Don’t Miss Star Parker’s Cure for Racial Polarization

The Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder has a sneak preview of American Experiment’s next lunch forum coming up on Tuesday November 7. The forum features conservative author and political activist Star Parker, who didn’t hold back in the Spokesman-Recorder interview.

Parker is an unabashedly Black female conservative. She once ran for Congress in 2010 as a Republican in California but lost to her Democratic opponent. “I am not alone,” she proudly announced. “That’s probably why I am so bold.”

“Blacks and Whites are polar opposites when it comes to the role of government,” she said. “Whites trust local [government] and not the Feds. Blacks do not trust local [government] and trust the Fed. As a conservative, you are trying to reduce the size of government.”

As a result, she is against federal government influence and its seemingly unsuccessful attempts to eradicate U.S. poverty. “We have been in poverty for 50 years; the victim of the war on poverty is family life,” Parker stressed. “We have concentrated poverty. What has happened in our most distressed communities is not about ethnicity anymore. Some people will pretend that it is.”

Parker’s compelling personal journey from welfare mother to conservative advocate and author led her to start a public policy organization called the  Center for Urban Renewal and Education. In the Spokesman-Recorder interview, Star shared some of the issues certain to come up in her noon speech at the Minneapolis Hilton on Tuesday. Her topic is “The Inner-City Fix: How Improving Our Communities Will Cure Racial Polarization.”

There are Blacks who don’t see racism as the lone reason why after “four generations…their children are still stuck in underperforming schools,” and wonder why a large income gap still exists between Blacks and Whites in this country, continued Parker. In 1995, she started her own think tank, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE), now based in Washington, D.C. for the past 10 years.

“We look for all types of answers,” she said. “I knew we needed to develop new leaders, and that’s why I started CURE,” which was originally called the Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education.

You can still get tickets to see Star Parker on November 7 at the downtown Minneapolis Hilton at www.americanexperiment.org or by calling 612-584-4557. The complete Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder piece on Star Parker can be read here.