At a time when many in the black community are joining the #WalkAway movement, it behooves us to look at what other political parties might do to court the votes of the people in minority communities looking for a better political philosophy to benefit them, not merely something to flee. It does not matter whether that party is the Republican, Libertarian, Constitution, or Federalist Party, but there are a large number of minority voters extremely disenchanted with the current status quo but no real positive message directed towards them to show how different policies and philosophies can directly benefit them and their communities.
With that in mind, and with the collaboration of the illustrious Mrs. Pinky, we would like to set forth a political party platform which would most benefit, and thereby most attract, minority interests. What would most benefit these communities? I would maintain that these communities want what every community wants: Respect, Employment, Family, Education, and Security.
- Removal of “Minority Leaders”
Before any advancement can be made in minority communities, the “minority leaders” need to be removed. That sounds completely wrong. However, those people called “leaders” are held up as spokesmen of a group to insist that they be homogenous, to all think and act alike. There can be no change within any community so long as the people in that community continue to be told that their opinion does not matter, that the rest of society only cares about the opinion of a Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. Respect given to the individual, to the dissenter, those who are not conformists comes before any real change can occur, and it has to be a politically concerted effort to challenge the very concept that minority groups have “leaders” who speak for them as if they are merely a special interest group.
- Strengthening the Family and Community
Support social systems from inside the home, community, and mentor-ship to develop the family and the community. Mentor-ships can help support and rebuild the moral, financial, and practical framework many of these young men and women in the community are missing from failing schools and broken homes. Parental classes showing the importance of being in children’s lives, teaching young parents how to raise their kids and classes-support for working parents, this is the type of community action these communities really need rather than people just directing them to government services for handouts.
The leading indicator of poverty is single parent households. Over seventy percent of black children are born to single parent households. Policies which encourage stable families reduce poverty, reduce crime, reduce drug abuse. You can never rebuild a community if you don’t have a family unit upon which to build it. Sad to say but much of the welfare system in this country is designed to encourage single parent households: single parents can get welfare, housing, increased educational grants, food stamps. All of those programs which pretend to “fight poverty” when looked at from this angle, really appear designed to “fight families”.
- Economic Growth
Hiring incentives through tax credits and tax incentives to encourage urban businesses to hire locally and give people in these communities a foot in the door for real long term employment. Reestablishment of voting and employment for felons, while controversial to many on the right, would create incentives for successfully completing parole programs and perhaps slow down the revolving door on the prison system.
Teaching financial basics in budgeting and household financial management is needed to help rebuild family stability. I have long advocated that a course in personal financial management ought to be required of every high school student in order to graduate.
- Encourage Entrepreneurship
No community can exist without an economic reason for that community to continue to actually exist. In too many of our minority communities, a lethal combination of government handouts and drug cultures have created and sustained communities without a reason for existence. Commerce, business, and economic utility is the basis of any and all communities. It is not sufficient, in fact it is detrimental, to promise minority communities more money. Rather, those communities must be built on the values of their own self-made businesses. Children in those communities need to see business owners hiring, parents going to work every day, some reason to study, learn, work, strive, to be the type of person who can succeed, not to see success as a financial lottery of basketball talent or drug sales, but as a product earned.
In order to increase the marketable job skills of young men in these communities, elderly or experienced craftsman need to pass on their knowledge and experience through apprenticeship or mentor-based programs. In order for young people to become good workers valuable to their employers so that they can earn better money, they need not only to learn the skills they need, they need to learn them from people they will respect and respond to, better examples of people who have worked through similar upbringing and from their neighborhoods.
- School Choice – Vouchers
It takes little or no education to play sports and only street smarts to deal drugs, so we wonder why certain communities have a hard time convincing children to even want an education. Then we send them to failing public schools which are mere children warehouses. The communities which most want “school choice” who most benefit from the privatization of our state education monopoly are the minority communities. Nothing can sell a political party to the desperate in the poorest communities than a way to improve the education their own children can receive. While I do not think “school vouchers” are the best solution, they are far better than what we have now, and a powerful political sell to minority communities.
Train young people in personal developmental areas of self-reliance, self-actualization. Nothing can replace the self-assurance which comes from being able to accomplish thing on your own. No amount of political pandering will give a young person the sense of worth that comes from personal accomplishment. The military does this very well, but young people who do not necessarily go into the military need to learn self-reliance and making themselves better people at a younger age while in school.
- Incentive-based Welfare Reform
Welfare reform, including food stamps (snap) and supplemental nutrition (wic), need to be changed to be incentive-based programs. At this time much of what these programs reward is what we least want in the communities and if the person receiving assistance starts to straighten out their lives the assistance is withdrawn. Food stamps should not be an all or nothing program where a person loses the assistance if they start earning too much, but decrease as the person earns more to encourage them to work, and set limits for those who are perpetually unwilling to work.
- Privatize HUD
Remember the “housing bubble” and the economic crash which followed from trying to encourage people to get into home ownership by offering banks incentives and government guarantees of risky loans to otherwise un-creditworthy individuals? Think about the excess government entitlements of public housing and enormous waste which goes along with it. I have a politically sellable idea. What if a political party sought to privatize HUD? I mean simply to end the program by giving away the deeds to the property to the current tenants? A government giveaway? Yes and no. We are already building the housing, giving away the tenancy, and building new ones as soon as those are destroyed. How do you end a government giveaway program? By giving away that political leverage. Home ownership immediately goes up, and the new homeowners become responsible for their own property, kind of an urban homestead act. No new public housing, it would be just a one time deal. Is it fair to the working poor struggling just to pay rent? No, but then neither is it fair to them as it currently operates.
All community-based programs are paid for by voluntary contributions, tax breaks and incentives. None of the above suggestions are forced payment by the tax payer. Anyone may contribute. A more reasonable political platform should be an alternative to asking the government to fix everything by throwing more money at the problem, but should involve the community with guidance on how best to fix their own problems, and encourage private charity and donations.
Do I imagine that all, or even most of these ideas could come to fruition? Not likely. But as a statement of political purpose, it is the beginnings of a road map towards a more prosperous future. That is what every voter wants whether in some minority or in the majority. It will take a lot of hard work to rebuild the inner cities of this nation, and let’s be honest, it will not be the rural and suburban white majority which will have to do this work of rebuilding the communities destroyed by leftist politics. The best any political party, any political philosophy, can do is to help build a roadmap the help the people who have to do the work have the intellectual tools they will need to actually do the work they must.
