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Showing posts from October 23, 2009

How We Got Here

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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 gott...