With No More Cotton to Pick, What Will America Do with 40 Million Black People?

If Black America is to survive (and there is no assurance that it will), the initial five keys to transforming our economic and social problems include:

1) Rebuild the Black family. Every major problem in the Black community, including poor education, massive unemployment, senseless violence, hyper-incarceration, lost spirituality, low-quality housing options and high mortality rates, can be traced to the disintegration of the Black family. The Black family was systematically destroyed during slavery, with the sanction of the government, to benefit the American economic system, and the devastating effects of its annihilation abound today.

2) Provide Black boys with strong, positive Black men as mentors, role models and, particularly, a connection to their fathers. Black boys, like any other children, imitate and become what they see. It is critical, therefore, that Black children see strong, positive Black men. Social programs and public policies of the 1950s through the 1980s discouraged Black men from being in the lives of their children.

3) Control the negative peer culture and the electronic media that propagate and glorify images of Black boys and men as violent, irresponsible and uncaring human beings. Either Black people will control the media that we consume or the media will control us. Modern media has put Black America on a trajectory to its own self-destruction.

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