Brother Hasan on the State of the Race

Marvin,

I hope you are doing well. The other day a young brother (his father told he that he is an honor student) was robbed for two dollars several feet away from his parents' home by two young punks. I heard the punk in question screaming that he should shot him. The young brother kept asking him: "But what did I do?"

That a young brother could "almost" lose his life at Ground Zero Black America over two dollars is breathtaking in its scope. I mean, I would have given this punk two dollars had he asked me for it; but, he did not know that I was looking at him out my window. I called the police and the reason I called the police is this: There is no male backup in these communities any longer to set the tone for civility. The main character, for example, in True To The Game by Terri Woods is a drug dealer with a Muslim name. It seems that she is suggesting that even the Muslims, who provided some degree of hope in these communities, are no longer respected and, furthermore are lost in a maddening mayhem.

What we are facing, Brother Marvin, is far more complex than a "child left behind." We are dealing with the consequences of "generations being left behind" and, in the absence of some kind of new socially engineered race, these folks are not going to catch up. What is the implications of this as a matter of public and social policy?

Many of the books now "flooding" Ground Zero Black America are basically trashy Black romance novels. I ride the bus every morning in the 'hood and one is hard pressed to see most our people reading anything at all. In fact, I cannot find a copy of Ebony or Jet magazine in a predominantly black neighborhood and would have to travel a considerable distance to find a book by Ishmael Reed. It is really incredible.

The Africans, for example, in New York City are busy involved in commercial endeavors. They are not espousing (if so, they are skillfully keeping it to themselves) any idea of the-way-we-were Afrocentricity and, in fact, probably think those of us born in America are completely out of our minds.

This is a time when clear minds with a will towards something concrete must prevail. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, so they say, and I am trying to determine what was lost when one has no discernible frame of reference at all.