Government Must Carry On in Battle Against Poverty, N.J. Governor Says

New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean on Tuesday said it is wrong to think that government should “throw up its hands and go home” just because poverty still exists in America.

Addressing the National Urban League here, the Republican also tossed a barb “at those who still blame the victim . . . the urban poor.”

Without mentioning names, he declared, “There are some in my party who look at all this and say government’s hurting urban America, (that) government ought to get out of the anti-poverty business.”

Kean said education creates progress for all peoples and, in recent U.S. history, has been “the catalyst for the liberation of black Americans.”

He reminded a crowded assembly of the League’s 76th annual conference that it was school issues that generated landmark civil rights cases such as Brown vs. Board of Education, the case that led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision outlawing racial segregation in public schools.

“Don’t let government off the hook,” Kean told his cheering audience. “Don’t let government tell you that it simply can’t do anything about poverty in America . . . those people are wrong.”

In fact, he blamed government for creating much of the problem, saying: “We have a welfare system that often encourages people to stop working and provides no rewards for those who go out and get a job. It creates financial incentives for children to have children.”

One of the biggest problems for black Americans, he said, is that “urban schools are no longer the seedbed for social change. Instead, they are often warehouses filled with unfilled human potential.”