BLACK MALE HOPELESSNESS: Causes and Solutions

Dr. Walter Gholson III, accomplished college educator, Vietnam veteran, and passionate advocate for Black youth, examines the complex societal root causes of Black male hopelessness, while exploring transformative solutions.

In a culture where Black lives are devalued and often vilified, Dr. Gholson references reggae icon and activist Bob Marley, who in his 1976 album Rastaman Vibration used part of a speech delivered to the United Nations General Assembly on October 4,1963 by Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia. In the song entitled War, Marley quotes: "Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned-- everywhere is war." Tragically that war, sown in a world that still holds to a system built on the historical structures of racism and exploitation, can produce an internal dialogue in Black males that is toxic, maladaptive, and ultimately self-destructive.

With laser-focus, Dr. Gholson exhorts that what…