Would it help to answer that question if you knew that the history of black Americans, as a people, exactly mirrors the past of the young gang-banger that I just described?
I said that during his first 14 years – that’s 64% of his 21 years of life – he was taken from his parents, he was denied an education, and he was physically, emotionally, or sexually abused every day of his life. Well, that is just what happened to blacks during 246 years of Slavery – which is also the first 64% of the time that blacks have been in America. I said that during his teen years – which was 27% of his 22 years of life – he lived wherever he could, doing whatever he had to do just to survive. Well, living as second-class citizens, struggling just to get by is exactly what happened to blacks during the 103 years of the Jim Crow era – which is also 27% of the time that blacks have been in America. In the case of the 22 year-old gang-banger, it was only the last year or two of his life that he, as an adult, was truly free to begin to try to understand, to accept, and to begin to try to fix his broken life. This is also the case for black Americans. It has only been during the
