Young Men: Take A Stand!
Young Men! Young Black men!
If you find that God has blessed you with a sound mind, with intelligence, with a voice, with purpose in your life, then you have a duty!
You have a duty to lead the adolescents in your community. You have a duty to help the adolescent females and males, but at this time , I would like to discuss how you could help our young adolescent males.
Young Men, you need to teach young adolescent males
· The importance of education
· To respect, cherish, protect and value their sisters, female peers and all women
· Why pimping and prostitution is wrong
· The importance of being involved in extra-curricular activities like sports, music, community service.
· That when young people are involved in activities, they are less likely to be involved in negative activities like joining gangs
· Why using drugs is wrong
· Why over-indulgence I drinking is wrong
Why are the majority of our black men in jail/prison? Can the adolescents in the Black community be saved? Yes they can! But what is going to be done to address this problem? What are males going to do about it?
The negative cycle needs to be stopped. Many black men get trapped in a cycle where at an early age, they get involved in activities like using drugs, committing crime, they drop out of school without completing their education, by the time they are 21, some of them come to their senses and try to change their lives around, but by that time, they try to apply for a job, and then realize that they cant get a descent job because:
· They have no qualifications
· They have a felony on their record
· They do the pre-employment drug screen and fail it because of the level of drugs in their body
· They don’t know how to conduct themselves and how to speak properly at an interview
· They don’t know how to dress for an interview
· They don’t know how to take a daily shower, brush their teeth, groom their hair everyday. They think these things should only be done on special occasions like birthday, Easter and Christmas.
Plantation slavery may have ended many years ago but these young men are trapped in mental slavery. From the slavery plantation to the jail plantation. Other things that keep them trapped in mental slavery are
· They have a negative attitude towards working
· They have no positive role models in their present environment
· They have no father figure or mentor to guide them in the right direction
· They meet a nice young girl they may want to marry, end up getting that girl pregnant and have a baby that they cant provide for
· They sit around listening to negative demeaning music everyday that they chant and that helps to keep them trapped in a negative mind set.
· They hate the police, they hate the government, have no respect for law and order, they hate themselves, they hate the world and everything in it!
And so without a proper job, and no education or means to elevate themselves from the condition they find themselves in, in order to survive, they turn to crime; they cant get a descent date, so they rape the young women in their community; they get arrested for a range of criminal activity; they are put into jail where their brilliant young minds are wasted. It is such a shame that all this intelligence should be wasted. These brilliant minds left to rot. By the time they serve their sentence and are back on the streets, they are hardened, and set in their ways. Some of them try to change. Many of them genuinely want to get a good job, and when you speak with them, you are genuinely surprised at how intelligent they are. But they find that they still cant get a job because of their long criminal record and still no education and and no skills, and yet they still must live. They still must eat, buy clothes, find shelter, provide for their young. But they cant get a descent job. So in order to survive they must once more commit crime in order to provide for themselves. Then they get arrested again and so are trapped in a negative never –ending cycle! One that is very very hard for them to break out of.
Young Men! This is an urgent call for you to help end this destructive cycle. Help save your younger brothers from this negative cycle.
Young Men! It is possible to be a positive influence to the younger males in the community. Help them by being their mentor, by being their role model, their big brother. It is possible to save the adolescent males. It is possible to set an example in the community and be that agent of change. Young men, it is possible to teach the younger brothers the right way.
Young Men!
Young Black Men!
It is time to take a stand. Time to heed your call of duty. Time to lead your young brothers in the community!
