"It is not your environment,

it is YOU-

the quality of your minds,

the integrity of your souls

and the determination of your will

that will decide your future and shape your lives."

                                 -- Benjamin E. Mays, Educator

Essentials Of Destiny

• Watch your thoughts for they become your words...
• Choose your words for they become your actions...
• Understand your actions for they become your habits...
• Study your habits for they become your character...
• Define your character for it becomes your destiny!!!

This article was found on the internet.  Interesting & thought provoking reading. 

Facts are not confirmed by LYF, but sources are provided for you in the article.

America Is Losing A Generation of Black Boys

By: Phillip Jackson

posted March 21, 2007

There is no longer a need for dire predictions, hand-wringing, or apprehension about losing a generation of Black boys. It is too late. In education, employment, economics, incarceration, health, housing, and parenting, we have lost a generation of young Black men. The question that remains is will we lose the next two or three generations, or possibly every generation of Black boys hereafter to the streets, negative media, gangs, drugs, poor education, unemployment, father absence, crime, violence and death.

Most young Black men in the United States don’t graduate from high school. Only 35% of Black male students graduated from high school in Chicago and only 26% in New York City, according to a 2006 report by The Schott Foundation for Public Education. Only a few Black boys who finish high school actually attend college, and of those few Black boys who enter college, nationally, only 22% of them finish college.

Young Black male students have the worst grades, the lowest test scores, and the highest dropout rates of all students in the country. When these young Black men don’t succeed in school, they are much more likely to succeed in the nation’s criminal justice and penitentiary system. And it was discovered recently that even when a young Black man graduates from a U.S. college, there is a good chance that he is from Africa, the Caribbean or Europe, and not the United States. READ MORE...