Comal County, Texas

Kenneth Chenault is now chairman and CEO of the American Express Company after spending over 20 years working his way up the ranks of the Fortune 500 giant. When the company's headquarters in the World Trade Center was damaged in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Chenault kept the company stable during a time of great difficulty.

Dr. Ben Carson is the director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes in Baltimore. In grade school, Dr. Carson struggled to succeed. With the encouragement of his mother, who only had a third grade education, he rose to the top of his class and earned scholarships to both college and medical school. He is now a world-renowned expert in separating conjoined twins previously considered inseparable

These two people obviously owe a debt of gratitude to those who came before them, but they also deserve admiration for taking advantage of available opportunities. Thurgood Marshall and Reverend Otis Brown may have been key to the integration of our public schools, but Dr. Carson, Kenneth Chenault and the others took advantage of it. They stayed in school and strived for success.

These modern-day heroes also share strong two parent homes. Sadly, most of us however, are not so fortunate. The gritty reality is that close to 70 percent of black children are now born to single mothers.

As of 2002, black males from the age of 20 to 39 accounted for about a third of all prison inmates under state or federal jurisdiction. 10 percent of the country's black male population between the ages of 25 to 29 was in prison, compared to 2.4 percent of Hispanic males and 1.2 percent of white males in the same age group.

Did you also know that in 2000, African Americans were 13% of the US resident population, but they represented an estimated 45% of all inmates in US prisons, and that an African Americans man has a 28.5% chance of incarceration over his lifetime.

The harsh financial reality is that most African Americans live one paycheck away from homelessness and perceive sports and music to be the only way out for their children.

If you think that, you’re miserably misled. Let me explain! There are more than 376,000 young adults in college sports, all enthusiastically vying for less than 4,000 total pro sports jobs. In contrast, just one US fortune 500 company, can produce 15,000 millionaires. Multiply that by 500, you do the math! Don’t worry I did it for you. That’s 7.5 million millionaires!

Yet, some high-profile black "leaders" will have us regard capitalism as unfair to African-Americans. That it creates some institutionalized racism, yet their organizations derive 70% of their very income from those same companies.

Who told our kids that sports or music was the way out. The only way out! Did they hear that from Harriet Tubman? Did they hear that from Fredrick Douglass or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr? I believe these great African Americans do not lecture opulent music careers or sports only occupations as the only way out of communities that are overrun with crime, that suffer from inadequate schools and are plagued by an epidemic of single-parent homes, which by the way is the leading cause of poverty among African Americans children …

But these great African Americans would speak clearly from the grave and ask Why! Why do we continue to do the same things expecting a different result? Why do we continue to expect the answer to the success equation while missing a fundamental piece of that mathematical formula?

Many of us are bright, capable people who just need positive and constructive leadership. This includes criticism of our actions. This criticism is not mean-spirited, as some would contend, but merely an attempt to nudge people in the right direction.

In closing ladies and gentlemen, it is up to us to do something! The church the parents! It is up to us to stress education over music and sports. And above all, do not be inactive, dormant or nonchalant in your children’s lives!

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it best when he said. “We will have to repent not only for the actions of the children of darkness, but also for the inactions of the children of light”.