Elvis Presley’s 1969 hit, "In the Ghetto" provides a prescient glimpse of what would later happen to generations of young black men who lived out their short lives on the mean streets of America’s urban ghettos.

As his first big hit in more than eight years, “In the Ghetto” played a key role in resurrecting his singing career, which floundered in the 1960s when he transitioned away from live performances to pursue an acting career in Hollywood.

Written by singer/songwriter Mac Davis, the song was originally titled “The Vicious Cycle,” an apt description of the endless trail of tragedies that would befall millions of young men fated to be born in the ghettos of America’s biggest cities.  Before reading the lyrics and commentary below, please click here to see Elvis perform one of his most touching songs.

In the Ghetto

As the snow flies
On a cold and gray Chicago mornin'
A poor little baby child is born
In the ghetto (in the ghetto)

And his mama cries
'Cause if there's one thing that she don't need
It's another hungry mouth to feed
In the ghetto (in the ghetto)

In attempting to level the playing field for black Americans after nearly two centuries of economic oppression resulting from slavery and segregation, a noble war was launched in 1964: the War on Poverty.  Over the next five decades, trillions of dollars were pumped into America’s largest cities, most of which have been under the continuous control of Democrats ever since.

By nearly every measure, Democrat administration of anti-poverty funding has been catastrophic for urban Americans, with the disintegration of the black family as Exhibit A. The year after the war on poverty was enacted, the out-of-wedlock birthrate among black Americans was 25%.  A half-century later, that rate had skyrocketed to 77%, clear evidence that the war on poverty backfired in an unimaginably tragic way that would leave untold numbers of young black males saddled with functional illiteracy and arrested psychological development.

According to Bob Woodson, a former executive of the National Urban League, 70% of the $22 trillion in anti-poverty funding never reached the desperately poor people it was intended to help. Instead, the lion’s share was siphoned off by Democrat governors, mayors, country managers and school boards to further entrench their political power.  Once in office, they created bloated, wasteful and ever-expanding bureaucracies that devoured massive sums of anti-poverty funding in ways that did virtually nothing to improve the plight of chronically impoverished people in the inner city.

Dating to the time the war on poverty began, urban Americans have lived in squalor, with each election bringing a new round of empty promises from the party of government dependency.  When chronically disadvantaged urban voters grumble, they’re told to be patient, that better days are just around the corner, the same line they’ve been fed for nearly 60 years.

While the black underclass faces a daily struggle just to get by, the Democrats they helped elect live in new homes, drive new cars, dine at fine restaurants and vacation at luxury resorts.  Chicago has not had a Republican mayor since years before the war on poverty was enacted

People, don't you understand
The child needs a helping hand
Or he'll grow to be an angry young man some day
Take a look at you and me
Are we too blind to see?
Do we simply turn our heads, and look the other way?

America did not turn its head and look the other way.  As millions of out-of-wedlock babies were born in ghetto neighborhoods marked by urban blight, rampant crime, sorry schools, generational poverty and chronic despair, America continued stratospheric spending on new and existing social welfare programs, nearly all of which were administered by blue state and blue city Democrats, with disastrous consequences, especially for young black males.

Having been robbed of a realistic chance for a decent education by the inexcusably substandard schools in America’s inner cities, generations of young black men unable to read or write defaulted to a life of crime, with many destined to end up dead or in prison, the fate that often awaits young men of all races who, for whatever reason, fail to get even a minimally acceptable education.  While urban kids who want to learn have no choice but to attend the sorry and unsafe public schools in the inner city, many of America’s most prominent Democrats send their own children to top-performing private academies.

Well, the world turns

And a hungry little boy with a runny nose

Plays in the street as the cold wind blows

In the ghetto (in the ghetto)

And his hunger burns

So he starts to roam the streets at night

And he learns how to steal and he learns how to fight

In the ghetto (in the ghetto)

Then one night in desperation

The young man breaks away

He buys a gun

He steals a car

He tries to run

But he don’t get far

And his mama cries

As a crowd gathers ‘round an angry young man

Face down on the street with a gun in his hand

In the ghetto (in the ghetto)

And as her young man dies

On a cold and gray Chicago mornin’

Another little baby is born

In the ghetto (in the ghetto)

And his mama cries

The majority of homicide victims in Chicago are young black men.  During a recent appearance on The Story with Martha McCallum, former Chicago police chief, Garry McCarthy, said 85 percent of homicide victims in the city are black, and that over Father’s Day weekend, Chicago had 104 shootings and 14 murders, one of which was a 3-year-old African American boy.

For the three-year period 2016-2018, Chicago had 1,893 homicides, followed by 530 more in 2019.  As reported by the Chicago Sun Times, the city has already chalked up 291 murders through the third week of June. That brings the total number of Chicago homicide victims over the last 4.5 years to 2,678, the overwhelming percentage of whom were young black men killed by other young black men.

Every election year, Democrats tell black voters that police killings of unarmed black men have reached epidemic proportions.  Epidemic?  According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report and the Washington Post, in 2019 the U.S. recorded just nine police killings of unarmed black men.  That’s nine fatalities out of a U.S. population of 21 million black males.  Assuming a third of that total are children, there would be roughly 14 million black men in America.  Fourteen million divided by nine equals one fatal shooting by police per every 1.5 million black men in our society, a rate of 0.00006%.

One unarmed black man killed per every1.5 million black men in America is light years away from being anywhere even remotely close to an “epidemic.”  The rare instances of unarmed black men being killed by white police are invariably followed by politically orchestrated outrage spurred on by breathless news coverage.  When one young black man is killed by another, little notice is taken, except by the victim’s crying mama.

America did not turn its head and look away from six decades of carnage in the inner city.  Democrats did.

Image credit: Wikipedia, public domain