There was an article in yesterday's Charlotte Observer on the same lines as what you posted, Wonderful.
Title of Article: Black males struggle despite local efforts
As a boy, Deon Steele loved taking trips to the movies and to Carowinds with the Big Brothers Big Sisters program.
But on Monday, as the 25-year-old stood outside a Mecklenburg courtroom, he described himself as a high school dropout and former drug dealer whose most marketable skill is wiring car stereos in his yard.
If the plight of America's most troubled black men is worsening, as a recent New York Times story suggests, interviews Monday with young men like Steele and charities trying to help them
show things are also bleak in Charlotte and in North Carolina.
As of Jan. 31, there were 36,428 inmates in the N.C. Department of Correction; 20,166 were black men.
Unemployment in North Carolina for black men stands at 10 percent, compared to 4 percent for white men, according to 2005 figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Mecklenburg County, census data show 15 percent of black families live below the poverty level, compared to 5 percent of white families.
"It's just hard out here," Steele said as he waited to face a judge on a probation violation charge. "Ain't no jobs, police messing with you all the time ... We don't have anything to do, and that leads to other things."
It doesn't have to be that way, one Big Brothers Big Sisters official said. Sondra Hines, a vice president with the nonprofit, noted that it helps more than 1,800 children, and most who participate stay out of trouble and improve their grades.
She suggested Steele and young men like him need to check their own choices. Sondra Hines is a Soror.
"The same energy that they put into a life of crime, they could put that energy into bettering themselves," she said. "You can't succeed by sitting back and complaining about what could have been or should have been."
Still, the studies, detailed in a story the Observer published on its front page Monday, sketch a depressing picture of life for black men in America.
Conducted by Ivy League experts, the studies show that in the inner cities, many black men don't finish high school, can't find work and are locked behind bars.
Those problems aren't new. But the experts say they are growing worse.
Read the rest
HERE
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The plight is sad, but it is not just Black males. It is the BLACK FAMILY as a whole that is in trouble. We have our priorities backwards and pass that on to our kids. Instead of being in the clubs shaking our collective azzes, we need to be at Borders and reading to our kids among many other things.