One of the main reasons given for the historic political shift in American is racism. The media has constantly portrayed the Trump camp as a bunch of racist bigots. Just as CNN’s Van Jones stated on election night: “We’ve talked about everything but race tonight,” he said. “This was a white-lash against a changing country. It was a white-lash against a black president, in part. And that’s the part where the pain comes.” Today one of the common reasons given for many of the problems in black communities is racism. Recently we have seen many professional athletes refusing to stand during the singing of the national anthem in an attempt to bring attention to the problem of social inequality in our country. So here is my question, “Are people more racist in America today than they were in the 60’s?” While I believe that racism is still a problem in America I personally don’t believe that we are more racist today than we were then. That was a disgustingly dark time in our countries history when communities, collages, even busses and drinking fountains were divided. So here is my second question, if we are not as racist as we were then why are things worse in black communities today than they were then? According to a report released by the Urban Institute, the state of the African-American family is worse today than it was in the 1960’s. Unemployment for African-American men remains more than twice as high as among white men. For white men in 1954, unemployment was zero. For African-American men in 1954, it was about 4 percent. By 2010 it was 16.7 percent for African-American men and 7.7 percent for white men. In 1954, 79 percent of African-American men were employed, but by 2011 that had decreased to 57 percent. If racism was worse then than it is now and yet social issues are worse today then one would have to assume that racism is not the main disease destroying them. I’m not denying that racism isn’t alive or that it isn’t a problem I’m saying that based on the facts it doesn’t appear to be what’s driving the poverty and prison rates. So what is? Could it be a parental problem? Since the 1960’s there has been a steady decline in the family. Of the 27 industrialized countries studied in 2009 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. had 25.8 percent of children being raised by a single parent, compared with an average of 14.9 percent across the other countries. In the African American community, 72 percent of Black children are raised in a single parent household. So let’s talk about single family homes and poverty. Today two-parent black families are rarely poor, statistics show that among black families where both the husband and wife work full-time, the current poverty rate is just 2 percent. Much of the poverty is found in single parent families. Children in single-parent households are not only raised with economic hardship but they also face social and psychological disadvantages. Statistics show that they are four times as likely as children from two parent families to be abused or neglected. They are much likelier to have trouble academically, being twice as likely to drop out of school. They are three times more likely to have behavioral problems, more apt to experience emotional disorders. They are two-and-a-half times likelier to be sexually active as teens and almost twice as likely to conceive children out-of-wedlock when they are teens or young adults. They are also three times more likely to be on welfare when they reach adulthood. Facts also teach us that growing up without a father is a far better forecaster of a boy’s future criminality than either race or poverty. Regardless of race, 70 percent of all young people in state reform institutions were raised in fatherless homes, as were 60 percent of rapists, 72 percent of adolescent murderers, and 70 percent of long-term prison inmates. As Heritage Foundation scholar Robert Rector has noted, “Illegitimacy is a major factor in America’s crime problem. Lack of married parents, rather than race or poverty, is the principal factor in the crime rate.” Because the black illegitimacy rate is so high, these pathologies plague blacks more than they affect any other demographic. Black economist and professor Walter E. Williams states “Even if white people were to become morally rejuvenated tomorrow,”, “it would do nothing for the problems plaguing a large segment of the black community. Illegitimacy, family breakdown, crime, and fraudulent education are devastating problems, but they are not civil rights problems.” Yet this runs contrary to the picture that the media has been painting as they keep spoon feeding society the lie that poverty problems are just a by-products of racism. That view, through decades of constant repetition, has won the minds of many Americans. “Instead of admitting that racism has declined,” observes Shelby Steele, “we [blacks] argue all the harder that it is still alive and more insidious than ever. We hold race up to shield us from what we do not want to see in ourselves.” The astronomical illegitimacy rate in black communities is a relatively recent phenomenon. Statistics show us that as late as 1950 black women nationwide were more likely to be married than white women, and only 9 percent of black families with children were headed by a single parent. In the 1950s, black children had a 52 percent chance of living with both their biological parents until age seventeen, but by the 1980s those odds had dwindled to a mere 6 percent. In 1959, only 2 percent of black children were reared in households in which the mother never married while today that figure is fast approaching 60 percent. In their landmark book America in Black and White, Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom make this profoundly important observation: “In the past three decades the proportion of intact married-couple families has declined precipitously even though the fraction of black women aged fifteen to forty-four who were divorced, separated, or widowed also went down.… It is thus not divorce but the failure to marry that has led to such a momentous change in black family patterns. The marriage rate for African Americans has plummeted in the past third of a century. In 1960 … black women were only a shade less likely to marry than white women…. Today a clear majority of African American women aged fifteen to forty-five have never been married, as compared with just a third of their white counterparts…. Many fewer black women are marrying, and yet they continue to have children—which was not the case in an earlier era.” Am I suggesting that racism is not a problem or that I am somehow ignorant or naïve, no in fact I can attest first hand that racism is alive all over the world. When a group of 30 men from our church went to New Orleans to rebuild after hurricane Katrina in 2005, many of the black families I helped had anger and even hatred for Hispanic people. Rap music regularly repeats racist remarks. I was born and raised in Africa and I repeatedly heard and watched different tribes not only disrespect but full out hate each other, black on black. Later living in the Middle East I watched Arabs treat Indian families as second class citizens, at the time there were more Indian workers than Arabs living in the country.  While completing my education in England I watched racism alive and well between white people just because they were from different European countries. Racism is not an American problem it’s a human problem. Look hate is a heart issue something the great Martin Luther King understood.  You see we have a sin issue not a skin issue and that is why Jesus died for the world not just for whites. What if Jesus had died only for Jews? Speaking of Jews have you ever wondered why there are so few I mean after thousands of years there are only 1.5 million Jews. It’s because people like Hitler hated and killed them by the millions and today they are still hated and bombed on a daily basis. While racism is a problem that needs to be faced head on it does not appear to be the driving force behind the poverty problem, parenting does. I would suggest that our greatest problem is not a racial one but a relational one. What’s driving the bus is not bigotry and fear but fatherlessness.  What if we are fighting the wrong fight, what if the fight isn’t black and white but family failure? Look a wall is only as strong as its individual bricks and if many of the bricks are missing what is going to hold the wall up? I wonder if the reason why progressive America has had so little impact on the problem is because their thesis is flawed. What if the answer is parent’s not more political policies, what if the answer to this failure is family, specifically fathers? What if what we need is not more legislation and laws but strong families?

