Black Celebs Don’t Hate Herschel Walker’s Privilege, They Hate His Ideas

Personally, I've really disappointed in Steve Harvey.

Steve Harvey’s actual issue isn’t with Herschel Walker’s wealth. It’s with Walker being an outspoken black conservative.

With the 2022 midterms right around the corner, more and more celebrities are stepping into the political arena to make their opinions heard.

Steve Harvey recently took to the airwaves during his morning radio show to express his opposition to Herschel Walker’s candidacy for the U.S. Senate. The rant was so dynamic that it circulated on TikTok, where it quickly garnered thousands of views. According to Harvey, Walker has lived a privileged life of fame and fortune resulting from his successful football career, so he could not possibly relate to the lived experience of most black Americans.

Such criticism from Harvey is ironic, given that Harvey himself has gained fame and fortune through a highly successful career as an entertainer. Per the comedian’s own logic, his success should also render him unable to empathize with the average black person.

In fact, Harvey and Walker, to some degree, share similar paths from humble beginnings to great success. If wealth or fame automatically disqualifies blacks from being “connected” to the larger black community, then Oprah, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, and countless others share the same detachment from those they claim to represent.

Harvey’s actual issue isn’t with Walker’s wealth; it is with Walker being an outspoken black conservative. Supposedly, Walker’s conservatism means he supports policies that are harmful to “our people,” and by “our people,” Harvey means black Americans.

Harvey’s pointed criticism of black conservatives as embracing policies harmful to black people is questionable, at best. After all, the policies routinely championed by Democrats have verifiably hurt black Americans.

For instance, black people receive a disproportionate amount of the country’s abortions. Data gathered by the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion NGO, confirms this; black women receive abortions at a rate five times higher than their white counterparts. How is protecting the life of the unborn, which is a conservative cornerstone, harmful to black people? Given the disproportionate number of unborn black children killed by abortion, it is really just the opposite. In 2019, nearly 40 percent of all abortions were performed on black women and their helpless babies.

Since 1973, when the Supreme Court wrongly ruled that the Constitution conferred a right to abortion, more than 60 million unborn children have been lost. Of that 60 million, a third were black.

Today, there are around 43 million black people in the United States. More than 20 million black babies — roughly half of this group — were intentionally killed before they were born. How many of these children could have gone on to do extraordinary things if given a fair shot at life?

If conservative policies pertaining to abortion prevailed, the result would be a dramatic increase in the number of black children born in this country. Would that be a bad thing?

Conservatives also believe that traditional marriage is the bedrock of society and that it is fundamental to economic prosperity. The Democratic Party’s insistence on destroying families is one of many things that has brought suffering to black America.

Prior to the 1960s, black Americans with children were more commonly married, with mothers and fathers raising their children in the same home. In 1965, following the Democratic implementation of large-scale social welfare programs, the percentage of black children raised in single-parent homes continued to rise while the rate of marriage steadily declined until 72 percent of black children were born to unwed mothers.

The decline in marriage and the increase in fatherlessness is reflected in our prison population, where the majority of black prisoners, and inmates in general, come from broken homes.

Are conservative social policies focused on repairing families not in tune with the needs of black Americans?

Black children are frequently negatively affected by the country’s public school system; in many ways, it fails them. Black children frequently underperform on standardized tests and are further disadvantaged by school systems that choose to politicize their existence instead of prioritizing their education.

Conservatives, like Walker, support school choice policies that would enable black parents to play a more direct role in identifying and accessing high-quality educational opportunities for their children. School choice policies are widely supported in black communities; Walker is perfectly in tune with black Americans in this regard.

Conservatives typically believe in limited government. Is a limited federal government harmful to black Americans? Leftists would say yes because, for the past 60 years, they have used the massive growth of the federal government to systematically trap black people into a myriad of programs that have made them dependent on the federal government. Limiting the government requires lessening black people’s dependency on social programs, which means the government — and the Democratic Party — has less power and influence over them.

Conservative policies aim to empower all Americans to exercise their freedoms so they can work and achieve success without having it handed to them on a silver platter. Race is not a factor in these equations.

When we look at successful black Americans, it seems reasonable to conclude that conservative policies have proven beneficial, not harmful, to them.