Bush's Rhetoric About Race Is Troubling

Star Parker - September 19, 2005 - TownHall.com

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."

There continues to be this huge elephant in the room, and it is ignored because political correctness still destroys any ability to even discuss it. That elephant is the impact on much of today's poor because of welfare dependence. If any white person, or black person, trys to point out the destructive nature of welfare, they are called a racist or an Uncle Tom.

A fact included in this article is that welfare has driven illegitimacy among white poor to the level that it is higher than among blacks from 1960, before welfare started. It is going higher yearly, and the destruction of the family among poor whites is nearly as serious a problem as among poor blacks. The welfare state has destroyed huge numbers of families, both black and white. When are we going to fix this?

Because blacks are disproportionately poor a rational discussion never gets off the gound. It is immediately sabotaged by attacks on anyone unhappy with the current system into irrelevant discussions about why there are more poor blacks. The convenient answer of course is racism, and anyone who criticizes the system is called racist. When the critic is black, they are an Uncle Tom. The MSM has a field day insulting and denoucing the people who try to change welfare dependency and nothing happens. By this tactic, supporters of the current system have successfully resisted any honest discussion for 50 years.

Courageous people are starting to speak out anyway. The problem has become so serious, that society has to change or utterly collapse. Bill Cosby, Star Parker and Larry Elder are blacks who are now speaking out. They are being attacked. My question is, "where are the conservative whites who are willing to stand up also?" Star Parker is right to point out that George Bush is parroting the black liberal line that got us to where we are today. And that is troubling.