Black children are in a state of emergency.
They make up nearly 50 percent of the foster care system and are disproportionately victims of violence, abuse and neglect. When you talk about winning the game, our children aren't even in the game. They are lacking a sense of community, a sense of support for too many of them, there's not a sense of hope. To underscore the point is a suicide rate among Black males that more than doubled from 1980 to 1995, from 3.6 per 1000 to 8.1 per 1,000. The deck, however, is stacked against Black children at birth.