GREENVILLE - Gaining a solid education provides one with the human impetus to hurdle the clutches of dysfunction, poverty and even bigotry.
But sadly, in my America, a growing number of young black males are languishing in penitentiaries rather than in institutions of higher learning.
Meanwhile, there are increasing percentages of black females who are seeking educational advancement beyond the high school dictum. Social scientists and educators say black females feel more of an urgency in gaining an advanced education.
Females comprise about 48 percent of the under-30 U.S. population, but they accounted for 58 percent of all college graduates in 2001, according to U.S. Department of Education.
"Uneven enrollment is both a women's issue and a community issue, because the alternatives for women are far more stark - it becomes a choice between going to college or working for $7 an hour," said economist Julianne Malveaux.
Perhaps the simple fact of the matter is young black males are not counseled or even exposed to the lifetime benefits of gaining a college education, said Dr. Anthony Young, a former president of the National Association of Black Psychologists.
"Black males have been substantially discouraged from pursuing higher education due to negative experiences in elementary and high schools," he said. "These males may not necessarily recognize the connection between education and increased economic opportunity."
I can recall during my senior year in high school as the Vietnam War was in full escalation, my guidance counselor enthusiastically advised me to enlist in the armed services, rather than enroll in college. I didn't have the potential, he said at the time. So I know the feeling of having your dream snatched away.
But my parents had other plans for their baby boy.
My parents - who never advanced beyond junior high school - nevertheless hammered home a central learning theme during my formative years, which stressed the importance of securing a solid education, one with spiritual underpinnings. Knowledge was the only ticket toward success in America, my parents told me.
Their tough love philosophy worked for me.
Then why is there an apparent educational malaise amongst today's young black males? Myriad reasons abound from the break-up of the traditional two-parent family unit to an utter sense of hopelessness within the black community. The liberal left always trumpets the root cause for the disproportion of black incarceration is due to America's long-standing prejudice toward people of color.
There is some truth to this racial bromide, but the entire problem has not been created nor allowed to proliferate solely because of pigmentation, because studies have shown that there is a direct corollary between crime and lack of education.
Yet, in a nation that has become obsessed with the criminal element, we are building more prisons than classrooms. We have adopted a "lock 'em up and throw away the key" mentality.
Even though Greenville has had a spate of homicides over the past two months, violent crime across the nation is largely on the wane - only three in 100 arrests are for violent crimes resulting in injury, according to a study released this month by the Justice Policy Institute.
"America's fear of crime is driving our policies. This fear of victimization, however, is unsubstantiated by the statistics," the JPI study says. "The prison buildup is taking place at the expense of higher education."
The authors of the JPI study say the cost of securing that treasured college education is quickly going beyond the economic grasp of a growing number of black families.
From 1987 to 1998, spending for corrections across the country increased 30 percent; spending for elementary-secondary education decreased 1.2 percent for the same period.
I am not saying coddle the criminal dysfunction, but we are allowing young people who have potential to slip tragically between the strands of life's safety net without ever tossing them a line of hope.
Young black males appear to be at a crossroads - in peril of tumbling into an abyss, from which there is no escape - where only knowledge can rescue them.
