A few days ago Adam tagged me in a note on Facebook. He was making the very valid point that the reaction to September 11th should be more than a day. It should my a life undertaking. We should re-evaluate how we interact with each other, we should hold our lives to a standard 365 days a year. Not to diminish it in any way whatsoever, actually to highlight it, it is the argument we often make on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. That third Monday in January, an annual day of service, we say, "this should be more than one day." So I found it fitting when he closed his note by quoting Dr. King himself, saying that "we are confronted with the Fierce Urgency of Now."

Today, I was confronted with the Fierce Urgency of Now and with one of my callings that stabs at me everyday. A cause the success of which will be the measuring stick of my life. And I will define it with a number.

6,782. Six thousand, seven hundred, eighty-two.

That is how many, of the nearly 17,000 victims of homicide in 2008, were black.

For a race that represents just 13 percent of the U.S. population, roughly 40 percent of the victims of homicide were black.

The number of whites victims of homicide was 6,838, just 56 more than blacks.

Stated another way - a black man was six times more likely to be the victim of a homicide than a white man in 2008.

But that only tells half of the story.

Nearly 16,000 people were arrested for homicide in 2008.

5,943 of them were black. More than any other race.

And they continue.

According to the Bureau of Justice (a DOJ entity):

1 in 3 black males will go to prison in their lifetime.

94 percent of black homicides are committed by other blacks.


This is my Fierce Urgency of Now. It is not a battle for racial equality. It is a fight for racial preservation.

Those days when I need a calling, the ones when I wonder why I moved out here. The days that my friends, the majority of whom are white, make a crack about how I am only half black or went to white schools and studied in classes the level of which have been designed for whites, I think of the numbers.

1 in 3. 40 percent. I come from the more than half of blacks that grew up in a one parent home. I come from the 1 in 4 that grew up in poverty. The recipe for success is minimal.

My eighth grade basketball team that won the city championship had eight players. Three of us graduated from high school. One is dead. Three are in prison. One is a dropout. All but one was black or Hispanic.

The solution lies in a classroom. And the time has never been more urgent. The calling has never been so strong. The stakes never higher.