Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can Do About It

Rating:
Summary: Star Parker created a gem of a book
Review: As an African American I already knew about the liberals efforts of enslaving poor and especially minorities in america. Star Parker book is so thought provoken and honest, even a person of blind ignorannce and denial will have a hard time debating the overwhelming facts! I will say the book is hard edged in content and very truthful. WARNING:Some people might not be able to handle what is said in this book. The Truth.

Rating:
Summary: Freeing the Captives
Review: Few people will admit how analogous government dependence is to living on a plantation. Star Parker, once enslaved by "Big Government", is now unshackled and ready to expose her former master in her new book, Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can Do About It. She openly takes on "Uncle Sam" for keeping millions trapped in poverty.

A former "welfare queen" and current president and founder of the Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE), Parker courageously analyzes Big Government's system of dependency. She encourages those living on handouts to break the chains of poverty and find purpose and meaning in their lives.

In a follow-up to her first book, Pimps, Whores and Welfare Brats, where she handed down a stinging indictment against liberal politicians and the black leaders they exploit, Parker hits the mark once again in Uncle Sam's Plantation. "Uncle Sam has developed a sophisticated poverty plantation, operated by a federal government, overseen by bureaucrats, protected by the media elite, and financed by taxpayers."

The author knows of what she speaks. Parker lived a reckless life; she was promiscuous, had four abortions, smoked pot and burglarized people's homes. One day while looking for "under the table" cash to supplement her welfare check, she was given a Bible instead. She was told that her lifestyle was unacceptable to God.

Three years later, still on welfare, the pastor at her church preached to no one in particular, "What are you doing living on welfare?" At that moment, Parker says, she knew he was talking to her and felt a sense of personal responsibility for the choices she'd made.

"Before the pastor could finish his sermon," Parker writes, "my heart was stirring with the desire to find real purpose and meaning for my life." The next day, she wrote her caseworker and asked that her name be taken off the welfare rolls. Parker began to wrest the chains of dependency and hopelessness and dared to dream.

Parker's charges against the liberal establishment will move readers to challenge Big Government's plantation system. Tracing the shift in America's attitude from belief in strong families and hard work to the flawed idea that it's the government's role to solve social problems, the author contends that the Great Depression marked a turning point in the American conscience.

After the stock market crashed, fear caused people to turn to the government for help in the face of the "dark side of capitalism." Looking to the government for solutions became acceptable.

As increased racial tension and discrimination led blacks to demand civil rights, societal guilt over past wrongs in turn led to a lie still perpetuated today.

"Social engineers of the late 1960s told Americans that black people could not take control over the poverty in their lives due to centuries of racism and segregation," Parker writes. The onus was now on society to "fix" poverty. Thirty-five years later, taxpayers are still trying to fix it.

But poverty cannot be fixed with money, Parker asserts. Moral bankruptcy, caused by the scourge of relativism, must be overcome. Government "safety nets" allow people to escape the consequences of personal behavior (free health care, abortion on demand, sex education, affirmative action, etc.). As a result, there is little incentive to learn from bad behavior.

For example, by removing the man's responsibility to take care of his family, the welfare state has freed men to abandon their pregnant women, the author argues. The collapse of morals in America has virtually destroyed the black family.

Uncle Sam's Plantation offers more than Parker's personal journey; it's about what works and what doesn't. The author outlines in detail several "mission-critical" challenges to anyone who wants to respond constructively to race and poverty in America. These challenges include dismantling multiculturalism, abolishing affirmative action, allowing school choice and privatizing social security. Radical!

Parker's life is a testimony to her faith in God and determination not to waste the precious gift she's been given: freedom. Read for yourselves the first-hand account of a black single mother on welfare who dared to dream. Freedom and personal responsibility, not government dependence, are the answers to poverty.

Uncle Sam's Plantation will inspire you to resist the lie next time you hear it.

© 2004 La Shawn Barber

Rating:
Summary: Very Eye-Opening for a Caucasion Male
Review: Growing up a "privileged white male" has allowed for me to become complacent and fallen uninformed of America's most significant social ills. Star Parker's book has totally showed me the reality that people are facing everyday in this country. I expect this book to gain popularity as morally starved people look for explanation and direction in a difficult time to live.

Rating:
Summary: Good Ideas
Review: Have you ever read an opinionated book to which you agree with, but feel dissapointed, anyway? That describes Ms. Parker's book. Her diagnosis of the poor's plight--that they have been "trained" to be helpless through governmental action--is well documented. No objective observer could question that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton serve the interests of black Americans seeking to escape poverty.

