Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 9, 1994 TAG: 9412100042
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Cox News Service
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Some have been ``on the county'' themselves, as welfare recipients are called. But an increasingly vocal segment of conservative blacks are calling for the welfare system to be smashed.
Their movement includes grass-roots pro-family groups and fledgling publications. It spawned Black America's Political Action Committee to help elect more conservative blacks to office.
The goal is to ``end the near-monopoly liberals now enjoy over black voters,'' former Reagan administration official Phyllis Berry-Myers said when she helped formally launch the group this fall.
Newly elected members of Congress will get a taste of the anti-welfare viewpoint this weekend in Baltimore at an orientation sponsored by the Heritage Foundation.
Among the featured speakers Saturday will be a member of the Black America's PAC board, Star Parker, a welfare mother turned Christian conservative activist.
Parker, who grew up in South Central Los Angeles, pulls no punches as she calls for ``totally'' abolishing the existing welfare system, which in the early 1980s sent her checks when she became a single mother.
``As we continue to subsidize it, we have just encouraged more out-of-wedlock births,'' said Parker, who uses herself as Exhibit A as she speaks on talk shows and college campuses across the country.
``I quit my job to go on welfare'' in the early 1980s, she says. ``I did it because I didn't want to go to work. It was easier.''
Welfare encourages ``a lifestyle of no responsibility whatsoever,'' she says.
When her daughter was 31/2, Parker underwent a religious regeneration, stopped her welfare payments ``cold turkey'' and took a part-time job answering telephones.
Since then, she has founded the conservative Coalition on Urban Affairs, which has about 10,000 members, about one-third of whom are black. She also has married and had a second child.
Through a local radio program, a magazine and visits to churches, she preaches the gospel of moral discipline, work ethic and independence from welfare, a system she blames for sapping the spiritual and mental strength out of the black community.
Such ideas have sparked anger. Parker needed an armed escort for an appearance on the Jerry Springer talk show in South Central Los Angeles. And a discussion on ``Geraldo'' turned into a shouting match with a liberal commentator.
``We've sent out a wrong message through our welfare system, and now people aren't trying,'' Parker says. ``... One more generation of this and we will have a permanent underclass of people who cannot mobilize themselves.''
Even the idea of orphanages - if they are privately run - should be discussed, she says. She proposes ending all welfare for underage mothers, requiring them to live with their parents. For those who can't do that, she suggests group homes, or tax breaks for families willing to house the teen-ager and child.
by CNB