HUD Secretary Ben Carson Keynotes Manhattan Institute Event

NEW YORK, NY – If the plight of poor black Americans is to improve, they must first be released from the “national safety net [that] became a net trapping millions of Americans,” Dr. Benjamin Carson, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said Tuesday during an upward mobility symposium.

Carson was the keynote speaker at the Manhattan Institute event, “Prospects for Black America,” following two panels discussing education reform, culture and family. Carson cited President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1964 address at the University of Michigan, laying out the basis for the Great Society programs that still define America’s welfare state. These programs have cost $22 trillion, Carson declared, but have failed to achieve meaningful black uplift.

Citing the high rate of incarceration among black men, as well as the high rate of homicide that plagues some communities, Carson called for social improvement through public-private partnerships that empower young black Americans through education, job training and mentoring.

Carson cited data that in 1965 more than 75 percent of black children were born to married mothers, whereas a half-century later, more than 70 percent of black children were born out of wedlock. “This is one of the most tragic statistics in America,” he said. “It represents so much unrealized human potential, so many families deprived of the educational, moral and psychological benefits of having a mother and a father. And it leads to a lot of poverty.”

Carson wants to see a focus on training people to close the skills gap and “break the ever-growing cycle of dependency,” he said.

“It means forming EnVision Centers across the country, which leverage private-sector investment and provide education, training and counseling to young people climbing upward,” he said.

Carson said that “the path forward is to return to a cooperative model for social improvement, which promotes local solutions, private enterprise and the initiative of Americans in their own communities ... We must recognize that a strong economy, strong family, strong values are the key to permanently defeating poverty, and that these conditions are fostered primarily by Americans themselves in their volunteering associations, rather than the federal government.”

For more information on the event,including photos and video, click here.

See attachment for a recent, related report on the positive impact African-American-led nonprofits have on the youth they serve.