Racial Injustice
Or Lack of Responsibility?
By Daniel Muniz
 

I and many others campaign for young people to stay in school, to graduate and not to make babies until they are prepared to be parents. My son and I write and teach about personal financial responsibility. Personal responsibility is critical. But personal responsibility alone cannot overcome the effects of a discriminatory criminal justice and economic system in generating broken families and broken dreams. -Rev. Jesse Jackson Chicago Tribune Editorial

Poverty warriors and racial arsonists now have to pay at least a little bit of lip service to personal responsibility as well as to the other cultural factors that contribute to poverty. They don’t care if they get scolded by conservatives but they are greatly alarmed that the general public won’t let slackers on the government dole off the hook.

The government has already devoted decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to eradicate poverty in the United States but too many programs have ended up in embarrassing failures. And after all these years, there are now plenty of taxpayers who are sick and tired of shoveling even more money into wasteful projects that don’t really work especially when there are millions of recipients who are blatantly ripping off the system. In fact, there is now a segment of the middle class that feels that they too should be entitled to welfare benefits.
 

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This revolt has caused activists to shift tactics. Whereas they once shunned and denigrated the concept of individual personal responsibility, poverty warriors now publicly embrace it. However, the important distinction is that these activists only embrace the concept but not the actual practice of it.

Just talking about personal responsibility is enough to cover all the bases and to get the public off their backs when angling for more government money. But the problem is that these activists have absolutely no intention of holding people accountable for making bad decisions and for exercising poor judgment. And they certainly won’t reprimand the slackers who are endlessly abusing our entitlement programs.

But to the chagrin of poverty warriors and the racial arsonists, there are actually a few people who have risen up to not only question the mush that gets passed off as social reform, but they have the temerity to criticize it. For example, comedian Bill Cosby created quite a firestorm in the black community and with white liberals when he had the audacity to start holding the feet of poor people to the fire. He blasted the outrageous and irresponsible behavior in the ghettos and challenged impoverished people to strive to have better goals in life.

Needless to say, Bill Cosby embarrassed a number of black community leaders. On the Larry King Show, he explained how he was admonished for airing out the dirty laundry of the African-American community. He responded by demanding why the black community wants to keep their dirty laundry dirty.

I am not black so I cannot address the specific issues within the African-American community but I am Hispanic and I grew up poor and in the barrio. And I can say from first hand experience that personal responsibility alone will always have the biggest role in getting out of poverty. Racial arsonists can harp all they want about how terrible this country is but at the end of the day, people still have to accountable for their actions.

There may not be a whole lot of things in life that someone can control while growing up poor but the single most important factor that is under your complete control is personal responsibility. Making good decisions and exercising sound judgment not only prevents a bad situation from getting worse, it creates the path out of poverty.

As I was growing up in the barrio, I was surrounded by plenty of awful examples of bad behavior such as rampant drug use, petty and violent crime, 13 year olds having babies, teenage fathers, truancy, and high school dropouts. Bad judgment can easily ruin any chance of ever leaving the barrio or the ghetto and making multiple bad decisions practically guarantees that you would never escape poverty.

As a result, my parents were strict with us. We couldn’t skip out of school or stay out at all hours of the night or go to wild parties. In fact, my folks made education a huge priority. We had to study for tests, turn in homework, and pass all of our classes. My mother and father were also nosy parents who kept us out of trouble because they strongly believed that being impoverished was absolutely no excuse for making the wrong decisions that could ruin our lives.

Overall, the good example of my parents laid the foundation for us to make good choices in life. But more to the point, it wasn’t the government that pulled us out of the barrio; it was avoiding bad behavior by making good decisions and exercising sound judgment that propelled us into the great middle class.

What Jesse Jackson will not accept is the harsh reality that the government and society does not create “broken families and broken dreams” and a government solution is not going solve to the problems of poor people.

Although activists can play the race card and blame a racist society for the root cause to explain why minorities are impoverished, making bad personal decisions is still the sole reason why there are broken families and broken dreams in the ghettos and barrios. I am so grateful that my parents never wanted to play the victim game or wait around for the government to rescue them. Instead, they worked hard and played by the rules and that is what really got them out of poverty.

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