One problem, however, with Parker's book is that it is mostly autobiographical and abstract. While her arguments were sound--the liberals have ruined our public schools, made the poor dependent on welfare and governmental goodies--she did not use a lot of outside sources to document specific instances of the problems she illustrates. Someone could be far more persuasive, however, if they were to abstractly describe the problem, and providing specific examples of how this came to be. Then, the author should provide a list of ways to improve this problem, along with specific examples and statistics which bulster the argument.

PROSE. Ms. Parker's prose is sadly quite weak. To attract a reader, write seductively. Words mean far more than simple communication; certain words minted together ignite certain neurotrino transmittors that define such ideas as "interesting."

Reforms: Ms. Parker deserves strong praise for her suggestions on school choice, Social Security reforms, and welfare reform. However, most of her ideas have been advanced elsewhere, such as the Cato Institute.

Michael

Rating:
Summary: Good Ideas
Review: Have you ever read an opinionated book to which you agree with, but feel dissapointed, anyway? That describes Ms. Parker's book. Her diagnosis of the poor's plight--that they have been "trained" to be helpless through governmental action--is well documented. No objective observer could question that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton serve the interests of black Americans seeking to escape poverty.

One problem, however, with Parker's book is that it is mostly autobiographical and abstract. While her arguments were sound--the liberals have ruined our public schools, made the poor dependent on welfare and governmental goodies--she did not use a lot of outside sources to document specific instances of the problems she illustrates. Someone could be far more persuasive, however, if they were to abstractly describe the problem, and providing specific examples of how this came to be. Then, the author should provide a list of ways to improve this problem, along with specific examples and statistics which bulster the argument.

PROSE. Ms. Parker's prose is sadly quite weak. To attract a reader, write seductively. Words mean far more than simple communication; certain words minted together ignite certain neurotrino transmittors that define such ideas as "interesting."

Reforms: Ms. Parker deserves strong praise for her suggestions on school choice, Social Security reforms, and welfare reform. However, most of her ideas have been advanced elsewhere, such as the Cato Institute.

Michael

Rating:
Summary: Today's Harriet Tubman
Review: I am yet to read this book, but I have listened to Ms. Parker speak on Dr. Dobsons radio program, and let me tell you something, this is one sharp Christian American! Ms. Parker has wisdom, and is a true woman of God. Liberals will most likely hate this book but that is exactly why we should buy it....If a liberal hates it, it must be good! People do not need big government, they need Jesus Christ. If we put our trust into Him, all things will fall into place. Ms. Parker believes this Truth, and that is why she is no longer a slave of Uncle Sam's Plantation.

Rating:
Summary: This book slams the poor
Review: I bought this book because the idea of an ex-welfare queen rehabilitated sounded pretty good. I myself am a born-again Christian and a conservative Republican and also a an ex-welfare recipient who successfully left the dole to a good job years ago. But after reading it found that the book has done more harm than good to those poor moms who have turned to the government for help.

Star Parker has based her views on welfare almost entirely upon her own experiences. She abused the welfare system and was lazy, so she now equates that to all mothers who have used it as also being "lazy." In this book, Star reduces the welfare mom as either lazy or "poor in spirit," a condition in which poverty is only in her mind. Personal responsibility means working outside of home, and never through her book does she recognize the work the mother does at home as true work. Because the mother receives government aid automatically qualifies her to either be "lazy" or "poor in spirit."

Those who don't care about the status of the poor mom will love this book. If one's goal is just to get the mom out of welfare and into "a job" -- any job, then this book is for you. Those who understand the value of raising your children and being at home for them, whether newborn or teens, will have compassion for the poor single mom and will look for other solutions.

One area of agreement with Star is the disappointment in the government in taking religion out of its programs. Whether the mom is married or promiscously unmarried, it doesn't matter. All can receive the same benefits without any care to one's moral condition which is a major problem with receiving government aid.

Interesting reading but sadly, lacks true Christian compassion for the overburdened single-mom who simply wants to raise her children.


