How We Got Here

The Brutal murder of teen Derrion Albert last month in Chicago has once again sparked a national debate about urban youth violence. Albert, a clean cut and by all accounts decent young man was beaten to death by a mob while on his way home from school. The horrific murder was caught on a cell phone camera by a bystander. This debate seems to happen every few years or so. Chicago has certainly had many of these incidents over the past decade due to their out of control gang problem, which has been so since I was a child spending summers there with my father- who has lived there for close to thirty years. This incident could have happened in any large or midsized city in America. African American males all across the countries inner cities are filling up prisons and cemeteries at alarming rates.

How did we get to this point? Can these negative trends be reversed? Sadly, I would have to say no. The proverbial toothpaste is out of the tube. Since the 1960's, each generation has gotten progressively worse. A sobering truth is that the hooligans who perpetrate the type of mob violence seen in Chicago and other cities are reproducing. So, again how did we get here? After the victory of the civil rights movement in the late 1960's there was another battle taking place. It was the civil war between the non violent civil rights movement led by Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the belligerent in-your-face black power movement led by Stokely Carmichael and the Black Panthers. Dr. Kings movement used non-violence and discipline while the Black power movement used violence and anger.

The dangers of using anger and violence as a tactic is that retribution will always be reaped upon its practitioners. For instance, if one teaches his or her children to use violence, then expect that those children will eventually turn that violence not only against each other but maybe even their parents. This is what has happened by and large in the black community. Government intervention in the form of the great society programs have played a huge role in the decline of the black family. Black women were given subsidies i.e money and food stamps for each child they had-so long as they were unmarried. Why would a woman get married when she can simply marry Uncle Sam? Prior to government programs, during Jim Crow even, black out-of-wedlock birthrates were approximately 30% -in 2009 it's over 70%. As a result, single mothers have become the rule instead of the exception. As the family failed in any community, the schools and churches soon followed. Once these institutions are broken, no government program can replace them. After forty years liberals are still waiting on those replacements.

Blacks in general prior to the civil rights movement were very conservative. After the introduction of the great society programs, liberal/far left values have dominated black life. The victimization culture which has been perpetuated by the poverty industry and the democratic party has become the norm. Blacks become democrats by default-virtually from birth. Blacks choose to be democrats just as a fish chooses to born in water. As long as the democrats promise social programs, they can and will forever count on us keeping them in office.

The broken family unit will never be repaired since it like many other things are longer values in the black community. There was a time when having children out of wedlock was shameful-that is no longer the case. Going to prison or dropping out of school is no longer shameful or embarrassing. Grown men wear their trousers below their behinds as a fashion statement. Black conservatives are less popular than drug dealers in the "hood". An offspring of the black power movement is hip hop culture-which encompasses not only music but language, politics and fashion-has pretty much spat upon every traditional value in our society. It worships money, sex, violence and to a few it is a multi-million dollar business and to many others a godless religion. So as I look at the black cultural landscape It's clear to see who lost this civil war......we did.