Call CSI!

I recently read a report by Phillip Jackson in which he stated, “There is no longer a need for dire predictions, hand-wringing, or apprehension about losing a generation of Black boys. It is too late. In education, employment, economics, incarceration, health, housing, and parenting, we have lost a generation of young Black men. The question that remains is will we lose the next two or three generations, or possibly every generation of Black boys hereafter to the streets, negative media, gangs, drugs, poor education, unemployment, father absence, crime, violence and death?”

After reading the latest dismal stats relating to the educational and social conditions bearing down on young African American men, it’s clear to me that a crime has been committed. A crime so terrible and inhumane the term holocaust wouldn’t be accurate enough to describe its totality. After sharing this information with my twin brother he asked me, "Where's the yellow tape that police use to put around a crime scene?"

There are many TV shows that feature the antics of crime scene investigators (CSIs). Seemingly, they’re able to solve every crime ever committed, from the most minute to the most heinous, based on the slightest scraps of evidence.

Despite the preponderance of evidence gathered by educational and social services CSIs from coast to coast -- low test scores, high drop out rates, high incarceration rates, high illiteracy rates, poor housing, poverty, broken families, high STD rates, teen pregnancy rates, drug abuse and alcoholism rates -- the mystery of why our children are not succeeding in life has yet to be solved.

My brother said, "There should be yellow police tape around every school in the hood, every prison, and I dare say, many churches. There should be chalk outlines drawn around those good brothers who do the right things but are victims of stereotypes just because they are African American men."

Do we need even more evidence to tell us why our children are not performing academically and socially? Then here's what we need CSIs to investigate:
1. Why in the hell African Americans continue to call each other niggas/niggaz/niggers.
2. Why young black males sag their pants -- despite the fact that saggin' spelled backwards is niggas.
3. Why young black male students have the worst grades, the lowest test scores, and the highest dropout rates of all students in the country. When these young black men don’t succeed in school, they are much more likely to succeed in the nation’s criminal justice and penitentiary system. There are more black men in prisons and jails in the United States (about 1.1 million) than there are black men incarcerated in the rest of the world combined.
4. Why don’t we as black men unite to overcome the many systems of oppression, suppression, and racism.
5. Why far too many black men are cowards when it comes to marriage, fatherhood, and parenthood.
6. Why we allow hip hop gangsters to pollute the minds of our children under the guise of entertainment.

We need to take that yellow tape and tape shut the mouths of profane artists, lazy parents, conniving preachers, loud-mouthed racists, corrupt and lying politicians, and brainwashed educators, all of whom continually contribute to this on going crime against humanity.