Something awful is happening in black America, something that no politician peddling "hope and change" or reparations can fix.

Linda Chavez quotes Jason Riley's book Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed and some statistics that the Left can no longer explain by playing the "race card":

In 2012, blacks made up 38.5 percent of all persons arrested for violent crimes and 51.5 percent of those under 18 arrested for such crimes, but they constituted only 13 percent of the population. 

And even accounting for the possibility or likelihood of bias in arrests, the conviction rates are similarly stark. One Bureau of Justice Statistics study from 2002 concluded that when the race of the person committing homicide was known, blacks committed 51 percent of homicides.

Riley's book discusses why these depressing statistics stem not simply from poverty or prejudice, but from cultural changes that have occurred in the black community and the unintended consequences of liberal efforts to blame everything on poverty and prejudice.

Much of Riley's discussion has to do with what has happened to black culture. He describes the pernicious effect of even middle-class black youngsters eschewing proper diction and devotion to schoolwork...

But, of course, the major problem in the black community that accounts for so much of the disparity in achievement and criminal behavior is that more than seven in 10 black children are born to single women and will spend much of their lives with no father present.

If we want to have an honest conversation about race, we need to begin here. Riley is not afraid to confront this issue or any other.

As the conversation on race in America continues, let's hope his voice gets a hearing.

Yes, let's have an honest conversation about black young men growing up without fathers in the inner cities of America.

Fatherlessness is the root of the problem in our inner cities!

Of course, we cannot erase or overlook the reality that young black men were mistreated by police in the past.  That was then, and this is now.

Something very bad is happening in our inner cities, and it has nothing to do with racism!

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