The distance from South-Central Los Angeles to this posh bedroom community, the home of Richard Nixon’s Western White House, is approximately 60 miles.
But for Star Parker, the ideological distance in her journey from a self-described “welfare queen” in the inner city to an anti-welfare advocate, social commentator and darling of the “religious Right” based at her hilltop home here in this Orange County suburb seems like light-years.
Parker, 40, joins a growing list of black conservatives, including Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.); Alan Keyes, a Republican presidential candidate last year; and Ward Connerly, who ran the successful campaign to dismantle all government-sponsored affirmative action programs in California.
Unlike her counterparts who have used the political system as their vehicle to further conservative causes, Parker’s route has been the lecture circuit, where she has made a lucrative career attacking liberal sacred cows.
That she is a black woman deriding welfare, abortion, feminism, affirmative action, civil rights leaders–and especially Bill and Hillary Clinton–has made her all the more controversial with the Left and all the more popular with the Right. She has appeared frequently with Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh and even was host for radio shows in Los Angeles and San Francisco a few years ago.
Yet what most distinguishes Parker from the pack of right-wing pundits is her experience: As a teenager, she broke into houses and torched a teacher’s car for kicks. She regularly skipped school and experimented with drugs. She was sexually promiscuous and had four abortions.
By age 22, she had a baby and was on welfare. She quickly learned the ropes of cheating the system, earning extra cash by “renting” her medical card to friends and acquaintances.
To her critics, Parker is simply a black mouthpiece of the right-wing ilk who has managed to re-create herself in their mold.
To her supporters, though, Parker is a most credible posterwoman: Her rough-and-tumble life and dramatic transformation have lent credence to the Republican theme that government social programs lead only to a life of dependency and moral decay.
“I lived the secular, socialist cesspool. I lived what the conservatives talk about,” said Parker, who had just returned home from a national tour promoting her new book, “Pimps, Whores and Welfare Brats: The Stunning Conservative Transformation of a Former Welfare Queen.” (According to the book, the pimps are Democrats who introduced welfare programs and the whores are black leaders who benefit politically by keeping them.)
“Welfare has a gripping effect on you. Automatically, your standards start lowering and you start living irresponsibly,” added Parker, now married to a Charismatic Episcopal priest. Several years ago, they moved from South-Central Los Angeles to San Clemente, a bastion of white conservatism, to provide safer surroundings for their two daughters.
Parker, like other conservatives, says recent welfare reforms limiting the amount of time people can receive benefits are a step in the right direction, but she wants the system “busted up.” Taxpayers, she said, would be better served if churches and charities were to take primary responsibility for helping the poor.
“Whether Star Parker’s assertions about welfare promoting laziness and cheating are based on self-loathing or a numerical analysis of the entire welfare caseload is now a moot issue. The fact is that today welfare is about work and it is about responsibility,” said Jodie Levin, senior state policy analyst for the Center for Law and Policy, a welfare-advocacy organization in Washington.
“My problem with what she is advocating is that if you were to dismantle all the social programs tomorrow, the charities would be ill-equipped to handle the demand,” said Joe Hicks, executive director of the MultiCultural Collaborative, a civil-rights organization in Los Angeles. “With the ideological mood in this country that poor people are cheats, ingrates and chiselers, how does Star Parker think that Americans will give more (charitable contributions) to help them?”
But her supporters point to her achievements as proof that her ideas will work.
“She is an example of what independence and self-esteem will do, and he (Watts) has used her as an example (in his speeches) many times,” said Pam Pryor, Watts’ press secretary.
Parker was the third of five children born to an Air Force sergeant and a beautician. The family moved frequently, settling in East St. Louis when she was a teenager.
Parker, who said she had little parental supervision, broke into homes, fire-bombed a teacher’s car and dabbled in the use of angel dust and other drugs. By age 22, after four abortions and having relocated to Los Angeles, she chose to proceed with her fifth pregnancy.
After signing up for welfare, she scammed the system by “renting” her Medi-Cal card to friends who didn’t have medical insurance, earning hundreds of dollars in unreported income. She also placed her daughter in a welfare-supported child care center on the ruse that she was taking job-training courses; actually, she said, she was spending the day with friends getting high.
“All along I was susceptible to peer pressure: Let’s take drugs. OK. Let’s go to bed. OK. Let’s cheat the system. OK,” she said.
Her transformation began after she joined a church and became a born-again Christian. She said she stopped using drugs, stopped sleeping around and finally, without a job, gave up welfare cold turkey.
Parker started a newsletter for young black Christians, selling advertising primarily to businesses in South-Central Los Angeles. Within eight years, she said, the newsletter grew into a 64-page magazine grossing more than $180,000 a year.
But in 1992 the Los Angeles riots put most of her advertisers out of business, forcing her to fold the publication and lay off seven employees.
Angry with black leaders, such as Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Rev. Jesse Jackson, who were justifying the rioters’ actions, Parker faxed off a letter to Los Angeles media outlets calling those responsible for the burning and looting “government-dependent, out-of-control, racist monsters.” Moreover, she agreed with then-Vice President Dan Quayle’s infamous Murphy Brown speech that a breakdown in family structure and a “welfare ethos” were contributing factors to the riot.
The remarks, she said, spread “like a forest fire,” prompting numerous media interviews and calls from several Republican leaders.
One of the first calls came from Buchanan, who invited her to speak at his conference on New Conservatism. Parker, at first put off by his reputation as an extremist, reluctantly accepted.
Looking out on a sea of white faces and blue and gray suits, she initially feared that her flashy style and street-smart sensibilities would clash with the audience. Parker–with her large hoop earrings, bright-red lipstick and star embedded on her front tooth–recalled that she looked more appropriately dressed to dance on “Soul Train” than to speak before the conservative group.
“I wondered, `Is my message going to be received?’ ” she said. “But it resonated with the audience. I learned that despite outward differences, I had a lot in common with these people.”
Sensing a potential gold mine, Parker marketed herself as a talking head. (She adopted a more conservative look, shedding the star from her front tooth.) Parker regularly speaks at colleges and universities and has appeared on such programs as “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “CNN & Co.” and “Politically Incorrect.” In 1995, she was host on a call-in show on radio station KSFO-AM in San Francisco and in 1996 on KMPC-AM in Los Angeles.
Parker can be just as harsh with her Republican peers as she is with Democrats. She takes conservatives to task for deriding social programs, while remaining uninvolved in fixing the problems.
“Conservatives get on my last nerve. They are disconnected from their own ideas, and they refuse to take the extra step to develop a pilot program to see if those ideas will work,” said Parker, who regularly holds workshops for welfare mothers, instructing them how to make the transition into jobs.
Parker also blames Republicans for their failure to reach out to black people. She said most black people are religious and hold conservative views but have been alienated from the Republican Party because of its indifference on historical discrimination.
She said she is working to bridge the gap between African-Americans and Republicans. She said she has recruited conservatives such as Watts and Keyes to speak at black churches and helped persuade the conservative Christian Coalition to launch a project aimed at assisting black churches in combatting gangs and drugs.
“I’ve always been a street fighter,” she said. “Now I have a new arena to fight in.”
