I point out that black teenage pregnancy rate has gone down steadily since 1990 - Response: Crisis!

I point out that the crime rate has gone down to 1960s! level nationally - Response: Crisis!

I point out that the black poverty rate has gone down from when it was first measured in 1959 from 55% to 24% - Response: Crisis!

I point out that more black people are going to college - Response: Crisis!

Seriously, are things perfect? No. Can things be improved? Yes. But the reality is that despite the hand wringing, things have gotten better (especially since the crack craze days) and I think that a better approach would be to focus on the successes and work on making the other things better rather than screaming crisis! and engaging in mostly repetitive and empty rhetoric and speechifying.

Also, let's stop with this disproportionate game because it's misleading. Almost any social issue/problem is going to disproportionately represented in an area where there are a lot of poor and uneducated people regardless of race. That's not a surprise. If you took a city that was, for argument's sake, 100% white, and looked for the social problems, they would be disproportionatley found on what was called often "the wrong side of the tracks".

Aw, poor baby should I get you a pillow? What's the matter tough guy? Hey, I told you if you want to start dishing it, you have to take it and you could leave it alone and it would be all good but noooooooooo you just had to go on.

You want to draw lines after you cyber sucker punch somebody? You got the wrong person. Maybe you'll learn a lesson for the next time.

What a drama queen/king response.

Apparently you didn't look up what Mike Lep said to me first idiot. Apparently it's okay for him to make a crack about my father and me but my response is the problem? Get the fuck outta here. Your protest is as shallow and your knowledge on this topic. Ah well, too bad for you.

"No, an overall drop in crime says nothing about whether the black community is self-destructive."

Um, it wasn't just an overall drop, the black crime rate dropped as well

"You did, when you kept insisting the black community was not destroying itself from within. Until I pointed out that blacks are overwhelmingly the perps and victims of violent crime. I'd say that blacks assaulting, raping and killing other blacks in far higher numbers than whites = the black community "destroying itself."

What? Saying that the black community is not destroying itself from within means that I'm saying that crime is not a problem in the black community? What idiocy. It's remarkable that you still don't get that the crime drop means that many less blacks are assaulting, raping and killing each other than before and blacks are not doing it in far higher numbers. You seem to have forgotten what disproportionate means. It's too funny that you are quoting stuff you don't understand. If you go to the BOJ webstite one of the first things you see is in the crime stats section is:

"Since 1994, violent crime rates have declined, reaching the lowest level ever in 2005."

"Homicide rates recently declined to levels last seen in the mid-1960s."

But you don't even know what's going on in your own backyard in Philly so I'm not surprised you missed the above.

"That's okay tinkerbell, you couldn't ruffle my feathers."

Reduced to Gay-baiting, now? Anyway, I'm not interested in your feathers but my boys in Iraq might be intertested in a diversion with your wife and she might be interested in dealing with real men for a change.

Okay, I stand corrected. I did call you a bigot too but, in retrospect, though you are pompous, you didn't deserve it as much as dataguyx.

OTOH, if you are going to complain about my response to MikeLep's orginal insult and play into the "Mommy, he hit me back" game, well,,,, ah nevermind, it's not worth it.

"The black community is hurting and we are partly responsible. The answers have to come from us as well."

And? I never said it was paradise. My point is that you seem oblivious to the fact that the some of the "answers" are coming from us as well. The personal responsibilty and positive message stuff is nothing new. As I pointed out the crime rate is down, the teenage pregnancy rate is down and do you know what the poverty rate was when they started measuring it in 1959? 55.1%. So, that's down as well.

Also, hasn't it occured to you that the incarceration rate is odd given the significant drop in the crime rate? Many less offenders but a bigger prison population/incarceration rate? The burgeoning prison population appears to be the result of changes in penal policies and practices and of the soaring number of drug offenders given prison sentences aka the Drug War and Rockefeller laws.

In general, we are really talking about complex issues that don't readily lend themselves to simplistic solutions