Right Message, Wrong Delivery

Project 21, an arm of The National Center For Public Policy Research, is well-known for advocating economic and social conservatism and elevating leaders within the black community to the national stage. With the Democratic Party's near hegemony over the black vote, Project 21 is a crucial voice in America.

Its latest press release, however, is a little over-the-top. Project 21 is on the right side of the ANWR debate, but instead of focusing primarily on the importance of increasing domestic oil drilling for purposes of expanding the free market and reducing our dependency on foreign nations, the group instead takes the traditional liberal approach to painting the picture of minorities as victims of high energy prices, shivering in their rundown tenements during the winter.

The document, titled "High Home Heating Bills Disproportionately Harm Minority Households," reads in part:

"Home heating bills are expected to be higher than usual this winter. People can choose not to drive their car when fuel prices are high, but they shouldn't have to choose not to turn on the heat to keep their family warm," said Project 21 member Deneen Moore. "Low-income households unable to afford rising heating bills might resort to unsafe alternatives. Drilling in ANWR, for example, would be essential to helping alleviate the high cost of energy in the U.S., create jobs and help America become less dependent on foreign oil."

[...]

"The prospect of keeping warm this winter costing so much more than the rate of inflation should offend every American family, but its impact on this country's working poor borders the criminal,” said Project 21’s John Meredith, who is active in several community-based non-profit groups. "How can a nation so rich and powerful justify forcing families to choose between staying warm and eating? We can't. Opening ANWR to exploration is the only humane thing to do."

If minorities make proportionately less money than non-minorities, any increase in prices, whether in regard to oil or food or clothing or school supplies, will disproportionately affect them; such depictions simply smack of Democrats' and liberals' portrayal of the elderly as so helpless as to have to choose between eating and buying their prescription drugs. In other words, resorting to such hysteria might tug at the heartstrings, but it does little to address the true problem.

Minorities would be much better served if Project 21 would combat government interference in and of itself, from restrictions placed on the oil industry to the minimum wage to its regulation of the welfare state to its collection of income taxes - all of which contribute more to the poor staying poor than slight increases in energy bills ever will.