|
What is the state of Black America?
As we begin this new millennium, it is very
clear that African Americans risk becoming an
endangered race. It is also clear that African
Americans continue to face conditions that to
grow beyond the boundaries of normal challenge.
Yet, we don't like to acknowledge these things or
openly talk about them and even when we talk about
them, we don't frame the issues in a context that
identifies the need for immediate, but most important
strategic action and implementation processes.
In other words, we have become very good at talking
the game of change, but I respectfully submit to you
the perspective that we could use some serious improvement
in driving the change.
Our family structure is deteriorating and we are loosing
our most precious resource…our children, at record
rates to gang violence, drugs and their disconnect from society.
Yet, we have studied the gang problem since 1928, beginning with
the work of Frederick Thrasher at the University of Chicago.
And, not until it became an issue that spanned outside the
norms of inner cities and hit communities like Littleton
Colorado, did people start to pay serious attention to
the etiology of youth gangs and gang violence.
When we examine the statistics relative to how many youth
are gravitating to gang violence, the number of youth in
general is alarming, but the number of black youth is
terrifying, not just within this country but across the globe.
However, the principally funded intervention strategy
is suppression. When we lock them up, the cycle of oppression,
despair, hopelessness and incarceration never ends.
However, more important, I had to ask myself, when do
we stop allowing others to define the strategies of how
we are going to help our youth and take an aggressive role
that is strategically oriented ourselves? Please understand,
I am not denouncing the work that is being done, but what
I am suggesting is that it is there is a call for far more
people to be involved, aware and working to help re-direct
our kids. Consistent feedback and data collected during
the years that I have spent investigating the issue of
youth gravitating to gangs has suggested that their
major issues are the lack of role models in their lives,
with predominate themes being spend time with me,
support me, come see me at school, and help me to
realize that I can succeed. Spending time, however,
being the most prevalent theme, and contrary to highly
publicized research, these kids value an education and
want to succeed in their school systems.
The state of affairs of African Americans also includes
the issue that our marriages are breaking up at record rates.
Although historically we have been a matriarchal focused race,
it has become more "chic" for African American families to
join the ranks of the cordial but divorced group, which
continues to decimate our family structures. We continue to
face controversial and troubling questions that must be
addressed relative to the link between declining numbers
of marriageable males and drugs, incarceration, and
Black-on-Black crime, which if we make the circular and
systemic connection, starts with the youth we are loosing.
They do grow up and if we have not broken the cycle of
hopelessness, it will continue.
|
|
