A brief discussion of devastating issues facing African Americans makes it clear that 2011 calls upon the entire community for swift, precise and collective action. In fact, it would be sane to say that African Americans in many ways face the most challenging year that they have in centuries.
The decrease of the financial value of real estate holdings of African Americans represents billions of dollars lost that may never be found. Fewer and fewer African American males are attending college or desire to excel to receive post collegiate degrees or professional degrees like MBAs PhDs and Jds. The creation of a gender gap in the education of African American women over the education and matriculation of African American men in high schools, colleges and graduate programs is creating a travesty. We live in an era where post racial concepts create delusional ideas amongst a hip hop generation that cannot see the value of a collective African American value system.
The footloose employment landscape has outsourced many opportunities for unskilled laborers throughout the United States. The open-door policy for employing legal and illegal immigrates in skilled and unskilled positions challenges the African American community to be ready with skill sets that employers worldwide are looking for. National recognized, celebrated, revered and venerated African American role models are at an all-time low in the media. Activism amongst entertainers who speak to their fan base about the discrimination that is ever present in the African American communities that remain largely segregated is absent. Educational disparities that exist in urban school systems that are filled with violence coupled with pariah attitudes are allegedly “fixed” by a business community that simply siphons the educational funds of the urban community through profitable charter schools.
Growing health disparities in manageable diseases like hypertension and diabetes and the ravages of HIV/AIDS present the devastating psychological response of a marginalized community that’s been failed by the health care system and pushed into a vicious cycle of self-care.
Food selection in the urban community is dictated by what’s fast and cheap and the only other options include substandard grocery retailers.
Rising numbers of reports of domestic violence and black-on-black crime represent African American’s misguided self-destructive behaviors.
There’s an ever-present intellectual dismantling of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, who remain under siege through organized right-wing thinking and African Americans whose lack of appreciation for historical institutions mandates their apolitical thinking toward these institutions.
The role of the African American church hasn’t produced a larger intellectual and financial population in the African American community. While they continue building larger edifices that organize large televised religious businesses at the expense of the entire African American community, the lack of quantitative evaluation for the investment that the African American community receives in return from the African American church requires reevaluation of the principles of African American church leadership.
These quandaries in addition to the decimation of the black family and the promotion of criminal behavior and institutions has eliminated a value system that’s identifiable and recognizable to the African American community. This leaves the community starting a new year without goals or measurable objectives to evaluate their true progress and the states of the African American community. The entire community has looked to politicians and religious leaders to identify and provide services that will lead to more financial benefits due to their election or their employment as spiritual and political leaders.
There are no new years goals or objectives that are measurable that the African American community can point to for their children or their husbands or their wives or their college educated or their skilled laborers… No key points used promote that which is needed in order to sustain the race and the community.
What are we waiting for ? We have already lived 2010. Where is the measurable leadership and responsible leadership today?
