It's clearly BLACK and WHITE

                Unless you’ve been under a rock….more specifically under a rock with no television or social media, you cannot help but notice how the news is inundated with stories of unarmed black males being killed by white civilians and white law enforcement agents.  While these incidents are nothing new, they were recently brought back into the forefront by stories such as Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis—both young, black teenagers killed by white men in Florida who incited the “Stand Your Ground Law” as their primary defense.  Recent cases such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York have reopened these wounds that were still so fresh for so many.  The latest case of unarmed Walter Scott in South Carolina who was shot 8 times in the back by a police officer only threw salt in the wounds.  There are many sides to these stories and in some cases, many questions that have yet to be answered but further discussion and open dialogue is definitely warranted.  Why does this keep happening? Who is at fault? What can we do, if anything, to fix it?

                Motherhood has been an amazing experience but even though my son is only 5 months old, my heart is sometimes filled with trepidation.  I am raising a young, black man.  I am raising an endangered species. My husband and I are raising the entity that is at the center of the controversy.   My husband and I will do everything in our power to raise a God-fearing, law abiding, respectable young man, but is that enough?  Does it matter that my child will be from a good home and a good community? Or will he simply be viewed as just another black male?

                We hate to talk about it, but it’s kind of the elephant in the room—racism.  It is still alive and thriving.  We have certainly come a long way from the days of segregation and Jim Crow Laws, but we are not too far removed from those times and we are currently in the times of racist leaked Sony emails and racist rants by college fraternity members. 

                While it’s never fair to blame the victim, have young black men created lifestyles synonymous with violence? Sagging pants, faces obscured by hoodies, loud misogynistic music, and crime have become the essence of the black man as portrayed in the media.  There are racial disparities in incarceration—According to statistics, one in six black men had been incarcerated as of 2000 and according to that same statistic, if current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime.  WOW. 

                We see the images on social media profiles of young males with sagging pants, holding wads of cash, pointing guns, and maybe even doing drugs. When did THIS become the pinnacle of success? Young, black men and women have their priorities all wrong—the value money of education, violence over hard work, looks and perceptions over reality, and flashy lifestyles over learning.  What would Martin Luther King, Jr., W.E.B. Dubose, Andrew Young, Nelson Mandela, and Desmond Tutu think of this new generation?  In the words of the late Marvin Gay, “What’s Going On?”

                So we’ve acknowledged that there is a problem now what is the solution? Do African American males change their behavior and culture? Do other races need cultural competency training? Where do we go from here? Contrary to what Michael Jackson said, it DOES matter if you’re black or white.