So what kind of an economic impact does the loss of 60 million consumers make? There were just over 170 million tax units in the US in 2015. That means that if we had not been aborting our babies there would be approximately 18% more tax payers. Conservatively that’s a one trillion dollar loss every 3-5 years depending on the number of abortions each year. Now while there are a lot of factors that play into how big the loss of revenue is each year one thing is clear morality impacts money and much of our national debt would not exist if 60 million lives did. Choice comes with a cost and today we are feeling the financial loss of abortion. Not only does abortion adversely impact the federal tax revenue but it has created a growing parity between the old and the young, which is really what is at the heart of the demographic challenges that face Medicare and Social Security. One fascinating figure is that when the peak of the baby boom generation reaches retirement age, the number of abortions since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision will equal the number of births in the baby boom. “If only one-third of those who have been aborted were available to start work on their 18th birthday,” speculated USA Today, “the demise of Social Security would be put off for decades.” It is estimated that largely because of abortion that by the year 2030 the ratio of workers to Social Security beneficiaries will be reduced to a 2-to-1 ration. Two workers will be supporting one retiree compared to the 42 workers supporting each retiree when the program first began in the 1930s. What are the real causes for our economic slowdown; the experts keep blaming it on good things like more efficient oil and gas production that has created a glut in energy supplies. But what if the experts are living in denial about the real causes of the economic slowdown, what if the real problem is a crisis in consumer demand driven by aggressive pro-abortion policies in both the United States and China. This year the U.S. population reached 325 million, but it should be 385 million or 18% higher if not for the 60 million lost to abortion. Can you imagine where the stock market would be with an economy 18% larger? Let’s not forget that the youth market which had driven the American economy since the 1950’s would be 30% bigger. Gen X, Y and Z have borne the brunt of the abortion epidemic, look the Fed can fool around and manipulate interest rates all it wants, but it can’t make up for an 18% to 30% hit on our whole economy. When it comes to finance the Fed is creating a false sense of security, look figures don’t lie, but liars figure. The truth is that if those 60 million babies had not been aborted Gen X, Y and Z would be 30% bigger. This means that we would need millions more teachers, nurses, and doctors and a whole host of other workers just to supply their basic needs. Also new household formation would be running 30% higher, which would translate to an increase in demand for housing and everything that goes with it. Both Wall Street and Main Street would be buzzing with activity. Just to give you a small slice of the picture, US-based consumers bought the most shoes per capita in 2013, according to a report by the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA). Each individual (children are included) bought 7 ½ pairs of shoes. If we scale this back a bit and go with an estimate that the average American buys 5 pairs of shoes every year. 60 million people who will never buy these shoes equals 300,000,000 pairs of shoes in one year that will never be bought or worn. Now let’s consider that apparel and footwear contributed a record $361 billion to the US economy in 2013, a bigger contribution than new cars, alcohol, toys, or practically any other industry. The reality is that businesses would be booming all across America. Part of the economic slump is tied not only to our pro-abortion policies but also that of China. The fact is that China has lost 400 million people to abortion, they too are seeing a marked slowdown in their economy. What’s happening in China compounds what is happening here. Not only has abortion adversely affected the economy but research also suggests that abortion is fast becoming a major national security issue, and not just a matter of personal and public morality. While most politicians and pundits are avoid the topic of abortion, for fear of upsetting someone because we cater more to political correctness that we do to people, it is our abortion policies that now threaten our nations very survival. We talk about the economy and national security in terms of how we can be fixed, but if we never recognize or admit what is creating and driving the problem how are we ever going to fix it? I think it’s time for us to deal with the real devil, our problem is not a money one but a moral one. You can’t diminish the value of one category of human life, the unborn, without diminishing the value of all human life. As Mother Teresa so aptly said: “America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has shown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts a child as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being’s entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign.” It’s time for us to face the facts, our money mess is the result of our moral mess. There are consequences to choice, and when you chose selfishness, personal convenience and death you will reap destruction. Why have we gone from prosperity to poverty, because as Mother Teresa once said “It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you live as you wish, any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use violence to get what they want. That is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion”