Black Think Tank


Some of the issues and problems that black people are facing are things that I believe can be easily reduced, if we create a group attitude of Non tolerance for generally selfish and self destructive behavior. For instance I believe that the infection rate of HIV Amongst African Americans can be drastically reduced within 5 years and maybe even controled in 15 years if the community, church, school, parents, friends and siblings all expressed the need to make condom use an extremely high priority. It would also help if we began an open and honest dialog about the sexual behavior and habbits of African Americans that have led to the out of control Hiv rate amongst blacks. If we focused our energy torwards changing attitudes and behaviours hurtful to so many black people, the way we focus on clothes and bieng socially accepted amongst each other we could start to pull ourselves out of this mess we are in. To be honest abstinence would best way to stop sexually transmitted deasieas, but I dont think thats going to happen anytime soon. It hasnt happen in the last 50 years. So as a communtity we should began to aggressively protect ourselve by using condoms. To tell the truth this is a piece of common sense that is 30 years overdue. I also believe that black men should be contributing more to thier families and communities.This is also a bit of common sense that is also 30 years overdue. I believe we could get more black men back into the family by having wide scale afterschool mentoring programs that focus on family and community service. These programs would consist of evening and summer camp sessions. These sessions would focus on reprograming and developing these young men. I have personally worked with youth from the Washinton DC community, over total a period of 6 months we put together 2 musical and talent showcases. These showcases featured music, peotry, dancing and singing .We awarded 1st, second and third place prizes. The youth sold tickets which paid the bills and they worked hard during rehearsals and ended up developing 2 pretty good showcases.The people in attendance along with the contestants enjoyed themselves. The parents were actually part of the process and I got the impression that there are lots of parents who are actively supporting thier kids in whatever it is the youth want to do. To be honest I think I enjoyed the process as much as any of the youth. I think we could expand these types of programs, I know we could get volunteers as both highschool and college students need volunteer hours to graduate. Thier are youth employment programs all through out the country ran by city and local goverment. I would love to get some military people involved, because in my oppinion the military has transformed more knucle heads into men than any other orginization in the country. Plus they have proven that they can get people from totally different backrounds to work together to accomplish a commont goal. In my oppinion the common goal should be our communities and families. Mark



1)Homosexuality
2) Aids in in the black community.
3) How to successfully promote, teach and motivate young black men to read, write and communicate effectively.
4) How to keep our social orginizations such as the urban league, Naacp on the forfront of what our what our community needs
5) Things black men can do that would make a practical difference in our communites.
6) Have clearly defined goals and an accountibility componet to any ideas or programs that may be established