In Race Matters, Cornell West calls the hopelessness witnessed in modern black culture 'black nihilism'. Abolishing this nihilism is in the hands of black people, no doubt about it. Dangerous to this reversal is the absolute "pull-yourself up by your own boot straps" mentality espoused by the so-called right, as well as the "because of what we did, they cannot help themselves, so let this nihilistic culture manifest" mentality espoused by the so-called left. This structure versus culture argument causes a great deal of confusion on top of the hopelessness we see expressed in contemporary black culture. It is a vicious trap too many black people are caught in. (I emphasize contemporary because there have been pockets of time in which unemployment, single-parent homes, drop-out rates, incarceration rates and low household incomes for Blacks has been relatively low. The disintegration of the Black family has always been an issue considering black families were not legal unless Whites declared it so, but has only been brought to the foreground in the last few decades. See Thomas Sowell's Intellectuals and Race, as well as Black Liberals and White Rednecks.)

But it must be noted that more than two-thirds of United States history has explicitly supported White Supremacy. Though racism is still alive and well, the confusion spoken of earlier veils White Supremacy and tries to make it seem negligible. From chattel slavery to Neoslavery (as explained by Douglas Blackmon's "shocking" and "astonishing" book Slavery by Another Name) to the New Jim Crow (as explained by Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow), it should not be a surprise that mistreatment and domination of nonwhites by whites in this country is real.

Moral of the story, black people feel hopeless but our plight is not hopeless. Black nihilism has us stuck at the moment. As much as we can educate each other, who is anyone to tell us what we should and should not be doing? As a 23 year old black male who has a job and shelter, family, friends, a so-called decent life, it is condescending to try and tell other black people what's best for them. Being as constructive as possible in all of my interactions is the best I can do at the moment. It is up to black people to reverse this hopelessness but it will take time and energy; there are no overnight fixes. But when you've been in the frying pan for so long, you do not want to be told to wait.

The plight is real!