Charles Barkley spoke up for millions of abandoned Americans — and no one cared

Former NBA superstar Charles Barkley recently called out the Democrats on his CNN show, “King Charles.” Barkley declared that the Democratic Party only cares “about Black people every four years,” at election time. 

Barkley further elaborated: “And then finally us black people are like, ‘I don’t know, man, other than my ability to dunk a basketball, all my neighbors’ hoods are still the same, our schools are still the same, and that’s why I think Black people are leaving disappointed the Democratic Party.”

While Barkley was correct to call out the Democratic Party, he should have taken the Republicans to task as well. They are just as guilty, for different reasons.  

As a white child, I grew up in abject poverty and was homeless often. By the time I was 17 years old, I had been evicted from 34 homes.

A number of those evictions landed me and my family in predominantly Black neighborhoods and projects. Often, I was the only white child in my class. Those experiences were one of the major positives and blessings of my young life.

I learned at eight years old that Black America was a great America. I began to note the words, deeds and ultimate great sacrifice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Single Black mothers working two or more jobs to provide for their children while sacrificing their own happiness became role models and, ultimately, enduring heroes.

As an adult, I became somewhat immersed in the political process. As I began to understand the system, one of the first questions I asked myself was: “Who truly cares about poor and inner-city Black America?” Sadly, I soon answered my own question: “Virtually no one.” 

What I discovered was that neither political party truly cared about the misery and heartache millions of our fellow citizens deal with on a daily basis in our inner cities. For the most part, Republicans — as they have for decades — simply ignore that suffering, because they believe that Black America has shut them out and will never vote for them. While multiple elections and statistics certainly back up some of that thinking, it is still wrong and even immoral for them to turn their eyes from the suffering in those communities for partisan and self-serving reasons.

Maybe Republicans should visit our inner cities, speak honestly to the people and try earning their vote — and respect — for a change. They might be surprised.

But while the GOP has real culpability in this never-ending nightmare, an argument can certainly be made — as Barkley attempted — that the Democratic Party owns much or most of the misery. For while the Republicans purposefully ignored the devastation and agony, the Democrats fostered much of it with their failed policies, while continually taking the community for granted.  

At the moment, our nation appears to be coming apart at the seams. Our people have never been more polarized, angry or hopeless. But as bad as that may be, what is happening within our inner cities is so much worse. Many in those neighborhoods know they are not even part of the national discussion. They believe themselves to be abandoned, alone and invisible.

Millions of people are in search of a champion — someone who can ignore the pull of the money, the power and the special interests and do what is right for men, women and children who struggle every day simply to survive. 

While much of the mainstream media buries this constant and worsening deprivation in service to the Democratic Party, some statistics cannot be hidden or downplayed.

Back in 2021, the Chicago Tribune reported that over the course of the past six decades, more than 40,000 men, women and children have been murdered in that city, and more than 100,000 wounded. Some 40,000 killed just in one city. Let that surreal and obscene number sink in for a moment.

Next, extrapolate that time frame to include the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Newark, New Orleans, Atlanta and others, and you quickly come up with more lives lost than all the U.S. military personnel killed during World War II.

Next, speaking of war zones, let’s go back to Chicago. Last year, the Chicago Sun-Times offered up this shocking headline: “Violence in some Chicago neighborhoods puts young men at greater risk than U.S. troops faced in Iraq, Afghanistan war zones, study finds.”

As the paper reported, “The risk of a man 18 to 29 years old dying in a shooting in the most violent ZIP code in Chicago … was higher than the death rate for U.S. soldiers in the Afghanistan war or for soldiers in an Army combat brigade that fought in Iraq.”

Now realize this: In those same ZIP codes, young children must cross that war zone five days a week twice daily to get to and from school. Young boys and girls walking across a “battlefield” with a higher death rate than for U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Who speaks for those children?

Sorry if facts offend some, but, as of today, all of these cities are run by Democrats. Many have been under Democratic control for decades. And yet brutal murders, crime statistics and the hopelessness of the children in those neighborhoods is continually and deliberately swept under the rug by those in power and those seeking to cover for those in power.

Charles Barkley was entirely correct. There is unassailable blame to be assigned to this decades-long tragedy.

Millions of our fellow citizens in our inner cities are unseen, unheard and forgotten by the elites in our government. Republicans don’t care to talk about them. Democrats shut you down if you try to speak up for them.

It is the greatest shame of our time.

Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration.