Former Florida Rep. Allen West (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)
(CNSNews.com) – Former Florida Rep. Allen West asserted Friday that liberal policies were responsible for the high unemployment and out-of-wedlock births in the African-American community.
“These are the unintended consequences of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs and the war on poverty, when he came out and said if you just give a woman a check for having a child out of wedlock without having a father in the home you will be helping them,” West said at the Road to Majority conference at the J.W. Marriott hotel in Washington sponsored by the Faith & Freedom Coalition.
“If we’re not careful with the progressive, socialist programs, that they have to destroy our inner cities, to destroy and breakdown the family, then guess what you get,” West continued.
West stated that only 29 percent of black children have mothers and fathers.
“That is not the black community that I grew up in,” West said. “How many black children will be able to celebrate Father's Day this coming Sunday?”
He said this is why it is necessary to have conservative values to strengthen the black family.
“When you look at the unemployment in the black community today, almost 14 percent, reported unemployment, almost 33 percent black teenage unemployment, all you have to do is look at Detroit,” West said. “Some of you at this beautiful hotel and go into some of the black neighborhoods here in Washington, D.C. to see how progressive policies have broken down the family unit in what used to be the strongest family community that this country ever knew.”
West said the first black conservative was Booker T. Washington, an early civil rights activist and writer at the turn of the 20th Century.
“Booker T. Washington’s program was based on three things. It was based on education, entrepreneurship and self-reliance,” West said. Don’t forget, one of the first things President Obama did when he came into office in January or February 2009 was he cancelled the D.C. school voucher program. No one challenged him on that. No one said anything about that.”
“I grew up in a neighborhood in Atlanta where I could walk past Ebenezer Baptist Church, and I could see black entrepreneurship. I saw doctor’s offices, lawyer’s offices. I could see professionals. I could see banks,” West said. “What do you see now? It’s a shell of itself with boarded up windows. If we cannot get economic success back into the black community, you will continue to see Detroit.”