United Press International - June 15, 2004
Al Swanson, UPI Urban Affairs Correspondent

Looking at the statistics one could make a pretty good case they definitely are at risk.

Of the 500,000 African-American males living in Chicago, U.S. Census figures show nearly one-third live below the poverty line.

The high school dropout rate for young black males has increased to more than 60 percent since 1995 -- and half of the city's African-American men between the ages of 20 and 24 are not working or in school, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The unemployment rate for young black males in May was a Depression-era level of nearly 40 percent.

The combination of poor education and a lack of jobs is a time bomb for already stressed and distressed African-American communities struggling to cope with an epidemic of guns, gangs, drugs and crime.

"Our problems and our challenges are America's problems and America's challenges," said Rep. Bobby L. Rush, D-Ill., one of the organizers of four regional conferences planned for this summer to discuss new ways to address the plight of the African-American male.

The Chicago Region State of the African-American Male Conference will be June 25-26 at Malcolm X College, a community college on Chicago's West Side.

Rush and other black political leaders say a comprehensive plan of action is long overdue to address problems of employment, education, incarceration and health issues, including drugs, HIV/AIDS, heart disease, obesity and prostate cancer, faced by a large number of black males.

For many young black men, life has become a stark choice between the classroom and a cellblock. Finding even a minimum-wage job may not be a viable option for someone with a criminal record.

Jail is the fate of far too many considered unemployable. They turn to crime over low-paying, entry-level jobs.

No wonder so many minority youth dream of becoming a big-time rapper or sports superstar.

Fate can be unkind to even the athletically gifted black males talented enough to be recruited to play for colleges and universities.

According to the NCAA, 16 of the 65 schools that participated in the 2004 NCAA Men's Division I national basketball tournament graduated 25 percent or less of their African-American players. Four colleges graduated no black male players, and some schools with top-ranked basketball programs have not graduated a single black player in a decade.

"These statistics are appalling," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., who was rebuffed when he asked CBS to broadcast African-American graduation-rate statistics during its "March Madness" college basketball tournament television coverage.

The statistics go on.

In 1990, 61 percent of all black males lived in single-parent households. Those 9- and 10-year-old boys are now adults.

The Illinois Department of Corrections said more than 85 percent of juvenile parolees and 60 percent of adult parolees are black males.

Times are tough, but what about personal responsibility?

Comedian Bill Cosby was criticized in Time magazine and other places for breaking "the unwritten rule of keeping black dirty laundry in black washing machines."

Cosby sparked a firestorm when he voiced his opinions on the behavior of some low-income African-Americans at a gala marking the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's historic Brown vs. Board of Education decision.

"People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around. ... The lower-economic people are not holding up their end in this deal," Cosby was quoted as saying. "These people are not parenting."

Cosby went on to put his comments in context.

"I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there is an orange suit. Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18, and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol? And where is the father?" Cosby said.

Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-Ill., who proposed the Public Safety Ex-Offender Self-Sufficiency Act to help former inmates successfully re-enter society, said the conferences would deal with the lack of positive role models for African-American males.

Davis said school districts must proactively recruit African-American male teachers.

"If boys see only women teachers at their school, what else are they suppose to think ... that education is not for men," he said.

Davis believes the government should do more for the predicted 630,000 inmates that will be released from prison in 2004. The Urban Institute, a non-partisan public policy research organization, said in 2001 more than a third of the 30,000 ex-offenders released from Illinois prisons wound up living in just six predominately black Chicago neighborhoods -- all six in Illinois' 7th District, which is represented in Congress by Davis.

Davis said his bill is designed to provide structured living arrangements for ex-offenders as they return home in a cost-effective manner for taxpayers. It uses models like the low-income housing tax credit program.

"If America is to become the nation that it has the potential of being, then we must seriously address the problems, needs, hopes and aspirations of all our citizens, and even those who are mired down at the bottom," Davis said.

Cosby, a philanthropist who has donated tens of millions of dollars to education and social causes, did not champion any programs. His remarks focused on personal responsibility.

However, Cosby did not say: "We as black folks have to do a better job. ... Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us. We have to start holding each other to a higher standard."

That statement was attributed to Cosby by Time and CNN, but former NBA star Charles Barkley actually said it to a convention of black journalists.
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