Last September a young black man was beaten to death on the south side of Chicago, and this violence was caught on a cell phone camera and seen around the world. This was not good PR for President Obama, especially just before he was headed to Copenhagen to woo the International Olympic Committee to bring the games to Chicago in 2016. So he sent his secretary of education, Arne Duncan, and other big wigs to Chicago to show that his administration took this violence seriously, and most importantly that they cared. I heard Mr. Duncan on NPR at the time talk about what needed to be done to stem this all too prevalent violence, and he mentioned several things including job training programs, mentoring, and other such community organization kind of things. What stood out and infuriated me at the time was that he didn’t mention fathers or intact families. It never occurred to this former head of the Chicago City Schools that the breakdown of the traditional two-parent, two gender need I say, family contributes to youth violence in the inner city, let alone is a primary cause of it. The way I felt that day listening to the
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