Our kids are a bigger threat to themselves than KKK ever was

Everyone I know has been shocked, saddened and dismayed by the violent and brutal attack that killed a black teen that was walking home from school last week in Chicago. It is unimaginable that the city whose politics produced the first black president of the United States could also produce perhaps more murders of black youth by black youth than anywhere else in the nation. Chicago, once a haven for black culture and economic progress, has become more dangerous for black youth than Mississippi was for their forebears before the great migration. Black youth gangs have become a greater threat to black youth than the Ku Klux Klan had been for their great grand parents!

The real irony of this ghastly development is that the religious movement that garnered the most respect for its ability to transform young black thugs into responsible men also has its home in Chicago. Controversial as it was and perhaps still is, the Nation of Islam, better known as the Black Muslims, cornered the market on its ability to transform the lives of prison inmates, urban thugs and street hustlers whose lives were not productive and whose lifestyles were self destructive. Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan were both feared and revered for their potential to mesmerize black people - mostly men - and convert them into impeccably dressed, enviably disciplined, faithful adherents to new values that uplifted entire neighborhoods.

The Nation of Islam created their movement by borrowing some core beliefs from Islamic tradition and then liberally adding a social and political analysis that resonated with many disenfranchised black men. Although the organization was appropriately doomed by its inability to sustain a long term movement based upon core teachings of hatred for whites and a separate state for blacks, the Nation of Islam accomplished some things that can be instructive as we attempt to find solutions for the current crisis of youth violence in Chicago and throughout the country

The major learning that comes from the Nation of Islam's legacy is that programs, policies and services alone cannot change a person. The religious perspective on their social contexts functioned as the primary tools used by the leaders of the Nation of Islam to convince their followers that they had been divinely created for purposes much higher than those they had been pursuing. The key religious instruction was that their values had to be changed before their social status would change.

The Black Muslims taught men who were in jail that they could have a different life when they left prison and that they would help them to insure that it would not be a life of crime. They taught fathers to be fathers and girls how to become respectable women. They convinced thousands of young men that work was honorable even when the work required putting on a suit and bowtie and selling newspapers and bean pies on street corners.

Many people never understood how so many blacks who were Christians could have such admiration for the Black Muslims. One answer is that the results of their work were empirical - people could see and touch the benefits that accrued to the entire communities. If someone were to emerge today and do for these young people in Chicago what Elijah Muhammad did for the youth of his day - without the hatred and the hypocrisy that came with it - they would gain the same respect and make a lasting contribution to a generation that needs help.