Democrats and the Asphalt Plantation

Obama and the Asphalt Plantation

"President Obama has done nothing to address the problems of the black community defined in a 1965 report by Daniel Patrick Moynihan…Forty-seven years ago, Moynihan (1927-2003) was the assistant secretary of labor in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.  In the context of helping formulate policy concerning Johnson's War on Poverty, he wrote 'The Negro Family: A Case for National Action.'  Later, he served four terms as a Democrat U.S. senator from New York (1976, 1982, 1988, and 1994)…His 17,000-word report is stacked with statistics that painted a dismal future for the 'Negro' in American society, if the trends were not reversed." "He wrote: 'The fundamental problem ... is that of family structure. The evidence - not final, but powerfully persuasive - is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling[.] ... So long as this situation persists, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself.'" [snip] 'A national effort is required that will give a unity of purpose to the many activities of the Federal government in this area, directed to a new kind of national goal: the establishment of a stable Negro family structure.'" "Moynihan linked the erosion of the black family with chronic unemployment among blacks." '"The fundamental, overwhelming fact is that Negro unemployment, with the exception of a few years during World War II and the Korean War, has continued at disaster levels for 35 years. Once again, this is particularly the case in the northern urban areas to which the Negro population has been moving.'" [snip] '"[H]igher family incomes are unmistakably associated with greater [black] family stability - which comes first may be a matter for conjecture, but the conjunction of the two characteristics is unmistakable.'"

Conditions in many American cities deteriorated dramatically as white flight, globalization, poor governance, drug trade ravaged urban America

"Moynihan's conclusion was controversial in 1965, and it still is today."  '"In a word, a national effort towards the problems of Negro Americans must be directed towards the question of family structure. The object should be to strengthen the Negro family so as to enable it to raise and support its members as do other families. After that, how this group of Americans chooses to run its affairs, take advantage of its opportunities, or fail to do so, is none of the nation's business.'" "Moynihan ends with this paragraph (boldface in source): 'The policy of the United States is to bring the Negro American to full and equal sharing in the responsibilities and rewards of citizenship. To this end, the programs of the Federal government bearing on this objective shall be designed to have the effect, directly or indirectly, of enhancing the stability and resources of the Negro American family.'" "To the debatable extent that the War on Poverty aimed toward 'enhancing the stability and resources of the Negro American family,' it failed -- miserably.  A case can be made that the effort led to an outcome opposite of its intention." "We are now in that worse future for the 'Negro' community that Moynihan predicted would happen with the wrong 'national effort'. For his presidential part, Barack Obama has done nothing to reverse the failed policies of the War on Poverty." "Had he truly been the transformational leader that some thought he would become, he would have declared the War on Poverty as lost and, therefore, over.  Then he would have led an altogether different approach to addressing a situation that has worsened since Moynihan's report.  But his response has been to push more of the same. " "Conditions in many American cities deteriorated dramatically as white flight, globalization (destroying the manufacturing base of many rust belt cities), poor governance and the drug trade ravaged urban America. The heavy police presence and law enforcement crackdowns sent a growing proportion of young black men to prison. Weak family structures, absent fathers, abysmal schools and the consequences of a culture in which drug abuse and violence were widespread placed almost insuperable barriers in the way of young generations of African Americans born into the inner cities." {snip}

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Trump may have aimed to reverse the plight of Blacks in the Big Blue Cities

"By now, the [in 2012] reader may be asking: How much worse will things get before the consequences are so socially traumatic as to require a dramatically new direction in city, state, and federal governments' policies and practices? After all, isn't doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome one definition of insanity?"

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