By Phillip Jackson, Chairman, The Black Star Project
If Black people are not working and studying and preparing our children to become some of the highest paid professionals in America, then we are guaranteeing that we will always be on the bottom of the American economic system. Always! Always!!!
The top salaries in America will be paid to people in the medical, financial, engineering, aviation, computer and business professions. The question becomes, why aren’t Black people in America flooding these fields? Why aren’t we working overtime to enter these fields?
In working with numerous young Black men this summer, many of their parents are telling me, “I don’t want my son doing anything with books or school. He should be playing and having fun!”
There is no fun when 40%, 50% and 60% of young Black men are unemployed. There is no fun when Black men in America comprise almost 50% of the men in U.S. prisons and jails.
There is no fun when about 50% of young Black men don’t graduate from high school. There is no fun when only 10% of 8th-grade Black boys in the U.S. read at a proficient level.
There is no fun when 70% of Black children are born to single, female-headed households, many times because the fathers of the children can’t contribute to their support.
There is no fun when young Black men are killing other young Black men over street corners that they don’t own or really control because of drugs and guns that are given to them as false hope.
The Black Star Project is starting a program to guide young Black men and women into the top professions below. Will the schools, churches, communities and parents of these students support this effort?
Or will they continue to encourage young Black boys to “play” their way back to a kind of slavery, poverty, death and mass self-destruction?
Please call 773.285.9600 to register your 5th- to 8th- grade student for our careers program beginning August 10, 17, and 24, 2017.
