Free Republic

John Sowell left his job as a truck driver in Louisville, Ky., last fall to move to Charlotte. He has family here, he said, and he'd heard it was a booming city with plenty of jobs. Now, three months and about 100 applications later, Sowell is still searching. “It's the grace of God if you get hired,” said Sowell, 43, who's been working at a temp agency. “It's hard. I don't know what to do now. I just pray a lot.” Though he has more than a decade of experience, he's having a hard time finding work – just like...

When the timing is right, the two parades meet on North Rampart Street, one showcasing men in skimpy skirts and bouffant wigs, the other with high-steppers waving handmade umbrellas and beaded fans. Both parades -- one hosted by Southern Decadence, the other by Black Men of Labor -- strolled through the streets Sunday within several blocks of each other in downtown New Orleans. This year, Decadence, a three-day gay festival, lured nearly 125,000 visitors to the city, while the Black Men of Labor parade attracted thousands of local and displaced New Orleanians. Behind each parade's glitz and glamour, participants said,...

ALLAHASSEE — The council charged with studying and helping the plight of black men and boys throughout Florida — who have disproportionally high incarceration, drug use and murder rates — was borne out of the experiences of its creators. State Rep. Frank Peterman remembered the handful of his best friends who were gunned down in their early 20s, he told the first meeting of the Council on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys on Tuesday. [snip] The 20-member council, consisting of lawmakers, state agency representatives, a psychologist and community members, will meet quarterly to first determine the conditions...

The 800-pound gorilla is back, and as usual folks are pretending the critter ain't in the room. We'll call this particular 800-pound gorilla Joey, in tribute to that 1940s film about the giant ape called Mighty Joe Young. I think it's time Joey got his props. I think it's time we acknowledge Joey. Joey, meet the guys. Guys, shake hands with Joey. "The guys" in this case are those Baltimoreans who, for the past week, have expressed angst and dismay about the appalling way some young black men in this city, addicted to the thug life, dispatch each other with...

TALLAHASSEE - State Sen. Frederica Wilson knows what a little TLC can do for at-risk black boys. As the founder of the 5000 Role Models of Excellence Project, the Miami Democrat has seen troubled teens go from life on the streets to college graduation. For the past two years, Wilson, a former Miami-Dade School Board member, has made it her mission to pass legislation aimed at helping more black men and boys. She's just one vote away from success. A bill to create ''The Council on the Social Status of Men and Boys'' has cleared the House and will likely...

The Plight of the Black Male Editorial | Change policy and lives "Is there some kind of conspiracy to get the black male?" That question, asked by Philadelphia Urban League president Patricia A. Coulter in an Inquirer article Sunday, has been thought, if not spoken, by others. Genocide has even been used to describe what is happening to black men. They die younger and faster than most U.S. demographics, often as a result of violence. Yet the lack of public policies to specifically address the problems of black men nationally raises another question: Who cares? Has the rest of America...

The Media's Bias Against Black Men in America Armstrong Williams Friday, March 31, 2006 Last week the New York Times published an article about the plight of American black men. The article was another example of major media outlets using negative statistics to consistently cast black men as the scourge of this country. It is not surprising that editors and journalists pursue and use these stories. Gloom and doom sells. But there is a deeper truth beyond the headlines, and it is this truth that we must understand in order to appreciate the full story of black men in America....

To the [NYT] Editor: As a married, hard-working black man who is a devoted father of two, I feel obligated to comment on the problems of black men described in your article. Why should we continue to study the self-inflicted decline in the socioeconomic status of black men? Opportunities for black men have never been greater. It is incumbent upon all of us, regardless of racial background, to take advantage of them. Unfortunately, thousands of our black men have failed at this and subsequently descend into being absent fathers, poorly educated, poorly trained and unproductive workers. Contrary to what many...

BALTIMORE — Black men in the United States face a far more dire situation than is portrayed by common employment and education statistics,... Focusing more closely than ever on the life patterns of young black men, the new studies, by experts at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and other institutions, show that the huge pool of poorly educated black men are becoming ever more disconnected from the mainstream society, and to a far greater degree than comparable white or Hispanic men. ...These were among the recent findings: ¶The share of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly...dropouts.... ¶Incarceration rates climbed in...

Sounding like a born-again social conservative, president Lyndon B. Johnson stepped to the podium and made this stirring pronouncement: “When the family collapses, it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a massive scale, the community itself is crippled.” And with his usual modesty, LBJ later hailed that 1965 Howard University commencement address as his “greatest civil rights speech.” A few months later the Moynihan Report came out. Despite its commonsense focus on strengthening the Black family, civil rights leaders raised a stink that Mr. Moynihan was trying to “blame the victim.” Floyd McKissick, director of...

Watching Simon Jackson in class is like watching a man who is conflicted about being in college. For long stretches, he huddles silently in the back corner, his head sunk into his bulky jacket. But every so often he strides to the front of the room to chat with the professor or to write on the chalkboard, self-assured to the point of cockiness. A 10th-grade dropout who earned a high school equivalency diploma, Mr. Jackson, 21, is now a freshman at Medgar Evers College in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, eager, he says, to get a college degree. "I was in school...