On matters of race, most blacks run away from introspection, and we do not like to hear others publicly remind us of our responsibilities to ourselves. One problem we should openly talk about, but run from, is the high number of black children born out of wedlock. Depending on whose numbers we use, between 70 percent to 80 percent of black children are born to single mothers.
Some black neighborhoods do not have any two-parent families. I know dozens of black kids who do not know who their biological fathers are, and most of their friends are in the same fix. We need to remind ourselves, which we rarely do, that having a child is a choice we make.
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We also run away from discussing crime, especially horrific cases of black-on-black crime that capture headlines and lead nightly news reports. We try to rationalize the high numbers of blacks in prison by blaming everyone except ourselves. Many whites, especially racists, use these phenomena to bash us. We leave ourselves open as targets for such attacks by refusing to confront crime honestly and openly.
To mention the deleterious effects of hip-hop is to be attacked. The ugly truth is that this outlaw culture, with its anti-intellectualism, antiauthoritarianism and nihilism, will do more harm than virtually anything else to a generation of blacks. Fearing attack, too many blacks remain silent on this issue, and when whites bring it up, they are shouted down as racists.
