This is a real situation that I faced last week that spilled over into this week involving a 19 year old healthy male who use to be in my group home. Perfect health and working one day, in intensive care and homeless the next day………..

A healthy young man who aged out of foster care and who used to live in one of my foster home comes to visit me at my office. He is all smiles and has the look of strength and resiliency. He tells me that he is having a hard time because he recently lost his job. He chose to work, instead of receiving the $1100.00 independent living check. He explains to me that in order for him to get this check he must be enrolled in school. Michael graduated from High School with a 3.03 grade point average , and says that he needed more than the independent living check to survive (by the way, we had agreed that  I would get him into  FAMU this  summer).  He landed a job making $12 dollars an hour; however he recently lost the job due to the down turn in the economy. Michael now sleeps on the floor at a friend house, which happens to live with her mother. He is now in a situation of being homeless. He tells me his cell phone is off. This is his only communications with the few friends he has. I pay his cell phone bill, and give him money to take the bus back to his home. I wonder what is going to happen to him. My heart grieves. 

In  the book "Why our Children Hate Us" Grimes and Slaughter asserts that the tension between Black children and Black adults is beyond the proverbial generation gap. We are in a terrible ,unforgivable place when Black Children do not care about Blackness. We are in a terrible place when Black children seek to destroy us. Share your thoughts.