White Ghetto: How Middle Class America Reflects Inner City Decay [Hardcover]

Star Parker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 14, 2006

Decaying values. Sexually transmitted diseases.

Fatherless homes. Rampant drug use.

These aren't just problems for today's inner cities.

It's the plight of all America.

Much has been said about Bill Cosby's incendiary remarks about urban black culture and its "dirty laundry." But in this provocative book, Star Parker, one of today's most controversial commentators, goes even further, proving that urban plight simply reveals a decay that is gnawing its way throughout American society as a whole.

The sexual chaos, values disorientation, and social turmoil we see in our inner cities, Parker argues, is just a magnified reflection of the moral collapse happening all over America: in our schools, our churches, our homes. And this slide toward moral decrepitude is all due to a flagrant dismissal of and assault on America's tried-and-true values.

With startling statistics and disturbing stories about the increasing secularization and criminalization of the middle class, Parker holds a cracked mirror up to suburbia. Taking on tough subjects such as abortion, drug abuse, sexual politics, and religion, she offers a rousing exploration of the raging cultural war-taking you on a wild, eye-opening tour through the White Ghetto.

Star Parker is the founder and president of CURE, the Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education, a nonprofit organization that provides national dialogue on issues of race and poverty in the media, inner city neighborhoods, and public policy. Star is a regular commentator on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and the BBC, which reaches 300 million homes worldwide. Her articles and quotes have also appeared in major publications including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, and is currently a weekly syndicated columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. Star is the author of Pimps, Whores, and Welfare Brats and Uncle Sam's Plantation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Touching on Sex and the City, Snoop Dogg, the National Organization for Women, stem-cell research and "the It's-Natural-To-Be-Gay movement," born-again Parker decries the "radicalized progressive liberalism that has pervaded Middle America and usurped the authority of our founding fathers" in her indictment of all things not hard-line Christian that posits the suburbs are just as rife with immorality as the inner-city. Parker discusses "sexual pandemonium," the dissolution of the traditional family and the concepts of the insanity plea and hate crime (not the existence of the crimes, but the existence of the concept) in an effort to discover "why so many obvious areas of moral breakdown exist throughout the country." No matter what the perceived malady, the cure is simple: the moral alignment of all with Judeo Christian values. Parker may mean well, but her shallow critique will turn off anyone not already in her camp.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Star Parker is president and founder of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education (CURE), a nonprofit center that addresses the impact of social politics on America's inner cities and the poor. Prior to her social activism, Parker was a single welfare mother. After turning to Christ, she returned to college, earning her B.S. degree, and then launched an urban Christian magazine. Now, she is a frequent lecturer at colleges and churches, a social policy consultant and media commentator, and a regular guest on national television and radio programs across the country, including Larry King Live, 20/20, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Parker is also a syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson; First Edition edition (March 14, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595550275
• ISBN-13: 978-1595550279
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #621,221 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #92 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology > Social Theory

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 96 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Moral Decreptitude April 30, 2006

By Edwin

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

The facts and statistics that Star Parker point out in her book are horrifying. The decline in morals coupled with the continuing failure of government programs has resulted in the decay of life in the inner-city. Although this decay of inner-city life is right in America's face, the same decay is happening in suburban Middle America--it is just hidden under wealth and privilege.

The loss of values and morals mixed with the left's obsession at "adopting" the lives of inner-city Americans is a direct cause of misery for these very Americans. Star Parker does a great job at showing this.

Because I am supportive of gay rights and same sex marriage, I found some of the book's rhetoric aimed at homosexuals a bit harsh. HOWEVER, whether or not you are supportive of same sex marriage, it's undeniable that some of the tactics used by proponents of gay rights are dishonest and manipulative. But this same dishonesty is practiced by liberals, democrats, republicans, libertarians, atheists and so-called civil rights leaders and Star Parker does a great job at exposing them all.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars It is a Wake Up Call! March 24, 2010

By L. Carter

Format:Paperback

This book will probably shock even the not so average person...it is "enlightening," horrifying, educational and definately a much needed a wakeup call. Many people will not want to to read or agree with such disturbing information and continue to live in denial as to what is happening in our communities, schools and government; hense the continual decline of our moral code in America. There is an agenda and the target is us. In the course of being so busy living our lives and becoming complacent; many of us are just unaware of what is happening around us and the agendas that are being slid under our feet without our knowledge or awarness. If you have a concern for the future welfare of our society, your children and embrace even a moderate to conservative moral code, this is a must read. Thanks Star! I could not put it down and I did not know what I didn't know.

42 of 55 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An Awesome Book!!! November 2, 2006

By Dave Pershall

Format:Hardcover

I grew up conservative, but going to college, watching lots of TV and working with teens, I slowly began to wonder if "liberals" could be right in some areas. Isn't helping the poor a good thing, and don't we want to be free to make choices?

