Reforming criminal justice to make it racially blind is imperative, but that won’t lift up these young men from poverty. In fact, I don’t believe any law will. For too long, we’ve attached some mythic notion to government solutions and yet, 40 years after we began the War on Poverty, poverty still abounds.
When you look at statistics for the white community alone, you see that we’ve become two separate worlds in which the successful are educated and wait to have children until they are married, and those in poverty are primarily those without higher education and with children outside of marriage.
This message is not a racial one. The link between poverty, lack of education, and children outside of marriage is staggering and cuts across all racial groups. Statistics uniformly show that waiting to have children in marriage and obtaining an education are an invaluable part of escaping poverty.
I have no intention to scold, but escaping the poverty and crime trap will require more than just criminal justice reform. Escaping the poverty trap will require all of us to relearn that not only are we our brother’s keeper, we are our own keeper. While a hand-up can be part of the plan, if the plan doesn’t include the self-discovery of education, work, and the self-esteem that comes with work, the cycle of poverty will continue.
Get a job, poor people. The government's not responsible for you. Unless, ironically, you end up in prison. Which Rand Paul is trying to prevent, see. Classice Rand Paul here, there's no government solution to a system that was never designed to help black people.
Bonus No Intention To Scold Scolding:
I will continue the fight to reform our nation’s criminal justice system, but in the meantime, the call should go out for a charismatic leader, not a politician, to preach a gospel of hope and prosperity. I have said often America is in need of a revival. Part of that is spiritual. Part of that is in civics, in our leaders, in our institutions. We must look at policies, ideas, and attitudes that have failed us and we must demand better.
Why can't your African-American church leaders take care of it? I'm a politician, and it's not my job to fix your poverty, but I'll sure as hell shame and scold you for it.
Nice.
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1 comment:
40 years of half-hearted partial efforts to reverse hundreds of years of repression, and he's surprised that many of the problems still remain?
But then, this is a dog whistle attack targeting the middle class, seeking to distract them from income inequality by saying "lazy people getting your hard-earned tax dollars! Teach those lazy bums a lesson and cut taxes on the rich!!"
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