The black community now collectively faces a series of problems, each related to the others, each compounding one another, and we must face them all together. We as a nation cannot ignore any of them.

Those in authority have their own agenda; they treat moraltransgressions like food they pass over in a buffet line — they don’t want tohear or think about them, so they don’t. Against these well-funded politiciansand interest groups feasting on the “social ills” of the black community, asthough they are inanimate objects unable to make their own choices, we mustaffirm their freedom and look at the choices many of them make.

• First, there is the family. Eight-five percent of poorblack children live in single-mother households, and such children are fourtimes as likely to live in poverty as those with two parents. Since a majorityof black youth is being raised by single mothers, we must study these mothers.I have found that 38 percent of these mothers live below the poverty line, 62percent of these mothers had never been married and almost half of them werealso raised by single mothers. The lack of a proper family structure has becomea revolving door of ill behavior. Is it possible that a horrible familystructure could spill over to other areas of life including employment andeducation?

Within the black community there has been much talk aboutbringing about a change to every person of color, and while the methods tobring about this change are constantly debated, many black people (myselfincluded) agree that a change is needed.

• Then there is crime. According to the U.S. Census Bureau,while blacks only make up 12 percent of the population, they account for 44percent of all prisoners. Demico Boothe, a former prisoner turned writer,composed a book titled “Why Are There So Many Black Men In Prison?” He writes,“African-American males are being imprisoned at an alarming and unprecedentedrate. Out of the 10.4 million Black adult males in the U.S. population, nearly1.5 million are in prisons and jails, with another 3.5 million more onprobation or parole or who have previously been on probation or parole. Blackmales make up nearly 75% of the total prison population.” It is estimated that1 out of every 10 black males will end up in some form of a correctionalfacility in their lifetimes.

• And there is economics and finance. Black unemployment isat 17 percent, while whites have a jobless rate of just 6 percent. According tothe Economic Policy Institute, the rate for unemployed blacks has grownconstantly in contrast to whites, and in some states the black unemploymentrate is as high as 25 percent. United for a Fair Economy reported that blacksare three times more likely to be poor than whites. The median annual income ofa black woman with a bachelor’s degree in comparison to that of a white male isalmost $20,000 less. Black women also have one of the highest teen pregnancyrates at 126 per every 1,000 women.

With alarming statistics in every form of modern society, weshould acknowledge that there is a problem.

Now they’ve had almost 80 years of it.

According the Family Research Council, “on every outcome,”the children who flourish most often are churchgoers with two parents, andthose who fail most often are from a broken home and do not go to church.Furthermore, he notes, young black men with married parents go to jail at thesame rate as white men with married parents — there is no racial gap — andyoung black men without married parents go to jail at the same rate as whitemen without married parents. “The reason for the education gap is not income,”he says. “It’s marriage and parents.” The same is the case for crime and drugs.

The thousands of people who marched certainly thought thatwe need more than marches to change many of the devastating challenges in theblack community. We need to see real progress. We want to see people rise abovethese statistics. The old answers of government planning and welfare are notgood enough. We deserve real solutions. The failures of safety nets do notjustify more and more safety nets.