- Star Parker and Ken Blackwell
Attorney General Eric Holder recently called for a more frank national conversation on race. We agree - because the lack of it helps explain why black voters vote monolithically for Democrats, despite compelling evidence that Democratic Party policies have profoundly damaged America's black communities.
For the last half century, the national conversation among blacks on matters of politics and policy has largely been a monologue delivered by liberals and Democrats. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that Democrats get nine out of 10 black votes.
All major organizations that supposedly represent black interests, or even specialize in analyzing how policies impact blacks, are left of center - the NAACP, the Urban Institute, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and so on.
And because these institutions are so widely believed to speak for black interests, they get generous funding from white Americans, individually and through foundations and corporations. And for their black advisory committees, major corporations invariably recruit liberals and Democrats - uniformly.
This has produced a good deal of cynicism in Republican and conservative circles regarding ever gaining ground among blacks. It's time for Republicans (who need to rebuild, anyway) to think past their skepticism - for a major reason why blacks are so lost to them is that the GOP hasn't done the work needed to help this community understand why it should be open to the party of limited government, traditional values and freedom.
Consider: The more a given voter attends church, the more likely that voter will vote Republican. Yet blacks, who attend church more frequently than any other demographic group in the country, are overwhelmingly Democrats.
Polling shows that black attitudes on core social and economic issues - issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, energy and the environment - are totally out of sync with the Democratic Party. Yet black voters still pull the lever for Democrat candidates.
Nothing correlates more with economic success in this country than education - and a major predictor of education success is family background. So, it's no stretch to connect the dots - first, from the disproportionate incidence of black poverty to poor education, and then from this poor education to the dysfunctional state of too many black families.
Black marriage and families were not always in this sorry state. A substantial body of research shows that the breakdown followed the growth of socially intrusive big government in the 1960s - the same socially intrusive big government that the Democratic Party continues to promote today.
But these facts are mainly discussed only in conservative intellectual circles - which are overwhelmingly white. Most blacks don't hear it, or think about it much. The churchgoers probably know it in their bones, but they don't act on it in the voting booth.
Instead, the black community drowns in the message that conservatives are racists and that it's racism that causes black poverty and lack of opportunity.
Much of what is dragging our nation down today is the "legacy systems" put in place over the last century. Our public school system, the way we deliver health care, our massive entitlements programs and our tax system - all broken. And they are failing because they were first built as departures from the paradigm of individual freedom that accounts for those parts of our country that are successful and prosperous.
None suffer more from these broken legacy systems than our low-income communities. And these same communities would benefit disproportionately from reforms that would move these systems to functional market models, ownership and choice.
The battle over school vouchers for 1,700 Washington, DC, schoolchildren is an obvious current example of this dynamic: The vouchers - instituted under a Republican Congress - give these families an alternative to DC's failed and dangerous schools. But teachers unions see that as a threat to their power - so they've gotten liberal Sen. Dick Durbin to insert language into a major spending bill that sets up the program to be killed. By the DC City Council - that is. The radicalized local black establishment will do the dirty work of denying hope to minority kids.
In other words, the reforms vital to these communities and to the nation's future are in desperate need of political support - a "buy in" from low- and low-to-middle income Americans, not just some occasional votes.
The Republican National Committee has taken an important step in electing a talented black professional - Michael Steele - as its new chairman.
But Steele needs help. Any successful plan to rebuild the Republican Party must invest resources to help new voices, thought and ideas reach blacks and other low-income communities. Freedom is the key to American success and low-income communities must get the message that freedom is the key to their success as well.
Twenty percent of black churches in America are conservative evangelical churches representing millions of conservative and traditional black Americans. As a start, these communities need to hear this message.
Giving up on getting the message of freedom to blacks is tantamount to giving up on America. Never has there been a more important time to get this work started.
First published in New York Post.
Ken Blackwell is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and chairman of the board of advisers of CURE, Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education. Star Parker is founder and President of CURE (urbancure.org).
