Poverty Is A State Of Mind - The Slave Mentality Of Entitlement

Washington, DC Mayor for Life Marion Barry was a master politician who remained in power for decades thanks to walkin' around money, no-show jobs, and millions of dollars paid from the public treasury to reward his constituents.  To black Washington he was a hero, to white Washington he was nothing but a crook, thief, and con man. 

 

Remembered for 'It'll melt', his retort to wealthy white residents who complained that snow still made their streets impassable and demanded municipal action; 'Get over it', to the same white voters who in a bloc voted to remove him from office but whose efforts were for naught as black Washington overwhelmingly returned him; and 'The bitch set me up', an angry response to federal agents who had burst in on him smoking crack, Mayor Barry was impervious to white justice, deaf to white concerns, and a champion of Ward 8. 

LaShonda Evans was  an old Barry girlfriend he had met on one of his walk-arounds.  She, a brazen, cocky, uppity black woman, child of the streets, high bitch and nobody's fool offered herself to the Mayor and said, 'No strings attached', the kind of woman Barry liked, befriended, kept in his harem and called upon when needed.  

Each woman in the harem had a particular allure - Letitia with the long, ferocious nails he loved raked along his back; LaToya who howled like a she-wolf when she sat on his face; and the lovely Mabel, church-going daughter of an Alabama preacher come to the Nation's Capital for wealth and some kind of recognition after a miserable childhood in a tarpaper shack, who prayed over him as she worked his body to a fever pitch. 

Yet LaShonda was Sultaness of the harem, the primus inter pares among women but also counselor, consigliere, and confidant in business matters.  Together they ran every kind of scam, scheme, and subterfuge to bilk white people out of their millions, siphon it to the poor, and take a hefty cut for themselves.  Kickbacks were child's play to these two - a few million from a developer, another few from the construction company - what they wanted was a steady gross income, a reliable source of funds for 'The Community'; and so they invented financial instruments the envy of Enron and the Wall Street Ponzi schemes of Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. 

Barry and LaShonda led the good life.  She, as Chairwoman of Pride, Honor, And Courage the NGO cover that was accredited by the city council, was the liaison, the ombudsman, the intermediary between the Mayor and white liberal Washington, easy marks for their universal support for the black man, racial pride, and the social and economic progress of the inner city.  

These dyed-in-the-wool progressives bit their tongues at voting time - the black man might be the rightful heir to human regency and soon would sit atop the social pyramid, but Barry's indifferent mismanagement of their tax dollars nettled, a burr under the saddle.  So they invested in private, non-profit agencies like LaShonda's, hoping that their monies would be put to better use than the no-questions-asked entitlement money engineered by Barry. 

It was brilliant.  Barry appropriated millions in shady doings via the tax system and unofficial emoluments from big capitalist developers who simply wrote Barry's favors into their balance sheets; and political liberals - public interest lawyers, professors, and social reform lobbyists - added to the Mayor's coffers via LaShonda and her agency. In short, white Washington was dunned, bilked, threatened, and cajoled and poured millions Barry's way. 

Now Anacostia, the deep, dark, nastiest slum of Washington is fly-over territory for white Washingtonians, and even those with the greatest fervor for the plight of the black man stay away.  No Congressional oversight, no federal agency investigation ever set foot anywhere near it, and so the money poured in was absorbed, sucked, savored, and forgotten. 

From a governance point of view, it was the perfect storm - a devaluation of enterprise, the perpetuation of a culture of entitlement, and enough free money to keep the crack flowing, the police at bay and personal responsibility far from the door.  

It was a case of moral collusion at its worst.  White liberal Washington felt that poor blacks were entitled to a free ride after centuries of slavery and Jim Crow.  Black official Washington saw easy money to be made from the ghetto and perpetual power guaranteed, Congress had written off the District under the cover of Home Rule and didn't think too much of what they considered a racial sinkhole within sight of the Capitol, and as long as developers got to build to the height limit, they were happy. 

'Poverty is a state of mind', said former black Trump cabinet member Ben Carson, a man who had rejected entitlement, and was brought up with American entrepreneurial values and ambitions.  He refused to be enslaved by affirmative action, DEI, and white patronage.  The only way out of the perpetual black slum, was subscription to white values. 

For this he was dunned and hammered, an Uncle Tom, a turncoat, a traitor to his people; but he was undaunted.  The longer the black man bowed to black massas, let themselves be used and abused by preachers, drug runners, and ho's, he would be pimped to death, left to die of a bullet to the head on the very street where he was born. 

Mayor Barry and LaShonda Evans are long gone, but little has changed in Anacostia or official Washington. The City Council appropriates millions in barely disguised walkin' around money - self-help schemes, drug rehabilitation centers, community organizations, programs of diversity, equity, and inclusivity - without an iota of accountability.  Black preachers, aided, abetted, and financed by white liberals continue to crow about endemic, systemic racism. Teachers unions continue their fight against school choice, and despite over $25K per student annually, the schools are little more than lockups.  Truancy is over 50 percent, and performance is among the worst in the nation.

President Donald Trump has expressed a personal interest in the affairs of the District of Columbia.  It is intolerable, he says, to have the seat of federal government within the most poorly governed, shamelessly entitled, indifferent city in the nation. Only by withdrawing all federal funds for the hopelessly racist, political schemes that have been business as usual for the District, and by insisting on a sink-or-swim ethos of individual responsibility, can there be any hope for the persistently rotting, foul, and crime-ridden slums of the capital. 

We wish him luck.