Rating:
Summary: WHAT WAS THE SOLUTION??
Review: I consider myself a staunch Democrat, formerly independent, socially liberal, fiscally more moderate. I am a 44 year old White male and the Chairperson of the Political Action Committee for the NAACP and also on the Board of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

While Star makes some very good points and offers wonderful solutions, many of her solutions were not that viable years ago. The facts remain that African Americans, with all their vast contributions to this Great Nation, were overlooked. No matter your political affiliation, especially in the South, the right thing to have done was for the White man to offer their helping hand, love and respect, for our Black brothers and sisters and to assure equal treatment under the law. But this Great Nation certainly has it's flaws and stupidity. So, what was there left to do. Perhaps, a quick fix. Liberals thought by putting some money in their pockets would help them along. We had no ill intentions in mind and felt that since obtaining the piece of the pie was so much more difficult, we could divide up the money a bit. I grew up in the Northeast and saw the vast obstacles in making it in this White world of ours. Blacks who migrated up from the South to get away from inferior conditions, came to the big NE cities, only finding the Whites and their business, bouncing to the suburbs in droves, leaving cities in financial ruins. It takes money and jobs to fix up deteriorating homes and schools. You need jobs and all the good ones left. And since I lived in one of the most segregated suburbs in the US, only 16 miles from NYC, we redlined Blacks so they could only live in the cities or older suburbs surrounding the cities, where house prices were declining. We have now another generation in which Whites are swimming in proceeds from inheritances on their parents homes like my folks whose 1958, $23,000 split level now sells for over $400,000 while my Black friend's larger city home bought at the same time for $13,000, now can get $80,000. I am happy for this author's solution. It might just be a better idea. Help was needed desperately and I thank God for the good people who saw through all of this. Why don't White people just "DO THE RIGHT THING" in this world so none of this would have to exist. It makes me so ill to see what I saw working in two major cities growing up!

Rating:
Summary: No Excuses, Except for Me
Review: I find this little or no improvement over Star Parker's earlier book, Pimps, Whores and Welfare Brats and therefore combine my thoughts on the two. She's smoothed over a few events, such as the time she enticed an Air Force captain into hitting on her, then claimed she didn't know (We honkies do have our shortcomings!) if they actually had sex, but later (and then only gradually) realized that " . . . what he did was wrong." In her new book she morphs that episode into a rape by the captain.

Bitching about government takes no courage, especially when the bitching echoes opinions of the country's wealthy, and it need not (and often does not) involve rational thought. On the other hand, it can provide a good living if done with a little pizzazz. Star Parker's books mirror her lectures, and tell how bad the rest of us are. If only we'd get off our asses and go to work, everything would be all right. In these hare-brained rants, Star Parker relates her wild years growing up, such as when she and a few cohorts played the old Murphy game on unsuspecting rubes, and other times when she posed as a hooker on street corners. Now that she's making her bread by preaching to choir-mates at the Christian Coalition, Heritage Foundation and Republican political conferences, it confirms she's back on the corner, if only metaphorically.

Explaining her adventures with the welfare system, Star says she was, ". . . caught up in the welfare cycle, seduced by the easy living and the carefree allure . . ." as well as " . . . its magical, sometimes luxurious hold." Wow!!! Those I've known who would have reveled in welfare's carefree allure and its magical, luxurious hold - had those delights existed - failed to notice them.

Although she often points out wherever racial bias was used against her, she pooh-poohs the thought that it might cause others any harm. Moreover, all the girl's troubles, her many sex partners, her abortions, her criminal acts, etc. were caused by something or somebody else. It was government, especially that nefarious part of it foisted on unsuspecting blacks by liberals. Many blacks who get a leg up in this society abhor the failures of liberalism, but apparently don't want to recognize that without liberalism's successes, conservatives in this country would have kept them all back in the cotton fields. But Star's never at fault, as in her analysis: "If just one person had said, 'Star, what you're doing is wrong,' it might have changed the destiny of my life." One wonders why such advice wasn't necessary for her sisters and brother, who - it appears - turned out to be pretty good people, despite having the same background.

I came out of high school with nothing more than a few brains and a white face, neither of which I had earned but which made me rich in light of the times. Throughout seven years of higher education (all supported by government) and then later with my two businesses (with little or no government obstruction) I've lived a very good life . . . and I'm a committed liberal. But I confess that sometimes - such as when books like these percolate out of the conservative cesspool - I regret some of the liberalism of the past 150 years. Without all that smarmy liberalism, Star would be back in her rightful place up in the mansion, doing special favors for Massa . . . all the while bitching about the laziness of the field-hands.

