The Death of Derrion Albert
This is a tragic story that plays out daily in every major urban area in America. It played in Chicago last week, but will move to Philadelphia next week, then Indianapolis, then Memphis and so on. The region of the country does not matter as the culture of violence and gangsta mentality is the same. For many, the inner cities of America are as much of a “no go’ zone as any place in Iraq, the only difference is that we have troops in Iraq supposedly guaranteeing “Iraqi freedom” while there’s no freedom for the denizens of America’s inner cities.
There’s no single solution to this problem. We can say that parents need to do a better job–and they do. We can say that the education system has failed us–and it has. We can say that the government needs to do more—and it does. But saying all of that again is like listening to a broken record with a needle stuck in the same groove–we’ve heard it all before and saying it again won’t solve anything.
Changing things is not possible without a plan and planning things is not possible without strong independent African-American leadership and therein lies the problem. There are few leaders seriously planning anything to address this. For the most part, our leadership is pursuing the civil rights agenda of chasing after the latest unfurled confederate flag or noose hanging. I’m not suggesting that gratuitous racism is not a problem, but the paramount problem facing the African-American community is the crime that’s killing our children. All else is secondary.
Quite frankly, the only “plans” for the inner cities are those proffered by the illegal drug importers and the prison industrial complex. The drug purveyors have the “jobs” while the prison industrial complex has a place for everyone to “stay”. Of course both of them are planning on profiting from the situation and other than that, there are few, if any, plans for inner city communities.