Star Parker clearly and boldly shatered the lies that I had begun to believe and has helped me to be more sure than ever of the biblical principles of hard work and Biblical morality. These fondations are the only way for "middle America" to help the poor and at the same time stop our own slide toward imorality and socialism!

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Book February 3, 2010

By ldg

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Star Parker gets a 5 star for this book. In our pursuit of happiness we have lost our moral base. Good book on what is wrong with this generation and how we got here.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars the truth behind America's moral decay... August 28, 2012

By Ed

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I was first introduced to Star Parker via C-Span radio where she was a guest speaker at some event. I was drawn to her directness in identifying the single most factor attributed to the breakdown in America's morality and culture - the breakdown of the American family. This motivated me to want to know more on her observations and findings. So I purchased her book "White Ghetto" via Amazon to gain more insight.
I have to admit, you would think the breakdown on the traditional (father and mother in the same home with children) American family would be the source of America's on-going moral decay. With everyone blaming somebody else for our collective social ills (racism, abortion, gay agenda, etc.) as opposed to starting with the man-in-the-mirror, we are bound to avoid our own personal complicity (silence equates to acceptance). The next factor right behind the crumbling American family is education. As Ms. Parker tells her "White Ghetto" readers "[t]he single most important factor in establishing economic earning power is education, and the single most important factor that drives the educational accomplishment of a child is family". While this book was published in 2006, the statistics on divorce have not gotten any better. And then there is God almighty. The creator of man and woman for the purpose of populating his creation while the creation holds fast to His Word (Bible). Not. And thus America's moral conundrum.
The book is an easy read and solidifies what I already knew to be true. However, I take pleasure in reading the work of like thinkers who hold fast to the truth, unlike the immoral majority.
Cheers to Star Parker on her well written book "White Ghetto". A good read!

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars An answer in search of ways to rationalize away a profound Black Cultural problem August 14, 2012

By Herbert L Calhoun

Format:Paperback

This author has solved the problems of the black ghetto's social meltdown the easy conservative way: by ideological rationalizations -- that is to say, by fiat. By positing a theory that puts ideological parameters like God, prayer and attending Church in the driver's seat while throwing the black man under the bus as the perennial scapegoat for American society; and then interpreting the statistical data in such a way that black women never make even a cameo appearance - that is to say, they are never implicated. In this way she is able to drive home her ideologically-based thesis in the normal socially and culturally approved and predetermined way.

Her thesis is that anyway you cut it, it is the lowlife black man who is responsible for the social meltdown in the black community: Their lost souls and non-attachment to God, has led black men down a singularly sinful path, one that practically defines them as a new lost self-destructive spiritual-less species. That, and conspiring with Hollywood, Rappers, and a sexually violent and sexually promiscuous society that embraces homosexuality and same-sex marriage and sexually overly explicit TV shows, somehow has led these evil creatures to begin impregnating black women at a thitherto unknown and unheard of rate?

Then, unlike in most analyses from rightwing advocates, Ms.... Parker adds a new twist, an important new catchall corollary: It is that the rest of mainstream society is complicit in the same behavior that black men have inflicted on black women and presumably have taught their white male counterparts (since it is clear now that white society too has adopted the evil ways of black manhood): of making babies and running away from them; not working; rapping, doing drugs, going to jail, skipping out on child support, and leaving God out of their lives. She calls this the decadent new socialist godless culture. Although she tries to embellish these themes for another hundred or so pages, this is essentially the end of the author's analytic story and thus the end of her ideological rationalizations too. QED. That is the author's narrative and she is sticking to it.

An Alternative Narrative of the Black Social meltdown

I want to offer a slightly different story that uses the same (but an earlier version of the) data that the author used in her analysis, except that I want to analyze those data in ways that she failed to do. It just happens that I know these data by heart since I used them to brief the brilliant Dr. Joycelyn Elders as she was preparing to assume the position of U.S. Surgeon General under Bill Clinton. Dr. Elders was alarmed at the dramatic increase in black illegitimacy the same as everyone else was. It had spiked sharply in the 1965 census data, and at my urging, Dr. Elders had relented and invited me to Little Rock to see what my computer model could tell her about the problem. She also wanted to hear me out to see what I thought had happened as well as what I thought I could be done about it.

I had just spent a year doing a postdoc under Dr. John Sterman at MIT where as a thesis project I had developed an iThink Computer Simulation model to study just this one problem, the rampant illegitimacy in the inner city USA.

Here essentially is what I said to Dr. Elders in an all day Sunday session in her Little Rock office during the Christmas Holidays of 1992:

The problem of the peak in illegitimacy has very little to do with the black male, per se, since like all men, black men will screw up to the maximum limit that women will allow them to. This has been the case since time immemorial. So, if black men are making more babies, there can be only one way that this can happen: Black women are becoming more compliant with "giving in" to sex. Period. This line of reasoning did not shock or surprise Dr. Elders at all.

