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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, OCTOBER 25, 1985
cause.
It is murder by other blacks. More than 1 out of
every 3 blacks who die in that age group is the victim of a
homicide. Across America, particularly among the underclass
in the nation's urban ghettos, brother is killing brother in
a kind of racial fratricide. More than 40 percent of all the
nation's murder victims are black, and 94 percent of those
who commit these murders are black•••• In America today, a
white female has 1 chance in 606 of becoming a murder victim.
A white male has 1 chance in 186.
A black female has 1
chance in 124. � black male has 1 chance in 29••••
The· issu_
e of black on black violence is a disquieting and
sensitive subject••• says Glenn Loury, a professor of public
policy at Harvard:
"The bottom stratum of the black
community has compelling problems that can no longer be
blamed solely on white racism, and which force us to confront
fundamental failures in black society."••• Social scientists
see [among some of the] reasons:
high unemployment, drugs,
gangs, and the rise in female- headed households and births
out of wedlock. The rate of black teenage unemployment in
the. nation's cities is more than 50 percent in some areas••••
In those same cities, more than half the black children are
born out of wedlock. [In some locations, Dr. Loury maintains
elsewhere, 75 percent of the births are illegitimate! J All
of this breeds a shadow society where traditional values are
scarce and violence is promiscuous•••• "To admit these
failures is likely to be personally costly for black
leaders," says Harvard Professor Loury.... "Not to admit
them, however, is to forestall their resolution and to allow·
the racial polarization of the country to worsen."
Black academicians such as Dr. Loury maintain that the accepted civil
rights leaders have maintained a "code of silence" about the fundamen
tal social problems afflicting the people they claim to lead, prefer
ring to continue to pin the blame on alleged discrimination, maintain
ing the route of legal remedies and government grants.
(For those
further interested in this subject, read "Breaking the Code" in the
October 21 NEWSWEEK, "Beyond Civil Rights" (by Dr. Loury) in the Octo
ber 7 NEW REPUBLIC and "Rumors of Inferiority:
Barriers to Black
Success in America" in the September 9 issue of THE NEW REPUBLIC.)
Because the traditional black leaders are locked in their strategies-
which aren't working--they are losing influence. And as 1ife in the
ghetto worsens, more blacks are turning to the one man who seems to
offer a way out and up--firebrand Louis Farrakhan. Reports the Novem
ber 1 issue of NATIONAL REVIEW: "Farrakhan now is the black leader
ship--the cutting edge, the storm center, the presence against which
others are measured."
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau