Back on Uncle Sam's plantation

Bloggers are talking about Uncle Sam's Plantation, a book by Star Parker, who is, let it be said, an Afro-American woman. The subject of the book is the American welfare system and the poverty trap, especially as it affects black people.

Here's a comment from an "opinionated older lady" by the name of Brenda Bowers, who can be reached at brenda.bowers@rocketmail.com.

This is a must read article from one who has been there, done that and dragged herself out of it.

I am of a white lower middle class background whose only experience with welfare is from working with those under its addictive control and watching the lives it has destroyed as the numbers in poverty increase yearly and the number of illegitamate babies being born into poverty and thus trapped in this life style have increased three fold since Johnson’s Great Society of 1965 was supposed to end poverty forever.

I have seen that no such thing happened at all. Poverty increased. It increased because of several reasons, all of which I have at one time or another discussed on this blog. It failed because it took the Black husbands out of the homes making the Black man superfluous. It failed because the Blacks themselves became addicted to the life of having money for food and free housing provided and tho it was a bare subsistence existence it required nothing from it’s recipients.

It failed because we kept trying to fix it by throwing more and more money at the poor which was akin to giving a crack addict an inadequate but steady supply of crack while trying to get him to break the habit. It failed because by making marriage almost impossible for poor Blacks it contributed to an acceptance of immoral behaviors in the Black community to a much greater degree than in any other ethnic community. An on and on and none of them productive!

For my efforts the nicest things said is to call me a racist. Well this article is from the “horse’s mouth” you might say. I hardly think you can call Star Parker a racist. So what can you call her message? You tell me after having read it. BB

Sadly, Ms. Parker's own comments, "Back on Uncle Sam's plantation", are too long for inclusion here. But you can read them on a blog called "In Defense of Truth" by clicking here. Thanks to Agent 6 for the tip!