Why Do NC Leftists Continue to Hide This Fact About Poverty in NC? | Eastern North Carolina Now

Publisher's note: This post, by Brian Balfour, was originally published in Civitas's online edition.

    Another day, another piece by the far-Left NC Justice Center that hides facts about poverty in NC. And they are getting more and more brazen about it.

    The latest example is this piece, a lengthy article packed with data about poverty in NC. I'll spare you all the details, but focus in on one paragraph that tells you all you need to know about how the Justice Center elevates a far-left narrative above any real concern about addressing poverty in our state.

• The poverty rate for women in the state was 15.3 percent in 2018, compared to 12.7 percent for men. ... In 2018, Latina, American Indian, and African American women were twice as likely to live in poverty as Asian and white women.

    That's quite a disparity. Surely, the Justice Center, whose stated mission is to "eliminate poverty in North Carolina" would dig deeper and offer some further analysis in order to properly diagnose the problem.

    Indeed, we get a major piece of information from the webpage linked to by the author of the article.

• Families headed by single mothers (33.8 percent) were 5.8 times more likely than married couple families (5.8 percent) to live in poverty. Nearly six in ten poor children (57.9 percent) lived in female-headed families in 2018.

    Specifically, according to the site cited as a source by the Justice Center, North Carolina women heading female-headed households have a 37.5% poverty rate, compared to 13.9% for women overall in the state.

    But the Justice Center piece neglects to include this vital bit of information - information found prominently on the site linked to in the Justice Center article itself!

    This is no mere oversight. It is by design.

    Why?

    Because it goes a long way toward explaining the poverty discrepancies they wrote about, but goes against the narrative they are trying to advance.

    Indeed, as I wrote last year:

• The strong correlation between fatherlessness and poverty can't be overestimated. That said, a racial breakdown of single-parent households may help to explain disparities in poverty rates. While no state data is readily available, national data is quite instructive. According to recent research, 66 percent of black children live in single-parent families, while 42 percent of "Hispanic/Latino" children do. Comparatively, 24 percent of "non-Hispanic white" children live in single parent families.

    And as President Obama pointed out in 2008, "children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime ... And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it."

    Instead of a recognition of such obvious correlations, we get a gauzy, unhelpful distraction from the facts; blaming the poverty disparity on "policies that haven't fully valued their (women of color) economic contributions," such as a lack of minimum wage laws in certain industries and a lack of taxpayer-funded childcare programs.

    It is more important to the Justice Center to play the divisive race card than to confront obvious facts about poverty staring them straight in the face. I've written about their blatant omission many times, including HERE and HERE.

    Why is the Justice Center so afraid to discuss this data that is so relevant to the issue of poverty?