I continued: Black men's sexual mores (like all men) are regulated by women saying "yes" or "no," to sex, period. If black women are having more black babies, by definition, this means that more black women are saying "yes," to black men, otherwise what they engage in would not be called sex, but would be called rape. This is the end of the sex story between the opposite sexes in the human race.

And to see that this is true, all one need do is look at a whole family of cross-confirming statistics in the most recent Census Report (the 1985 Report at the time). There, one will see that there has been an unmistakable quantum leap in sexual activity in the black race (accounting for the 1965 peak that Dr. Elders' computer graph also showed). This leap occurred at the same time that black marriages were in an equally precipitous decline? How could this be?

With no exceptions in the statistics, there were nothing but increases in black sexual activity across the board in every statistical category: in live births, miscarriages, a quantum leap in black abortions and in STDs, increases in black children admitted to adoption centers, pregnancy and sex related illnesses, including deaths in child birth, etc. (Some of these increases, like in abortions for instance, were simply mind-boggling since it had leaped-frogged over white women abortion statistics even though white women outnumber black women almost 10 to 1!)

There is only one conclusion that can be drawn from these data: Black women are screwing like rabbits, and black men are readily accommodating them. But this is not the end of that story. When the computer simulation was run. It had two running modes: one for black married couples and another for the group of cohorts called "the unmarried" or "ineligibles," who apparently met in dramatically increased numbers for loose or casual sexual encounters and uncommitted sexual liaisons.

What the simulation showed was unmistakable and unfortunately has not been reported on anywhere else. It is that birthrates and sexual habits across the board for black married couples tracked almost identically with similarly situated white married couples. There was not even a statistically significant difference between the two similar situated racial marriage groups. However, when the model was run with those blacks that were considered ineligible for marriage, the real sex story in black culture then unfolded.

ALL of the increase in sexual activity in the black race was as a result of sex between ineligibles -- that is, among those left unselected for marriage (i.e.. fat black women with bad attitudes, and black men without jobs and who were not funny, were on drugs or had been to jail, or did not attend church regularly.)

I told Dr. Elders that the moral of that black cultural story is that there was a quiet black female revolution started in 1965 in which black women began saying to black men: I may not want to marry you, but I don't care what you look like, or how many times you have been to jail, or how much dope you smoke, you are coming home with me tonight? End of the black female sexual revolution.

But that is not the end of my briefing with Dr. Elders, for she then asked me what should be done? That is when I briefed her on the various alternative solutions to the problem spit out by the computer model. They ranged from tweaking the model to simulate changes in morals, full abstinence among the ineligibles, full employment for black men, making both parents (and grandparents) pay a hefty tax for having a child out of wedlock, and a number of contraceptive regimes. The only option with a high-leverage outcome was having all ineligibles (of both sexes) wear a passive form of birth control (like the Norform which was popular at the time). Dr. Elders agreed that it would work but thought it was too draconian a measure and would be politically toxic and thus impossible to get implemented. End of my story to Dr. Elders.

Summary: What has religion got to do with it?

This author would not be the first conservative to place all her eggs in the religious basket as THE silver bullet to solve all of the problems of the world. However, as the most recent Pew report shows, young religious people who engage in abstinence on average have more STD's and more out-of-wedlock pregnancies than non-religious teens? And what is more, there is no significant difference in the illegitimacy rates? So, sadly for the author, religion is not the same silver bullet as doubling-down on "passive contraceptive" is.

I take no adverse pleasure in being able to say that the Pew Study confirmed many of my own findings. This is too serious a problem to be gloating about, as the black illegitimacy problem is a system generator of a whole suite of additional societal problems, problems that later come back to haunt a culture as it is doing the black race today. Clearly it defines a culture downwards in a dramatic way.

I want to lovingly suggest to the author that cultural problems are never easy and cannot be squeezed into an ideological formula. No one should be scared of the truth, what ever it is. And to her credit, I believe this author was sincere but profoundly wrong in her belief that religion was the answer. And if religion made the difference it is suppose to make in our culture, indeed it would have been the answer. However, unfortunately as the recent Pew study shows, this is far from being the case.

When I first started the project at MIT, even I (like this author) was committed to the forgone conclusion that sexually loose black men were the only cause of this problem. But the data, even her own data, shows that this is far from the truth and that the main culprits, black women, have been left out of the analysis altogether. It is about time that the sisters, man-up, and stop this Aunt Jemima BS and get serious within their own ranks. This is an urgent and a solvable problem. They can solve it in one fell-swoop: just by either keeping their legs closed, or by doubling-down on contraceptives. Three stars. Read more ›