I've said before that my 2 little sisters are black. In many ways they are "whiter" than me in the stereotypical sense. They grew up in rural Tenn after my parents moved back there mostly and listen to country music, speak flawless english etc. I grew up in charlotte and hung out mostly with the guys i played football with. We listened to gangsta rap (tupac biggie outkast snoop etc.) and to my embarrassment i used to speak with a lot of ghetto slang as a teen. that was 20 years ago and i couldn't be more different now. The way i behaved and spoke etc. was largely due to who i chose to run with and where i hung out. Teens, moreso than adults; tend to be products of their environments.
I think the culture within the black community will have to change radically and stay that way for a generation or 2 before these statistics begin to really change. Sadly with almost 70% of black kids not having a father in the home there is a huge vacuum of rolemodels and discipline. The black guys i ran with chose exactly who you would think as their role models: athletes, rappers, etc. While i can't fault athletes much gangsta rap is the absolute opposite of what a good parent wants their child to emulate or idolize. Every song is about "dope, hoes, and paper"...they have absolutely no respect for women and glorify selling dope and pimping on the street.
While any logical adult can look at the 17 year old kid slingin crack on the corner andknow that that road only ends 2 places (prison and the graveyard)...it has to be hard to come up in a bad neighborhood where mom is dirtfloor poor and see the kid on the corner who makes a couple grand a week easy. Many good guys fall into the trap of selling drugs and end up with multiple felonies or death.
As long as the liberal policies are in place to reward absent fathers, AND black culture continues to find the concept of a "baby mama" acceptable....there will be no progress in the black community as a whole. Sure, there are government policies that try to hold the black vote hostage (damn libs) but until the black community stops blaming others and takes responsibility for their own actions as individuals and as communities. Young men need to keep it in their pants or use protection. young ladies need to stay pure or use protection. People need to take back their neighborhoods by working with police to send the message that drug trade is not acceptable where they live. More positive role models need to take the chance and try to be an example and mentor for the youth in their communities etc. The race card is beyond played out as the first excuse for any failure or outright crime by blacks. No black person alive today even has a living relative that was ever a slave. We are just about to the point where none have a relative that was ever discriminated against before the civil rights movement of the 60s...its time to quit beating that dead horse and man up and make something out of themselves. Unfortunately Barry has set race relations back at least 20 years with his bullcrap, so right now blacks are a little leery i think. There are a lot of people like me out there though that refuse to be caught up in the divisive rhetoric from the pres and the MSM