The live discussion on race that followed “Meeting David Wilson” was an uneven exercise. I was disappointed to hear overly simplistic assessments of the problems facing black urban communities and vague proposals for institutional remedies. But how to move forward?

Fellow blogger K Myles has written an exciting post that not only considers the historical context of problems facing the black community, but also puts forth a basic contemporary strategy for beginning to fix those problems. Some excerpts:

Our grandparents and great-grandparents understood that our families, our ethics, our faith, our education, and our dignity could not be subjugated to the wills or whims of society. When the Nation mistreated us, we didn’t respond by mistreating each other… and now, having made it through the darkest of those days, I believe we too often look towards our history of suffering and neglect at the hands of others to rationalize our new-found pathologies. But blaming our past is the path of least resistance. It exonerates us for allowing the diminution of our legacy of cultural resistance to the forces that would redefine us as inferior.
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Righting this ship means re-writing our schedules… If we’re going to talk about institutional racism (which we must), let’s have the conversation while we’re doing a neighborhood clean-up. If we’re going to talk about the role of government in creating dysfunction (which we must), let’s have that conversation after we’ve selected, prepared and prepped our own candidate for office. If we’re going to talk about what the Church Isn’t doing (which we must), then let’s have that abstract conversation after discussing some specific projects that we Can work on together. If we’re going to talk about the failures of Black organizations (which we must), then let’s have that conversation in the membership meeting and in the context of where we would like to volunteer our time and talents. If we’re going to talk about the breakdown of the black family (which we must), then let’s have that conversation with the group of teens you’re mentoring. “What’s wrong with black people?” K Myles The Wichita NAACP Blog

I encourage you to read Myles’ entire post. Perhaps more than Myles, I believe that local, state and Federal government must redirect more expenditures toward the welfare (yes, I said it) of poor children. It’s all well and good and essential to volunteer and get involved. I do. But there is no excuse for the sorry state of many public schools serving our most disadvantaged populations. It is simply impossible to learn in many of these spaces.