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King Had a Dream, but Blacks Now Face a Nightmare
Chris W. Bell
When was the last time you heard anyone express outrage over the fact that up to half of the black kids in major cities are high school dropouts?
Black America is in a state of crisis, and not only are we being ignored by those for whom we vote, but we are also being ignored by the press and the "civil rights movement".
For the last seventy years, liberals have asked blacks to elect and empower them so that they could defend us from racist conservatives who were trying to keep us down. They said that without them, we would be relegated to an inferior education, lower-paying jobs, and the sorrow of institutional racism. (And it has happened, but with a different cause.) But after all this time in power, how has liberalism benefited us?
An analysis of the leading indicators for a good quality of life for the black population (employment, education, crime, and family) shows that in many ways, the current generation of black youth is in worse shape than the last. It seems incredible that in the 21st century, we could be backsliding, but the facts don't lie.
The black unemployment rate is 89% higher than the white rate (8.7% versus 16.5%). This is after nearly seventy years of the solid black vote for liberals. At each election, liberals say that blacks need protection from conservatives, but there are no conservatives anywhere near us. The only thing that all of the people who set the policies that affect us have in common is that they are all liberal. Our cities have been under liberal control for decades, and they are also where the black economic and social indicators are the worst; and the mainstream civil rights movement that claims to represent us never questions whether or not liberalism is partially to blame.
Inner cities have higher taxes, more costly business expenses, slow police response, more crime, and therefore less economic opportunities. All these problems are exacerbated by liberal tendencies to raise taxes, stack up regulations, and blame society instead of the criminals for crime, which results in soft-on-crime police and judicial systems.
The high black unemployment rate is partially explained by the fact that the high school dropout rate in major cities is close to 50%, with some as high 75%. What employment prospects can we expect for a generation of men without high school diplomas? Liberals run the school systems, but their philosophy is not held liable for the tragic circumstances we find ourselves in. They lower standards in the name of fairness to the underachievers, and then they fight vouchers that would allow us to take our scholastic business elsewhere. The result is kids who are less prepared for college than those they must compete with.
It's incredible and saddening that in the 21st century, amid all of the marvelous technology that we live with, there is a whole class of people who do not have the education required to take advantage of our new high-tech workplaces; they have 1950 skills. It is even more saddening that the policymakers whom we have entrusted our votes to still receive our solid and unwavering support even though their actions have made our situation worse.
Look at the state of the black family; the black illegitimacy rate is near 70%. Coupled with high divorce rates, it's a pretty good bet that any given young black lives with his mother. Beginning in the 1960s, liberals told us that we didn't need marriage to enjoy our sexuality. They said that marriage was cramping our style and that a woman needn't be "dependent" on a man to help with the family. They said she could do it all. (One activist said that "women need men like fish need bicycles.") Liberals encouraged us not to consider being married a prerequisite for having kids -- so we didn't, and look what it has caused: millions of single women trying to earn a living while raising kids and running a household alone, while burdened with the crushing weight of disciplining our young men and instilling virtue in our young women.
Our cities are infested with crime. Blacks make up 49% of all homicide victims and 35% of state and federal prisoners. The liberal solution to crime is to look for racial discrimination in law enforcement and criminal sentencing. I can remember that when I was a kid, the liberals attacked street crime police decoy units for being racist since most of the people caught were black. Well, they stopped, and now look at crime. Liberals have diverted money from law enforcement to social programs. Every time a new prison is proposed, the civil rights "professionals" claim that it's part of a plan to unfairly round up and imprison our men.
Welfare is a good example of a liberal policy that has devastated us. The last generation grew up with unrestricted welfare, and its effects are still being felt. Unrestricted welfare meant that anyone could receive welfare at any time and would never be kicked off. I can recall men in my neighborhood in their thirties who were dropouts and had never held a job. Yet with all of that spending, liberals could never find the money to lower police response time -- something that would have an immediate and beneficial impact on all of our lives. It would lower crime, increase business, and lower costs.
In fact, every time they run low on cash, liberals do an early release from the prisons -- releasing those hoodlums right back into our community. Liberals don't have to live alongside the thugs they let loose in our neighborhoods.
And also in our neighborhoods you will see the sad sight of thousands of mentally ill people, who can't take care of themselves, living in the streets. The police won't pick them up, and if they did, the mental hospitals won't keep them. Why? Because our liberal lawmakers said that it was unfair to hospitalize someone against his will. They said that society has no right to force someone to take medication for mental illness. The result: Our cities have homeless people strewn about like old toys tossed in an attic. And this is what they call compassion. But of course, liberals don't have to live with the results of their handiwork. We do.
And through it all, nearly 90% of blacks loyally vote for liberal candidates. This has got to stop before we are a permanent underclass. Blacks must abandon their blind support of liberals and support candidates who will focus on lowering crime, improving schools, and encouraging commerce. These priorities are mostly found with conservative candidates. It's ironic that now that we have the freedom to vote for whomever we like, almost all of us vote for one type of candidate -- the kind that's the worst for us.
Rich people can withstand liberalism because they will always be able to buy what they need, but rank-and-file citizens like many blacks can't afford it anymore. What next -- half of us in jail, three-quarters of us underemployed, and all of us illegitimate?
It's time for black voters to elect candidates who will reverse the ambition-numbing effects of seventy years of liberals. It's time to turn the wheel in the other direction as hard as we can. If we did nothing else other than vote against liberals, we would be far better off. We would see immediate and incredible advances toward the society that Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed of instead of this hellish nightmare that keeps getting worse.
Our very first step must be an end to all support for liberal candidates in the same way we shunned segregationists in the '60s. When we were faced with segregation, we rallied to remove those who approved of it from power. We did this even when faced with water cannons, attack-dogs, and worse.
How much less debilitating is the current caustic environment than the one King fought? How much less forcefully should we fight it? I say no less. Whether it is through discrimination, as it was, or lack of education, as it is now, the result is the same: a large percentage of blacks are not able to live the American dream. But if we don't fight, who will? No one will take this struggle more seriously than we do.
Chris W. Bell is a freelance writer. He can be reached here.
Feb. 18, 2010