On March 20th Star Parker went to American University to talk about race and poverty issues. The event was sponsored by the University’s College Republicans and co-sponsered by Kalpa Alpha Si. Star Parker is the founder and president of CURE. Acording to the website CURE is the “Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education, a 501c3 non-profit think tank that provides a national voice of reason on issues of race and poverty in the media, inner city neighborhoods, and public policy.” (http://www.urbancure.org/starparker.asp)
When talking about poverty she gave 5 steps of getting out of it. One of the steps was work. Working results in self-empowerment from having a work ethic. She relates this back to children. Giving children chores can be a way to identify what talents they have. Her example was she was told to wash the dishes as a child but persuaded her siblings to do it for her. She believed this was early evidence of being an entrepreneur. Since work was one of the steps it is necessary that the poor communities have jobs available. In order for those who want to be entrepreneurs need fewer laws and red tap and the less taxes on businesses. Also that labor law and union participation has to be addressed.
Another step was education. This related to a topic she felt strongly about school choice and vouchers. This means even though it is mandatory that children are sent to school their parents should have a choice of where to send them. Parker said the poor people get trapped in the system, instead of getting basic skills they are learning about sex education. Only way out of the system she believes is vouchers. Vouchers are a way of giving funding for school to families instead of school districts. http://www.schoolchoices.org/roo/vouchers.htm
Charity was added as a step as well. She spoke about charity empowering local communities. Including the work of Christians helping their communities.
When it came to the Q and A session a number of questions were her opinion on the hip-hop community, no child left behind act, and Social Security Reform. Being that Star Parker response to the hip hop community was that is was public policy and only way to get rid of it was to reduce desire for it through community, involvement and individual decisions.
From the event it is obvious Star Parker knows a lot of information to support her views. She provided a lot of stats on single headed households, number of people in welfare programs, pregnancies out of wedlock birth rate, etc. Besides factual information she also had great personality with a sense of humor and stayed after the event to talk with students and take pictures.
1 comment:
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