Rating:
Summary: (4 1/2) Wonderful Insights Gained From Personal Experience
Review: I first met Star Parker several years ago when she spoke at a conference which I attended. I was impressed both by the story of her personal journey and her articulateness in discussing many of the problems which face our society today; thus I made the effort to speak with her after her presentation and have subsequently become a contributor to her organization CURE, the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education. She was kind enough to mail copies of her book to her supporters last year when it was first published; now that I have finally found the time to read it I highly recommend it to any reader interested in the inspiring personal story of someone who has not only overcome the destructive effects of the problems frequently keeping the underclass in poverty and addicted to welfare (as well as personal tragedy which would have overwhelmed many individuals), but who has also utilized the lessons drawn from her experience to preach the gospel of self reliance, faith (in both ourselves and the existence of a higher power who can provide us strength and direction) and individual responsibility as the crucial elements which will empower individuals to escape the poverty trap of the welfare system.

Star Parker doesn't hesitate to speak truth to power, since she has the credentials to do so. She has lived the self destructive and joyless life so prevalent in the welfare community and she has overcome incredible obstacles (often self imposed). Thus, while anyone can fairly disagree with her often controversial conclusions and recommendations, she clearly has the moral legitimacy to present them. These are insights invariably gained from personal experience and sharpened by an enquiring mind. The key thesis of this book is captured by the subtitle - HOW BIG GOVERNMNT ENSLAVES AMERICA'S POOR AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT. She begins by attempting to define and characterize the poor, she discusses three broad categories of those individuals united by their lack of money. The first is those who are "economically challenged", who she meaningfully separates into the "weary poor" vs. the "hopeful poor". The second category is the "lazy poor", who can be subdivided into "the careless, the sluggards and the scoffers". Finally, there are the poor in spirit, or "the broken". While these are obviously not precisely defined groups based on rigorous academic study, they are very useful constructs which spring from her practical experience. These groupings serve two purposes. First, to remind us that poverty is not a homogeneous problem with a single set of solutions, but rather a complex issue best addressed by "creating new possibilities for those who still can be helped, one person at a time." Second, these practically descriptive terms are much more effective than the usual academic and political jargon in reminding us directly that much of the poverty in which many of these individuals are apparently hopelessly mired seems to be as much a result of their attitudes and expectations (victimology and/or entitlement) rather than being an inevitable outcome of their circumstances.

The author is willing to attack the sacred cows of both the left and right, and is critical of both the liberal belief that racism (as the legacy of slavery) is still an impossible barrier for blacks to overcome without government help and also of President Bush's suggestion of government support for successful faith based initiatives in the private sector. (She correctly recognizes that government support means that they will loose the flexibility and moral legitimacy that is conferred upon them by being truly private and thus totally voluntary.) After outlining in detail her criticisms of the "poverty plantation operated by a federal government, overseen by bureaucrats, protected by the media elite, and financed by taxpayers", she proceeds to her "mission-critical challenges" and a six pronged agenda as a response to the interrelated problems of race and poverty. First, "dismantle so-called multiculturalism". Second, "abolish affirmative action". Third, "Abandon the faith-based initiative". Fourth, "personalize welfare services". Fifth, allow school choice". Sixth, "personalize social security". Certainly, implementation of this radical agenda would strengthen the role of personal responsibility in society and at the same time arguably promote freedom and broaden the opportunities for individuals to escape poverty as opposed to simply subsisting on the life support provided by the current welfare system.

As I have previously said, this book describes the devastating effects of government dependency not from an academic perspective but rather through the eyes of someone who has escaped from the addiction which entraps so many individuals. The book is almost conversational in tone, yet provides many powerful philosophical insights and much well reasoned discussion. At times, some of the imagery created by the author's prose almost becomes poetic. While I was familiar with both the author's background and much of her philosophy, I still found the book both enjoyable and thought provoking. My only major criticism and the primary reason that I did not rate it a full five stars is her overemphasis (in my opinion) on the importance, indeed necessity, of the religious component as an essential element in her proposed reforms and involvement of the private sector. For many individuals (myself definitely included), this is undoubtedly a major factor in their ability to overcome the obstacles which they face, as it has been for her. (And as it also is for those who experience physical addiction and join such organizations as NA and AA.) Nevertheless, I would have been pleased to see a somewhat more pluralistic approach, and a recognition that personal empowerment can be achieved by individuals through a variety of means more diverse than she recognizes here.

Tucker Andersen