If you hired a plumber to fix a leaking pipe in your basement and after a half dozen attempts at stopping the leak the pipe was still dripping water, would you hire that plumber again? Say for some reason you did decide to continue using the plumber’s services, how long would you give him before you considered the plumber incompetent and terminated the working arrangement?

Well, the minority community has hired the same incompetent political party for the past 50 years and if these Democrat politicians were plumbers, by now the perpetual leak they can’t seem to fix would have managed to flood the entire basement as well as wash away all of the inside contents of the house into the street. And yet minorities are comfortable with continuing the dysfunctional working relationship.
For the most part, the broken promises of the Democrat Party to minority people living in inner cities across the country included better employment opportunities and better education and what they have actually delivered is perpetually high unemployment, high drop out rates and lower test scores along with the accompanying high crime rates.
black family income
declines under Obama
According to a New York Times article, median family income for black Americans has declined by 10.9 percent during the Obama administration. And according to a “Real Clear Politics” report, the poverty rate for blacks is now 25.8 percent. The black unemployment rate, according to Pew Research, stands at 13.4 percent and among black, male, high school dropouts, PBS’ Paul Salmon reports, the unemployment rate is 95 percent.
So why do minorities continue to vote for a party that has systematically destroyed them for the past 50 years? The answer is twofold and it consists of addiction and deceit. Entitlements are just like drugs and they produce addicts when administered for long periods of time. And the Democrat party clearly understands the carnage that entitlements bring but also understands that just like actual drug addicts, entitlement addicts will defend, protect (and vote) for their pushers so that their supply of entitlements never runs out.

Doling out entitlements
A March 15th article in the American Thinker states this clearly, “Democrats create highly segregated communities whose boundaries are defined by racism so that they could represent minority neighborhoods in elections. All racially segregated communities are under Democrat control and its residents suffer very high rates of poverty, single motherhood, crime, high dropout rates, high unemployment, zero economic growth, misery, and death. And the solutions Democrats always put forth to correct these social ills are always more community programs and entitlements.” The article goes on to say that entitlements only serve to expand Democrat political control through dependency.

Moreover, a destructive conflict of interest resides deep within the leadership of minority communities, in particular, the black community where there is a thriving enterprise of black civic leaders owing their livelihoods to perpetuating the myth of large-scale racism in the United States. Where these black leaders ignore the tremendous strides this country has made toward racial equality and conveniently ignore the reality that the United States President, U.S. Attorney General, U.S. National Security Advisor and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security are all African-Americans.

Booker T. Washington, a black educator and author who advised U.S. Presidents wrote in his 1911 book My Larger Education: “There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs – partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

History tells the real story
History clearly shows that the Democrat Party, along with corrupt black leaders and many corrupt media outlets perpetuate a lie when they say the Democrat Party has always been the champion of the black community.

We can see examples of this reality when we learn that the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, passed in 1865 with 100% Republican support but only 23% Democrat support in congress.

The 14th Amendment, giving full citizenship to freed slaves, passed in 1868 with 94% Republican support and 0% Democrat support in congress and the 15th Amendment, giving freed slaves the right to vote, passed in 1870 with 100% Republican support and 0% Democrat support in congress.

Even the integration of the US military was implemented by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who saw initial opposition for the Civil Rights Act of 1957 by non other than the then Democratic Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson who, before supporting the Act, voted the straight segregationist line.

A strong black community is a valuable asset to America but in order to regain that strength it does indeed need a revolution but it is a revolution of thought and direction not violence. It will take courage and trust in new leadership to turn things around. It is time for real economic freedom, time for truly exceptional education, time to resurrect a solid family unit and time for the black community to realize once and for all that for any of these improvements to take off, its first order of business is to hire a new plumber.

**The views expressed in this column represent only those of the author and not the board or membership of the Juniper Park Civic Association.