Future of Black America
“Strategies for the Survival of African American Families of the Future” The needs, interests and dispositions of the African American community today are unmistakably the focus of national attention. The mass media and popular culture throughout the country increasingly employ black spokesman and black themes. Soul music, soul food and other elements of the black culture once confined to the black ghettos now appear to be greatly infused into what is the mass, mainstream, and white culture of American society. ... Colleges and universities across the nation have embraced “black studies” programs. ... This growth may be seen in the expansion our middle class and stable working class, the consistent triumphs our young in the higher-education system and the exponential increase in the number of black elected officials. Still, we as a people have farther to go in our struggle – a struggle for our future and its success. ... The distressing reality is that the despite the gains accomplished, Black America still faces difficult challenges – the most pressing being the improvement of healthcare, as our population is sapped by the illnesses and diseases that afflict us at rates far greater than whites; the ignorance of the need of stimulating the positive energy of our youth; and continued public policy and political representation reflecting our minority interests. Black America’s Health Crisis: AIDS The African American community is burdened with a breadth of health care issues and afflictions – from high rates of infant mortality, to high rates of teenage pregnancy, drug addition, and the resulting AIDS epidemic, as well as alarming ratios of cancers and diabetes, among other ailments. For decades, the status of blacks has been lowered by many barriers, particularly fiscal divisions between black and white. A relationship exists between socio-economic health and physical health and black Americans have historically been less healthy in terms of socio-economic status than whites. According to Samuel Duh of Blacks and AIDS, in the early 1980s, the percentage of blacks living below the poverty line was 34 percent, nearly three times that of whites at 12 percent and black representation in non-skilled labor was paramount (9). ... Even today, often times the only occasion that a black person does see a physician is in the emergency room, rather than on a regular basis. This has been the history of America’s black community as the “less educated, employed, and economically well of a group of people, the less healthy they are” (Duh,10).