Rapper Kayne West has one ongoing groove of doing and saying obnoxious things. He styled himself as Jesus Christ on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. He stole the limelight from a young breakout artist named Taylor Swift at the MTV Music Video Awards. Like a spoiled child, seared with self-pity, he tacitly apologized in a private telephone call, then justified himself further on morning talk shows the day after.
His biggest whopper followed the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a category five storm that slammed the Gulf Coast, submerging New Orleans, leaving thousands stranded, and delaying security responses throughout the country.
Kanye West attacked the previous chief executive, George W. Bush, during the natural disaster and the horrendous aftermath of Katrina. Explaining the poor rescue response of the federal government to the humanitarian crisis in the Big Easy, West daffily assumed: “President Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
Granted, the President’s initial assumptions that Hurricane Katrina would only inflict scant damage, and his glaring Air Force One flyover rubbed salt in the nation’s wounds, West’s prejudiced assumption of racism as reason was inexcusable. Of course, West neglected to indict New Orleans’s black mayor Ray Nagin, who had failed to learn from previous hurricane disasters. The Democrat instituted a poor city-wide preparation and response to Katrina. After the natural disaster, Nagin, now out of office and under federal indictment for corruption, snidely declared that he wanted to keep New Orleans “chocolate.”
Black Unemployment
Fast forward to Barack Obama, the first “really black” President. Under his administration, unemployment for African Americans remains nearly twice the national average at 14.1 percent, with black youth unemployment touching 50 percent. Obama’s administration wants to raise the minimum wage again, a policy that disproportionately harms minorities, a statistic researched and verified by black conservative economist Walter Williams, plus Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman. The economic policies of the President have done nothing to alleviate the pain and trouble for black voters.
Obama’s Democratic Party has taken the black vote for granted for the last 50 years. While former Presidential candidate Herman Cain represented a viable GOP option for black voters before the untimely suspension of his campaign in late 2011, President Obama did not even bother to attend the NAACP summit, sending gaffe-prone Vice President Joe Biden as his prolix proxy.
During Republican administrations, blacks enjoyed a better standard of living, more jobs, and a better quality of life than during Democratic administrations, except during the Clinton presidency. Yet the former governor of Arkansas implemented conservative policies, such as balanced budgets and welfare reform. Both are anathema to Democrats. Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson summoned his progressive spirit to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1965 (although he had gutted previously proposed legislation during the Eisenhower administration). Johnson’s vision transformed into the Great Society as welfare and subsidies gave birth to unwholesome social policies of entitlement and disorder, followed by bitter race riots all over the country. Pandering handouts caused more harm than good, setting up blacks (and all Americans) for further dependence and failure.
Free Enterprise Is the Answer
Statist status quo pandering by Democrats is not the solution for expanding individual liberty for the black man or the white man. American citizens are far more than the color of their skin. Free enterprise recognizes the traits, talents and opportunities all people can perform. In word, if not in deed, the Republican Party has respected and promoted the greater good of free trade and free enterprise, a system of community and culture that punishes inequality and unjust retribution through competition.
President Obama’s anti-black policies have aggrandized the role of the state, diminished business prospects, frustrated the hiring quotas of existing businesses, scared away investment, and forced entrepreneurs to invest in foreign countries. He was a no-show at the NAACP conference, while Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney showed up, front and center. Romney should be applauded for stating his intended purpose to repeal ObamaCare, even if he endured a hearty chorus of boos for his views. Blacks deserve leadership in Washington that will not shrink away from telling every voter in this country the truth, no matter how unvarnished or disconcerting. ObamaCare is a job-killer, an investment-staller, a budget-buster that hurts blacks.
Besides suffering under twice the unemployment rate of whites, blacks are disproportionately incarcerated, and they are forbidden from enrolling in better public schools because of arcane, inane zip-code laws. I submit that President Obama does not care about black people, that his policies have, instead, impeded African-Americans’ pathway to success. It's time for the black community to elect a candidate who will honor the freedom and dignity of all men, no matter what their color or their culture. The black voters who respect the role of family and seek choice in education and the economy need look no further than the Republican Party.
Arthur Christopher Schaper is a writer and blogger on issues both timeless and timely; political, cultural, and eternal. A lifelong resident of Southern California, he currently lives in Torrance. He may be contacted at arthurschaper@hotmail.com, aschaper1.blogspot.com and at asheisministries.blogspot.com. Also see waxmanwatch.blogspot.com.
