Let me preface this column by stating (again) that I am a not only a passionate fan, avid supporter and effusive admirer of Barack Obama, I am also one of his honest critics. I hope my past writings on the man have proven this enough. And yet, as I write this column, more than 1.1 million black males are languishing in jails, prisons and penitentiaries all over the U.S.A.; this is about half the number of black males incarcerated worldwide. And as I write this column, President Barack Obama has been in office for more than one hundred and one days. After I post this column, I would like to hear Mr. Obama talk more than 1.1 times, about what’s really going: relative to the state of black males in the USA. His silence on this issue is deafening.
Figures from the Department of Prison Statistics, have been showing us for the past decade or so that the prison population keeps rising annually. More and more blacks (both male and female) continue to live in a seemingly non-ending cycle of revolving prison life. It is a national crisis. President Obama needs to address this like yesterday.
If 20% of all white males were in and out of prison during most of their lifetimes, then we would get some of national emergency declared immediately.
Look, I know Barack Obama has spoken out loudly on something I like to call (and write about) the “missing father syndrome”; and that’s fine. It is true that too many black men have shirked their parental obligations. It is true that too many black men (and some Hispanic men also) have shied away from their moral and legal responsibilities to be decent fathers. And all this continues to heavily impact the communities of color all over the USA. Look, before I bring silly critics out of the woodwork, ready to attack this column, let me acknowledge that this issue is also problematic in the white population lately. However, it is nowhere close to being the problem in white-America as it is in communities of color.
And yet very few leaders talk about the role that black women are playing in all this. It’s time to put black women on the hook also: we can’t continue to let them off. We cannot continue to apologize for their horrible choices. Through the years, I have always told my students that “life is all about the choices you make”. And further, that if you don’t develop yourself properly (intellectually), you will continually make bad choices in life.
When you look at the rising HIV-infection rate amongst black women (half of all new cases in the past decade), we have to admit that the lack of individual responsibility, poor life-style choices, under-developed values, poor education choices, sexual promiscuity and the lack of valid support systems, are amongst the many factors that all in all continue to contribute to the metastasizing state of the overall black community. It’s not only about the missing fathers: it’s not.
When two of three black kids are born outside of marriage, we have a recipe for disaster: given that all indicators put kids born out of wedlock at a higher risk for poverty, ill-health, prison, hardships and social deviancy. When two out of every five black men in this country aren’t working, try to figure out the social consequences; especially when one in five goes in and out of prison near all their adult life. Look; there is a silent crisis in the black community that many are trying to ignore: but silence is nothing other than death and destruction.
In 2006 the Joint Economic Committee submitted a study (NY’s senior senator Charles Schumer/chairperson), that showed 37.7% of the black male population as chronically unemployed. Almost two out of every five blacks have major difficulty in maintaining a livelihood. So behind the recent unemployment numbers -which show the country going through an almost fifty year high in this area- there are harsher realities within the black community.
The fact is unemployment has always been high amongst blacks, throughout recent history; especially amongst black teenagers. The only time every black person had work to do in this country, was during slavery. Just a few years ago, the Citizen Service Society in NYC did a survey which showed 48% of all black males being jobless on any given day. So if the national unemployment figure is somewhere around 9% these days: I say “whoop-de-damn-doo”. Black people would welcome that figure without a stir.
Then we have the issue of gun violence in the black and Hispanic communities; Barack Obama has been avoiding this issue like the swine flu. Blacks make up one in every eight citizens of this country, and yet we make up one in every two victims of murder. So we are half the murder victims and half the prison population: both at the same time.
And it all starts with education. Of all blacks who enter college, just around 22% eventually graduate. In Detroit, one in five black males will graduate from high school this year. In Chicago that number is around 35%. In NYC the graduation rate for black males is around 26%. Nationwide that number is about 42% (Short Foundation for Public Education/2006).
And let’s go back even further; black males in kindergarten are 7 to 10 times more likely to get into trouble over behavioral issues than white males. And the criminalization of blacks starts as early as ages six or seven; that’s when some are arrested and prosecuted for crimes of all ilk and sizes.
Barack Obama needs to start talking about all this right now. What are his ideas for solving the many revolving issues in the black communities? It’s more than just about giving lofty speeches on ‘race’ in Philadelphia (with no follow up); it’s about recognizing a big problem and facing it head on.
And so you see, my patience is wearing thin. Barack needs to know that it isn’t only about bailouts, and economics, and Iraq, and Pakistan, and the economy (stupid), and same-sex marriage, and green jobs, and the middle-East, and the economy, and the Supreme Court, and so on and so on. It is time to address what’s going on in the communities of color all over this country. It’s way past time.
Stay tuned-in folks.