Digging deep into the political punditry-well this morning we unearth the cultural and economic musings of Charles Barkley. The NBA star and TNT Sports analyst isn’t impressed with how politicians treat the Black community. Democrats included.
“It’s an economic thing … and that’s what both parties have been neglecting, especially the Democratic Party,” Barkley said. “Every black person I know has always voted Democratic and, with the exception of a few guys who can play sports, all those people are still poor.”
Professor Walter Williams often reminds us that the ‘thing’ doing the most harm to African Americans is the welfare state. Erected, expanded and defended by whom? Democrats.
Today roughly 30 percent of blacks are poor. However, two-parent black families are rarely poor. Only 8 percent of black married-couple families live in poverty. Among black families in which both the husband and wife work full time, the poverty rate is under 5 percent. Poverty in black families headed by single women is 37 percent. The undeniable truth is that neither slavery nor Jim Crow nor the harshest racism has decimated the black family the way the welfare state has.
So, Mr. Barkley is correct. It is about economics. Just not in the way he remembers it.
And I think he may want to revisit the idea that no one is doing anything about that.
Donald Trump’s economy has been the best thing to happen to minorities in at least 50-years. Record low black, Latino, and youth unemployment. It has been great news for blue-collar workers. And we are seeing record wage growth and individual savings.
People who were encouraged to go on welfare and collect food stamps are encouraged to work and gain skills. Minorities, kids. The only thing holding many of them back is an institution created by Progressives that fosters dependency and, if we are honest, poverty.
A system that continues to exist because, as Mr. Barkley so rightly points out, every black person I know has always voted Democratic and, …all those people are still poor.”
A problem whose visuals are exacerbated by the recent row between the President and Elijah Cummings.
This long-standing member of congress has had decades to fix what is broken in his home district in Baltimore. Twenty years ago, by his own admission, that district was drug-infested, and people were walking around like zombies. Twenty years later, the conditions in this one-party Democrat-run city are worse, rats and all.
The black Democrat president didn’t do anything to help. Obama probably made matters worse. Instead of using his bully pulpit to lift people up, the community-organizer-in-chief bullied people into forming mobs and ignited a race war for political power.
Meanwhile, the guy that the Obama Democrats and folks like Congressman Cummings call a racist has done more for Black Americans in just a few years than they have over decades. And what is truly tragic is that if they, like Mr. Barkley, do not see this, the downward spiral may continue. They will vote Democrat (as Mr. Barkley appears inclined to do), and remain poor, without ever realizing that Democrats put them on this modern-day plantation and intend to keep them there.
Image: Screengrab, Yahoo! News
