How to save a lost generation of black males
More needs to be done to save the lives of young black males, the Rev. James Meeks says. (Phil Velasquez, Chicago Tribune / March 14, 2012)
By James Meeks
April 10, 2013
In 1956, the year I was born, 75 percent of all homes in the African-American community were two-parent households. Today, only 25 percent of all homes in the black community are two-parent households. In the 1960s and the '70s, African-Americans fought to send their kids to better schools and for an end to segregation. Communities and churches united for change. Of course, back then, guns and drugs weren't readily available on street corners, as they are now. A teenager getting hold of a gun and firing into a crowd of his peers was unthinkable.
The escalating gun violence in Chicago is a symptomatic failure of all of the above, specifically as it relates to black men and boys. Ironically, black communities were safer back then, and black males had a better shot at a good education and a decent job at a time when black people were waging war against U.S. policies that were designed to hold us back.
Today, though we enjoy hard-won freedoms, our schools are separate and unequal by ZIP code. The drug and gun culture in our cities has proliferated, despite strict laws and sentencing guidelines to stop it. No disrespect to single mothers, but for African-American males, growing up in a fatherless home without other positive male role models has a negative impact on their psyche. Sadly, the majority of young African-American men in the inner city fit this description. Many become drug addicted. They lack clear pathways to an economic future. Combined with a proliferation of firearms, by age 15 you have a dangerous product of the street.
To reverse the culture of violence that is leaving a trail of bodies across the city, innocents and perpetrators alike, we must target the inherent social and economic disparities disproportionately impacting African-American men and boys. The numbers bear this out. According to analysis of police data, of the more than 500 reported homicides in Chicago last year, 361 of the victims were African-American males; 287 were ages 15 to 35.
Recently, more than 100 churches and clergy across Chicagoland organized a night of prayer, targeting neighborhoods and street corners where lives were lost to gun violence in 2012. Concerned parents and residents lined city blocks by the hundreds. It was a demonstration borne out of frustration and sadness designed to build strength and unity around a concerted effort to take back our streets and save our young men. It must now be followed up with a red-hot level of community engagement, like we did back in the day, so that we don't again fall into complacency.
We're dealing with a generation that's been lost to the streets, steered down errant paths largely due to circumstances beyond their control. The issue has been politicized, but the problems young black men are facing cannot be viewed solely through a political lens. If we look back 40 years, we'll see that this demographic group has suffered socially and economically as a direct result of the backlash to hard-won civil rights laws. Without street alternatives, these marginalized young men aren't destined to become the breadwinners I remember from my generation. Their educational advancement has been systemically eclipsed. In Chicago, about 40 percent graduate from Chicago Public Schools. They top the ranks of the unemployed, and our penal system is overflowing with them. They are released back onto the streets without identification and additionally carry the stigma of being an ex-con, making it harder to get a job.
Now, barely a generation removed from the civil rights era, the fear factor is missing among them. They're not afraid of prison; some aren't even afraid of dying. That's how low their expectations have plummeted.
On April 18, I will convene fellow members of the clergy to finalize a program targeting African-American males ages 15 to 35 to, among several initiatives, help them attain GEDs, find jobs and kick their drug addictions.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy recently announced a campaign to invest in after-school programs. They also said they want to toughen laws for gun violations. As citizens, we cannot let the buck stop there. Speaking as a former Illinois state senator, I know the problem won't be solved strictly by politicians and policies. Take our failing schools, for example. The quality of education in poor, urban communities has been a highly politicized issue, culminating recently with an announcement to close 53 so-called underutilized elementary schools and one high school program in Chicago. The quality of our schools is a problem with no quick fix. We can't afford to wait on it.
The mayor and police superintendent might hold sway over politics and policies. But what goes on inside households is beyond their reach. And therein lies the solution: It's going to take a focused, integrative, intentional effort by lawmakers, pastors and church folk, community leaders and educators to stem the tide of violence robbing our city of its bright future.
The Rev. James Meeks, pastor of the House of Hope at Salem Baptist Church of Chicago, is a former member of the Illinois Senate.
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