The root cause of poverty

By Tom Quiner

I heard it said once that avoiding poverty is really pretty easy. You have to do three things:

1. Graduate from high school.

2. Defer child-rearing until your twenties.

3. Get a job. Any job, even if it’s flipping hamburgers. It will lead to a better job, and then an even better job.

The Associated Press (AP) just came out with a story that talked about the tremendous toll unwed motherhood is having on the African-American community. A stunning 72 percent of African-American children are born to unwed mothers.

AP listed the out-of-wedlock rate by race, as follows …

Asian: 17%

White: 29%

Hispanic: 53%

Black: 72%

Interestingly, income inequality by race somewhat mirrors the ranking above, only Hispanics earn a little less than blacks on average. Below is U.S. Census median annual income by race from 2006:

Asian: $36,152

White: $32,919

Black: $27,110

Hispanic: $23,613

These income rankings suggest that out-of-wedlock rates may correlate with median average income rates.

It makes sense. Women who have babies without husbands often find themselves in over their heads trying to raise their children and put food on the table. That’s why the majority of people on welfare are single Moms.

A disproportionate percentage don’t graduate from high school.

A disproportionate percentage can’t get a job, any job.

Income gaps are frequently politicized, the claim being that they are primarily the result of discrimination. The numbers above suggest family structure is the biggest issue.

President Obama’s election in 2008 revealed the truth about America, that we are moving beyond race. People of all colors voted for Mr. Obama’s message of “hope and change.”

And yet, here we are a couple years later and black unemployment rates are 29% according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and unemployment rates for black youth between the ages of 16 and 19 is 48 percent.

Democrats’ hostility to small business has dealt a serious blow to black entrepreneurs.

The black abortion rate is one out of every three pregnancies.

Nothing is going right for black America, even with a black President. As a result, black voter turnout plunged in last week’s election.

Despite the fact that Republicans ran 14 black candidates for Congress and got two of them elected, the NAACP smeared the Tea Party Movement with charges of racism.

How counterproductive.

The root cause of poverty is primarily family structure. It is exacerbated by job-killing liberal policies promoted and passed by the President and his party. As political columnist Star Parker (an African-American) states it:

Star Parker

“We have arrived in post-racial America but establishment blacks – lodged in the political left – refuse to accept it and are doing all they can to get black citizens to refuse to accept it.

The sobering reality is that the black political establishment doesn’t want Dr. King’s dream. They don’t want an America where people are judged by the content of their character. They want an America that is Democrat and left wing and this is what they promote today under the banner of civil rights.”

Another columnist, Lurita Doan, also African-American said:

“Black Americans, like many Americans, were proud of the “post-racial” president, a feat which many of us had not believed would occur in our lifetime.  But, as president, Obama, a man who is clearly bright, articulate and intellectual, has appeared to be excessively anti-business, ignorant of the basic workings of government, inexperienced in the kind of leadership necessary to bring different factions to consensus, and incapable of putting together a team to fill in the gaps of his inexperience.

These failures have been disappointing to many Americans, but perhaps most painful to the Black community who may have hoped that the first African American president would turn out to be the stuff that dreams are made of, answering to a higher calling than just the petty politics of partisanship and trying to achieve more for all Americans rather than just focusing on getting himself re-elected.”

The potential in the African-American community is staggering. The tragedy is that this potential is being squandered, and an African-American President isn’t helping them a darn bit.