(Akiit.com) In several speeches, Barack Obama has used an easy, if imprecise, formulation to express his despair over the high incarceration rate of young black men. “I don’t want to wake up four years from now and discover that we still have more young black men in prison than in college,” he said at a rally last year, repeating, more or less, a line used frequently by critics of the criminal justice system.

But it’s not accurate. If you were to check with academic and criminal justice sources, you’d find, happily, that there are far more young black men in college — about 530,000, ages 18 to 24 — than in prison — about 106,000 in the same age group.

Still, Obama’s count expresses a larger truth. If you counted black men under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system — on probation, in prison or on parole — you’d find that their numbers are higher than those pursuing a college degree. And, on any given day, about one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 (more than 475,000) are locked up in city or county jails or state or federal prisons, according to The Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group that advocates alternatives to incarceration.

Not all those black men behind bars are hardened criminals. Many have done something dumb — written a bad check, failed to pay child support, bought a $5 bag of crack. But they haven’t robbed or maimed or murdered. Still, they’ve ended up with criminal records that are likely to haunt them for the rest of their lives, limiting their chances at decent employment.

Unfortunately, Obama hasn’t made the nation’s soaring prison population — more than one in a hundred American adults is behind bars — a major theme of his campaign. He probably believes he can’t afford to. Democrats have long been burdened by the perception that they are “soft on crime,” so a black Democrat would be even less likely than a white Democrat to linger on the subject of black men in prison.
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(Akiit.com) Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama received a lot of (generally positive) media coverage for his sermon last Sunday delivered before more than 3,000 worshippers at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago. It was basically a “tough love” speech castigating Black men who father children but fail to stay around to raise and nurture them.

It was a great sermon. I agreed with just about everything he said. Nevertheless, I do not think he should have given it because it targeted the end-result manifestation of a problem and not the cause of the problem.

I have long been convinced that white Americans get a twisted thrill out of hearing Black people criticize one another. Such criticisms tend to let whites off hook. It enables them to feel that the problems and social pathologies confronting Blacks are just a result of individual failures and not a result of 240 years of slavery, 100 years of systematic discrimination, 100 years of state enforced poverty and a culture which has long denigrated and denied social value to Blacks.

What I want Obama – a man I find truly amazing in many respects – to understand are some basic principles of rational thinking which are necessary to grasp if we are going to solve the problem of the missing Black father and not just talk about it. I assure you that these principles are sound and must be followed.

The first two rational thinking principles are these: Everything has a cause but nothing is the cause of itself. The primal example of these two principles is the phenomenon called a baby. Like all phenomena in life and nature, the baby does not cause or bring itself into existence. It is the product of causes external to itself - a mother and a father.
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(Akiit.com) Like legendary Roman Fiddlers, African Americans stood starry-eyed in June when the numbers showed Senator Barack Obama would be the Democrat Party’s presidential nominee.

In unison with the race-neutral Obama campaign African Americans too have turned a blind eye to the fact that black joblessness is twice that of white Americans.

The devastating effects of crime, family dissolution, welfare, and low levels of social organization among African Americans are fundamentally a consequence of the lack of work that blacks endure because of institutional racism and a lack of attention to public policies on this issue.

Too many blacks can’t get a job and any candidate wanting African American votes should be made to outline economic plans that provide more jobs for us and all Americans.

The latest business conditions show reason why African Americans should make their vote work for them. We are in a deeply troubled economy, and again, blacks are the last and least of workers. The number of unemployed people grew by 861,000 in May - rising to 8.5 million. The over-the-month jump in unemployment reflects more workers losing jobs and an increase in those coming into the job market - especially younger people - to look for work.

When Obama stared his “Impossible Dream,” the number of unemployed stood at 6.9 million and the jobless rate was 4.5 percent. Since then, a trio of crises - housing, credit and financial - have rocked the economy.
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(Akiit.com) As I drove down the street today, I couldn’t help but notice all the farm land… It was a time in which there were trees all over the place, but now one can see for days… Alot of people are now back to making a living off of the land… I can remeber as a child heading to the store with dad to pick up some cattle supplies so we could feed our animals… Oh well, the sun is shining so let me get a tan…

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(Akiit.com) My little friend is sitting on my lap as I type this message… It amazes how we as humans can connect with animals as I wouldn’t know what to do without my cat… It’s now a part of me and vice versa… Need to pick up new some toys for it, as recently I came across a cat condo which is perfect for Spider… That’s the name I gave my cat with it’s beautiful white and black fur… Let me go now as I need to clean up around the house…

Written By CTA