I was proud recently when Marc Little, chairman of my organization, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, stood behind President Donald Trump at a White House event for Black History Month and prayed for him.
Then a parade of black liberals did their thing in the media to try to deflate and devalue this important event. Their actions help us understand why so little progress has been made after more than half a century of civil rights activism.
CNNs Keith Boykin called the black Christians grouped around the president "Uncle Toms." Chris Redd of "Saturday Night Live" called them "White House negroes." And Spike Lee mocked them, writing, "We Gonna Pray Fo' You Massa."
How can we miss the irony of black liberals, their lives dedicated to keeping blacks on the government welfare plantation, using insulting plantation imagery to attack conservative black Christians working for freedom and better lives for African Americans?
The Economist magazine last year ran an article with the headline "The black-white wealth gap is unchanged after half a century."
"(I)n 1962," the article reports, "two years before the passage of landmark civil-rights legislation ... the average wealth of white households was seven times greater than that of black households. Yet after decades of declining discrimination and the construction of a modern welfare state, that ratio remains the same."
The article fails to mention that total spending on government anti-poverty and welfare programs over these years is estimated at $20 trillion.
Why do significant gaps in wealth and income persist between black Americans and the rest of the country?
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Racism?
Americans recently elected a black man as their president twice.
In the elections of 2008 and 2012, Barack Obama received almost 80 million votes from white Americans.
Between 1967 and 2015, the percentage of marriages that are interracial or interethnic couples increased by five times.
Why are blacks still inclined to attribute the challenges they face to racism? Because that's all they hear from left-wing black media moguls who are in business to get a rise out of people, rather than enlighten them.
A major theme being peddled in the current Democratic presidential campaign is that wealth is evil. Candidates are tripping over one another to see who can come up with a better tax on wealthy Americans.
But is punishing wealth and achievement the answer for improving the lives of black Americans or any Americans?
According to one study, 69% of those on Forbes Magazine's list of 400 wealthiest Americans are self-made. And 20% grew up poor.
Dr. Ben Carson, now secretary of housing and urban development, rose from a Detroit ghetto; he was raised by a single mother and later became a world-renowned neurosurgeon. His story, how his mother made her sons turn off the television and read at least one book every week, should be read by every American child.
Surely, if blacks continue to buy the lie that the poor are poor because the rich are rich, 50 years from now there will still be no change in the wealth gap between black households and the rest of the country.
It's so easy to hate. It's so easy to blame others for your problems. And it's so hard to take responsibility for your life, regardless of the circumstances.
But hate, blame and mockery are the meal ticket of black liberals.
So for them, conservative black Christians standing by the president, standing at the seat of power, is a red flag. The idea that freedom, faith, family, marriage and personal responsibility are the path to the good life is the last thing they want to see legitimized.
Once, the great challenge that black Americans faced was the scourge of racism and the acts of evil white men.
Today's great challenge for blacks is to shake off the culture of the welfare plantation and the destructive rhetoric of evil black liberals who want to keep them there.
Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and author of the new book "Necessary Noise: How Donald Trump Inflames the Culture War and Why This is Good News for America," available now at starparker.com
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