National Urban League Report: State of Black America 2004

[AKA2D '91]

http://www.nul.org/news/2004/soba.html

[Honeykiss1974]

An excerpt from Leonard Pitts regarding the NUL's assesment...


"I can think of three things off the top of my head that ought to be on it.

One: Stop waiting for the next Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Two: Reintegrate white folks of good will into the struggle.

Three: Handle our business."

Click here for the article in its entirety

[AKA2D '91]

From Pitts' article:

And before we can make ourselves free, we must first make ourselves whole.

Amen!

[Honeykiss1974]

Leonard has it going on. I think we on GC have touched on these topics many times. How we can get this message out to the masses (and to get them to CARE) is the next question?

Excerpt from his article....

Not to minimize the corrosive effects of the aforementioned racism, but truth is, much of what ails black folk is within the power of black folk to fix. We need to bring fathers back into our families. We need to prioritize education above entertainment. We need to shut off the television sometimes and read. We need to support black business. We need to bling-bling less and save-save more. We need to stop saying "n*gger."

[nikki1920]

I havent read the article yet, but the quote HK1974 used is ON point. We (AA) need to fix what is wrong with us.

[Steeltrap]

I don't have an answer on how we can get the masses to care and be accountable. But it may be challenging to get to that point, because there's such a pervasive victimization mentality that exists in some of our communities: "the Man is doing this to us."

Years ago, I recall reading about black politics and the author of that column talked about the opportunity strain and the resentment strain. The opportunity strain would say that we need to get our own house in order, while the resentment strain emphasizes victimology.

[Ideal08]

I read both articles. I forwarded them to the staff here at school. We have an Inter-Session coming up where we will discuss race. "They" need to be prepared for the conversation. Hopefully this will help. I won't even tell y'all what race relations are like at this all Black school.