Back on Track

On Back of Track: The Epidemic of Violence among African-American Youth in the Gresham Park Community, Dr. Hubert Brown research offers an astounding reality check into violence which challenge the existence, maintenance, and sustenance of the future of African American youth. Moreover, statistics has proven that violence among African American youths are disproportionate to the ratio of American youths for a myriad of reasons. Therein lies a problem that speaks to the need seek perpetual solutions. This dilemma, in fact, suggest that violent behavior must be rehabilitated or possibly could become the norm over time, rather than producing healthy lifestyle citizens in the wake of historical violence and in the twenty-first century among African American youths.

The pertinent questions are: What is going on? Why is it going on? What ought to be going on? What is the way forward? Why is there prolific violence among African American youth? Where is God and society in this violent epidemic? Who and where are the participants that would embrace and evoke change? Is transformation possible? And how can the church, government, communities, and the populace come together to resolve this pressing issue?

The pressing issue is that African American youths are bombarded by historical and domestic woes, economic and educational disparities, racial and political complexities, genocidal tendencies, and systemic factors that ultimately contribute in some form to violence whether overt of covert. Without resolutions and applications that promote change, the future of African American youth looks dim, despairing, and disheartening. One obstacle that stand in the way are open hearts and open minds as it relates to public opinion. However, the most significant obstacle is the refreshing recognition of the love and value all human beings.

Dr. Hubert Brown's book is a must read to encounter a dynamic and thrilling, inspiring, and informative, and practical and pragmatical theological pathways for education, renewal, and transformation of African American youths' violence in America.