was just so much lip service and pandering, but he was already tried and found guilty of racism by the court of public opinion before he ever even stepped up to the podium. Unfortunately, he was already in damage-control mode at that point. For him to twist the knife by pointing out the self-destructive behavior of beleaguered minorities wouldn't win him any more sympathy, so I dare say the President's approach was more constructive.
Now, the opportunity to take part in rebuilding the communities should be offered to the evacuees. That will be a fish or cut bait moment. Then we'll see how many truly want to work hard and lift themselves out of poverty and how many want to just live on handouts while somebody else cleans up their town for them.
Come on now he dosen't get everything wrong - he's right about Iraq, wrong about Mexican immigration, (hopefully) right about Roberts, W is only human, he makes mistakes, but overall he is a good man.
I think you could be right:
Ignoramus
Since Sep 19, 2005
Things I have learned from watching the news on TV during the last two weeks:
1. The hurricane only hit black family's property.
2. New Orleans was devastated and no other city was affected by the hurricane.
3. Mississippi is reported to have a tree blown down.
4. New Orleans has no white people.
5. The hurricane blew a limb off a tree in the yard of an Alabama resident.
6. When you are hungry after a hurricane steal a big screen TV.
7. The hurricane did 23 billion dollars in improvements to New Orleans: now the city is welfare, looter and gang free and they are in your city.
8. White folks don't make good news stories.
9. Don't give thanks to the thousands that came to help rescue you; instead bitch because the government hasn't given you a debit card yet.
10. Only black family members got separated in the hurricane rescue efforts.
11. Ignore warnings to evacuate and the white folks will come get you and give you money for being stupid.
YOU forgot.......Middle Class and Rich people did NOT LOSE much.....only the POOR!
People aren't on welfare because they are poor, they are poor because they are on welfare.
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Well stated. And with the government more than eager to keep filling the taxpayer pigtrough with money, it will continue...just look at what is happening in N.O....massive perpetuation of the portion of that population that is a welfare state.
And some of them even have the audacity to complain that what the government is GIVING THEM is not good enough...
Make them work. Get them off their lazy asses. Stop the welfare state. Quit funding it.
I don't think you know much about Star Parker and her history.....she's a former WELFARE queen who pulled herself up by her bootstraps and has made something of herself....and she's Black, too....
Bush didnt surprise me - GW is a liberal plain and simple - I rank him below Clinton and just above Carter in his liberal ideology and for his liberal social programs. At least with Clinton we could fight him in Congress (not much because RINOs are whimps) but with Bush he continues to show that he is out of touch with Americans - he unfortunately has proven himself to be the lilly white rich liberal elitist. So much potential wasted...that is what is sad.
bttt
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