Rebuilding
New Orleans and the black family
September 6th 2005
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Rebuilding New
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Of all the
horrific pictures of New Orleans, the pictures of African
Americans are the most troubling and telling. I’m speaking of
the pictures showing lawless black men looting and shooting,
obese black women trying to walk to safety with their
children, and thousands of blacks waiting for the government,
or “the man,” to rescue them.
The pictures
show what happens when the government fails to perform its
most important role of protecting life and liberty, and what
happens when it exceeds the role by doing things for people
that they should do for themselves.
I am not
referring to what the government should have done to protect
New Orleans from Level 4 hurricanes or what it is doing after
Katrina to help the victims. I’m referring to two historical
injustices inflicted on blacks: 1) the failure of various
governments to protect their lives and liberty for centuries,
by allowing slavery and then Jim Crow; and 2) the U.S.
government’s efforts over the last 40 years to remedy the
failure with misguided programs and policies, especially the
Great Society, which atomized inner-city black families, made
black men superfluous,
and resulted in black women becoming dependent on the
government instead of the fathers of their children.
No doubt, if
the government had performed its most important role for
centuries and had not exceeded the role for decades, pictures
of blacks after the hurricane would be different from what
they are today. The pictures would be the same as pictures of
whites. Inner-city blacks would not be more lawless, more
dependent, more unruly, and more obese than whites. Nor would
they have less money, less education and fewer options than
whites. And the same percentage of blacks as whites would
have left New Orleans in private automobiles before Katrina
hit.
Before the
Great Society did its damage, I worked as a teenager as the
only white on a black maintenance and janitorial crew at an
exclusive country club upriver from New Orleans in St. Louis,
Mo. For extra money, I would wash and wax the big Pontiacs
and Oldsmobiles of the blacks who waited tables in the country
club’s restaurant. Former Pullman waiters, they were better
mannered than the club members. Despite the legacy of slavery
and Jim Crow, and despite the awful conditions in segregated
ghettos, blacks were on the ascendancy, due in large part to
black men behaving like men and not as yet being replaced as
husbands and fathers by the state.
The silver
lining in the hurricane is that the government has an
opportunity to rebuild inner-city black families as it
rebuilds New Orleans. It will take hundreds of billions of
dollars to rebuild New Orleans. The money should be spent in
a way that restores self-reliance and industriousness in the
inner-city, and gives black men an incentive to behave like
responsible citizens. Instead of sitting in refugee camps
doing nothing, they should be taught construction skills and
other skills. And instead of returning them to public
housing, they should be given the opportunity to build their
own housing and gain financially from sweat equity.
Yes, the
devil is in the details. But as the pictures from New Orleans
show, there is a worse devil in keeping inner-city blacks
dependent on the government.
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By
Craig J. Cantoni
Honest Americans
Against Legal Theft (HAALT)
www.haalt.org
An author and
columnist, Mr. Cantoni has published a new book, Breaking
from the Herd: Political Essays for Independent Thinkers by a
Maverick Columnist. He can be reached at
ccan2@aol.com.
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