Archive: Star Parker’s Advice to Conservatives Who Want to Connect with Black Voters

Originally published in June 2023.

Star Parker, founder and CEO of the Center for Urban Renewal and Development (CURE), recently appeared on the Daily Signal podcast to discuss how conservatives can connect to black voters and many other topics.

The Daily Signal interviewed her at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention last week in Orlando, Florida.

Star founded CURE because she wanted to work on national policy that removed barriers to poverty and put the government out of the charity business. The left, she added, weaponizes race and entraps people into poverty.

“The reason that I’m in this work to dismantle is because I had believed all those lies of the left,” she said. “I understand, deep down inside, why they built the welfare state and what they intend to do with it, to paganize and build a totalitarian country out of America. I believed their lies. I got caught up in this rhetoric we’re hearing today that America’s racist, so don’t mainstream. I got caught up in this rhetoric that you’re poor because others are wealthy.”

Star also discussed how she left a life of welfare, crime, and drugs and became a Christian. She started her own business, but it was destroyed during the riots in Los Angeles in 1992. Star went to the nation’s capital to serve as a consultant on welfare reform.

Working with black pastors is an important part of CURE’s work as well.

Star talked about distressed zip codes, critical race theory, and more in this wide-ranging interview.