Afromerica recently published an article on the concept of double-mindedness using the Black conservative mind-set of Jesse Lee Peterson; and we thought we had it all figured out. But after more research on the phenomena of double-minded Uncle Tomism, the Black conservative mind-set of Larry Elder took our theory to another level.

The theory posses the question: How can one condemn the reactions of subject A if subject A is the result of the continued oppression of subject B? At what point does the actions of subject B be called into question? In other words, if one knows the root cause of the struggles of a people (their own people), why do they continue to make excuses for the oppressor? This seems to be the identity crises Larry Elder is facing in his own analysis of the Black problem below as he argues with himself from both sides of his mind.

Elder: President George W. Bush, according to Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., doesn't care about the poor...For, one certainly cannot accuse the president of indifference to the poor based on his actions. Since Bush took office, according to the Heritage Foundation, federal anti-poverty spending - including Medicaid, food and nutrition programs, housing, earned income tax credit and child credits, plus other programs - increased 42 percent.

This is nearly double the rate of increase under President Clinton. Some critics claim increased poverty has driven up poverty costs. But poverty rates have increased less than 1 percent under Bush and remain lower than the average poverty rates under Clinton.

Bush doesn't care about the poor? Let us count the ways.

Education: Under No Child Left Behind, Bush increased federal spending on education - in inflation-adjusted dollars - from 2001 to 2005 by 38 percent. During the same period, Education for the Disadvantaged Grants (this includes Title I) - the program designed to decrease the performance gap between urban and suburban school districts - received an inflation-adjusted increase of 58 percent. Bush increased spending on Education for Homeless Children and Youth by an inflation-adjusted 57 percent during those same years. Under Bush, federal spending for bilingual education has increased 44 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars since 2001. Bush has increased by 52 percent (from 2001) funding for Pell Grants used at technical schools and community colleges.

Elder: President Bush's 2005 budget included 12.5 percent more funding than in 2001 for job training and employment assistance. This comes to a total of $23 billion for 30 programs in nine agencies. The Trade Adjustment Assistance Program pays for job training for those "displaced" as a result of free trade. Bush, in his first four years in office, more than doubled the inflation-adjusted dollars spent on this program.

Elder: Minimum Wage. In "Free to Choose," Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman writes that before the imposition of minimum-wage laws, black teens were more likely to be employed than white teens. After the imposition of minimum-wage laws, an employment gap emerged between white and black teens, with black teens becoming increasingly less employed. Friedman finds "... the minimum-wage law to be one of the most, if not the most anti-black law on the statute books."

Afromerica: Truth is - Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report that showed a slight decrease in the overall unemployment rate - from 5.6 percent in June to 5.5 percent in July. But that wasn't the case for black folks. During that same period, the black unemployment rate increased from 10.1 percent to 10.9 percent. That was the highest increase among all groups. Also, the 306,000 jobs a month that Bush's tax cuts were supposed to generate haven't been realized.

While white unemployment inched up from 5.4 percent in May to 5.5 percent in June, black unemployment, already in double digits, soared from 10.8 percent to 11.8 percent in the same month (i.e., 10 times the increase in the white unemployment rate).

Elder: Community Service: The budget of the Corporation for National and Community Service - which includes funding for former President Bill Clinton's pet project, AmeriCorps - grew by an inflation-adjusted 76 percent from 1995 to 2005.

Elder: The War on Drugs. By making drugs illegal, lawmakers intended to target minorities - specifically blacks, Mexicans and Chinese. Former President Theodore Roosevelt's drug adviser warned, "Cocaine is often a direct incentive to the crime of rape by the Negroes." In "The American Disease," David Musto notes that prohibitions early in the 20th century, at least in part, targeted foreigners or minorities, including the allegedly opium-using Chinese. In 1937, the Marihuana Tax Act targeted Mexican immigrants.

Elder: Health Care: The federal share of Medicaid, the joint federal/state program, increased from $129 billion in 2001 to $176 billion in 2004, a 36 percent increase, averaging over 10 percent a year. Health research and regulation funding has gone from $42 billion in 2001 to $63 billion in 2004, a 48 percent increase.

Elder: Social Security. Although Congress did not intend for Social Security to disproportionately hurt blacks, it does. Blacks have a shorter life expectancy, and therefore get less out of the system. According to the CATO Institute, "A 1996 study by ... the RAND Corporation found ... a net lifetime transfer of wealth from blacks to whites averaging nearly $10,000 per person ... A 1998 study by the Heritage Foundation ... found that an average single black man will pay $13,377 more in payroll taxes over his lifetime than he will receive in benefits, a return of just 88 cents on every dollar paid in taxes."

Elder: Faith-based Initiatives: Tracking of faith-based spending only began in 2003, and was not broken out separately before then. Under President Bush, 600 religious organizations received federal grants for the first time in 2003 and 2004, and faith-based groups received 8 percent of available social service grants in 2003, and 10 percent in 2004.

Elder: SBA Loans: The Small Business Administration provided twice as many loans in 2004 than it did in 2001, providing over $19 billion in loans and venture capital to almost 88,000 small businesses. Over 30 percent of all loans and all loan dollars went to minorities in 2004, a 34 percent increase from 2003. From 2000 to 2004, the SBA backed more than 283,600 loans worth more than $63 billion, almost as much in those five years as the agency totaled in its first 40 years.

Elder: The Davis-Bacon Act. Introduced in 1927, this Act sought to shut out black workers from competing for construction jobs when whites complained that Southern blacks were hired to build a Long Island Veteran's Bureau hospital. In a labor market dominated by exclusionary unions demanding above-market wages, blacks at one time competed by working for less money than the unionists. Davis-Bacon stopped this by requiring federal contractors to pay prevailing union wages, causing massive black unemployment.

Elder: Homeownership: Half of all minority households are homeowners, an all-time high. In 2002, Bush vowed to increase minority homeownership by 5.5 million families by 2010. Bush pushed for programs on down payment assistance, and called for increased funding for housing counseling services.

Elder: Gun Control. Gun-control laws, in the beginning, sought to disarm blacks. Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, in the infamous Dred Scott case which defined blacks as property, said that if blacks were "entitled to the privileges and communities of citizens ... [i]t would give persons of the negro race ... the right ... to keep and carry arms wherever they went ... inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the state ..." In "Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story," author Antonia Felix describes the secretary of state's early years in the Jim Crow South. Rice watched her father and neighbors guard black neighborhoods with shotguns against armed, white vigilantes. Felix writes, "The memory of her father out on patrol lies behind Rice's opposition to gun control today. Had those guns been registered, she argues, Bull Connor would have had a legal right to take them away, thereby removing one of the black community's only means of defense."

Elder: Bottom line, under President Bush, the nation has seen the largest overall increase in inflation-adjusted spending since President Lyndon B. Johnson. Indeed, much to the chagrin of fiscal conservatives, President Bush's budgets - even excluding defense and homeland security spending - make him the biggest spending president in 30 years.

Elder: But, Bush doesn't care about the poor.

From one extreme to the other, Elder proves our theory, that someone can know and understand the root cause of the struggles behind Black America but continue to make excuses for the oppressor, which in this case is a structured white America. The conclusion we have reached is that the white structure is paying Elder and others enough to think and talk both ways. As quoted by Elder "as a member of the so-called rich, I welcome you to take a look at my 1040." Join us again in our research of double-mindedness, we are sure to find another case.

Sources from:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46806
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46457

© October 2005 By CR Hamilton

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