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July 16, 2022

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is holding its 113th National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  Its media release claims its “workshops and discussions” will “promote solutions to some of the most pressing issues facing Black communities.”  It identified four of those issues as “voter suppression, student debt, police brutality and reproductive rights.” 

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Do those four issues relate to any of the real causes of unequal poverty, violence, and misery in Black communities today?

Don’t Black Americans consistently vote in higher number than almost any other racial or ethnic or racial group in almost every election?  Isn’t most “student debt” incurred by white students who obtain masters and doctorate degrees?  And besides, isn’t “student debt” really a secondary issue?  Aren’t obscenely high and unsustainable college tuitions and fees the real problem?

Is “police brutality” the cause of violence and anger in Black communities?  Or are police called in to deal with the violence and anger of far too many young black men?  Thomas Sowell described and explained them in his 2005 book Black Rednecks and White Liberals.

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Finally, why are “reproductive rights” a “pressing issue” for Black Americans.  In 2017, the most recent year I could document, there were 851,000 abortions and 3,855,500 live births in America.  Roughly 18% of all pregnancies in America ended with an abortion.  However, among Black Americans, there were 295,000 abortions and 870,000 live births.  Roughly 34% of all Black pregnancies ended in abortion. How have black communities benefitted from this since 1973?  Supporting “reproductive rights” mean opposing a movement that questions and seeks to limit mass produced abortions used as birth control, including barbaric abortions in the eighth and ninth months of pregnancy?  How does that benefit Black communities?

Meanwhile, these four issues seem far more pressing: 

1. More than 64% of all Black children in America are raised in one-parent families. That is more than three times higher than the percentage of one-parent households for any other racial or ethnic group in the world.

2.  Each year, roughly 10,000 Black Americans are murdered or otherwise deliberately killed each year, almost entirely by other Black Americans.

3. According to the Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress, 84 percent of Black students lack prohficiency in mathematics and 85 percent of Black students lack proficiency in reading skills. 

4.  Almost every NAACP workshop and discussion in some way blames whites for every failure of blacks to achieve equality in America.  Stephen R. Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People observed that most people who succeed in reaching their goals are “pro-active.”  They focus on things they can control, such as their attitude, education, skills to learn, enthusiasm, habits, useful hobbies, etc.   Those who fail tend to be “reactive” and blame others for their situation.  Are the NAACP and white and Black Democrats promoting a “reactive” culture of failure in the black community?