Star Parker

Star Parker
Born	(1956-11-24) November 24, 1956 Moses Lake, Washington
Nationality	United States
Occupation	Political writer and commentator

Star Parker (born November 24, 1956) is an American syndicated columnist, Republican politician, author, and conservative political activist. In 1995, she founded the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE), originally the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education. In 2010, she was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for the United States House of Representatives in California's 37th District.

Biography

Parker was born in Moses Lake, Washington, to mostly absent parents and raised in a nonreligious home. She lived in Japan for three years and returned to the U.S., moving to East St. Louis, Illinois, at twelve . She said that after one arrest for shoplifting, her white high school guidance counselor told her "not to worry about it, because I was a 'victim of racism, lashing out at society.'" After attending church at the behest of her friends, she became a Christian and her life turned around. She enrolled in Woodbury University graduating with a degree in marketing. She began advocating for conservative social and political causes. She founded CURE in 1995, and took it on full-time after being laid off from her job as a host on Los Angeles radio station KABC after it was purchased by Disney.

Center for Urban Renewal and Education

In 1995, Parker founded the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education, and later changed its name to the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE). Located in Washington, D.C., CURE is a politically conservative organization; Parker serves as its president. CURE "works with black religious and community groups on social policy issues like school choice" and organizes meetings and discussions. The group's mission is to "jump start national dialogue on issues of race and poverty", according to its web site.

Activities

Parker has been a syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service. Her column is carried weekly by newspapers across the country and opinion sites such as Townhall.

Views

Parker opposes many welfare programs, claiming that welfare is similar to an invitation to a government plantation, which creates a situation where those who accept the invitation switch mindsets from "How do I take care of myself?" to "What do I have to do to stay on the plantation?". She believes stable families and strong moral values are the key to ending poverty. She has asserted a moral objection to abortion and claims that rampant abortion has hurt black families. She has also said that she rejects evolutionary biology in favor of Christian creationism and opposes abortion, divorce, homosexuality, same-sex marriage and birth control.

Congressional campaign

In March 2010, Parker announced her candidacy for Congress in California's 37th District, which encompasses most of Long Beach and Compton, as well as Carson, Signal Hill, and parts of other municipalities. She lost the November 2 general election to Democrat Laura Richardson, earning 22.7 percent of the vote.

Remarks on the President

On February 9, 2015, during a panel discussion on Sean Hannity's show, on the Fox News Channel, Parker denounced President Barack Obama for pointing out that in the context of a larger discussion about religion and brutality, Christianity's history is "far from spotless" in that department and that, "during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ." She complained that the President's remarks were "verbal rape", calling Obama both "blind" and "arrogant in his conceit."

Books

• 1998: Pimps, Whores and Welfare Brats: From Welfare Cheat to Conservative Messenger (Pocket Books, ISBN 0-671-53466-1)
• 2003: Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can Do About It (Thomas Nelson, ISBN 0-7852-6219-9)
• 2006: White Ghetto: How Middle Class America Reflects Inner City Decay (Thomas Nelson, ISBN 1-59555-027-5)
• 2014: Blind Conceit: Politics, Policy and Racial Polarization: Moving Forward to Save America (Sumner Books, ISBN 978-1939104137)

External links

• Center for Urban Renewal and Education
• Star Parker's Official Column Archive
• Appearances on C-SPAN