Several months ago, Topsoil Columnist Andrew Padula submitted a piece triggered by TI’s gun insanity. It was a good post, but in it Andrew made the observation that increasingly, there were two kinds of people in America. Beyond black and white or brown, there were those who were striving, adhering to the law and doing their best to fight for a taste of the American dream and there were others engaged in perpetually self and community destructive behaviors. He argued that the gulf between the two cultures was rapidly widening.

I regret to say, I flipped out. I argued that there is only one kind of person and most of those who are misdirected and losing in America just needed ‘bootstraps.’ They needed ‘bootstraps’ from both the private and public sector to find their way into the swim of the hardworking American ideal.

I now believe I was wrong. And my heart breaks to observe that there are generations of people lost to us and the best we may be able to do is to fight to save their young children.

Now the ‘us’ I refer to has absolutely nothing to do with race or socioeconomic bracket. I recall the time I spent as an adult literacy volunteer at the Urban League in South Central LA. The folks I worked with were black and Latino and I believe exclusively poor. But everyone worked: in fast food, as health aids, as janitors, as receptionists. Everyone consistently made it to the free and voluntary Saturday morning class eager to learn. Now I can certainly rail against the public education system that failed these students so miserably in during their school years, but the point is they weren’t giving up. I had a 56 year old man working on his GED! They is us. They is the we who have critical thinking skills. We have the ability to analyze and question and take advantage of whatever opportunities we find or create.

I am sure some of you are disagreeing with me. But as you structure your argument in rebuttal to my observations about critical thinking skills, you prove my point.

I had a heart sickening epiphany the other day. I was listening to an urban radio call in show when a young man called in. I think he said he was 23 and he had fathered 4 children by 4 different women and took care of exactly none of them. And he was proud of the fact that he had “4 kids.” I thought to myself, he would make any slave owner proud. And then I realized that he was measuring his own worth in the exact same way a century gone slave owner would have measured his worth, “How strong is this black buck’s back?”

That young man has exactly zero critical thinking skills. Of course there is clearly low self esteem, I understand that. But that young man and hundreds of thousands like him have no ability to ask themselves seemingly simple questions, “Does this make sense for me?” “Does this make sense for my community?” “Does this make sense a new human life?’

In April, the New York Times did a piece on the efforts to address disproportionate rates of black infant mortality in poor rural Mississippi. In one family profiled, there were multiple generations of women without high school diplomas, on welfare and with multiple children. The youngest mother of the bunch refused the social workers offer to help her children. She just refused to participate. Such a choice does not make any sense. I argue that this woman does not even have the skills necessary to make a decision that makes sense.

So here is where I come back to we have to save and teach those children. We have to make sure that the neighborhood school is clean, safe and staffed with qualified motivated teachers. We have to enforce truancy laws and provide after school programs like sports and school clubs to engage the minds of kids early. Let them get addicted to learning.

More tomorrow. Please comment. I am anxious to hear your thoughts.