For my audience I chose to write to city leaders because there seems to be a disconnection between them and the black youth of America. A lot of the city leaders, in my eyes, look down on the inner city families and when there is an issue that receives national media attention, they decide-with an aristocratic attitude-to help by building the kids a recreation center or two. Obviously, that’s not good enough. If the city leaders really understood what these children are experiencing on a day-to-day basis, more could be done to save the inner city kids. Now my professor asks us who should black youth be afraid of today and I believe they should not fear anything. I believe they should fight against the injustice caused by crooked police and racism, while breaking the vicious pattern of teen violence. I think that the city leaders cannot comprehend that many of the inner city youth do not have stable homes, which destroys a child’s self worth; consequently, that same child bottles those insecurities and eventually takes out his aggression in an unhealthy, damaging fashion. City leaders see these harmful actions and look at the black youth in the inner city as a lost generation that is spiraling into an abyss of self destruction; however, if those leaders combine their faith with their power those “lost” kids could be saved. One of the solutions that I suggest is reinstalling “prayer” in public schools. (I put “prayer” in quotations because, of course, not everyone believes in the same thing and I must be respectful of everyone’s culture.) Just like schools must perform the Pledge of Allegiance, it should also have at least five minutes of “prayer” or meditation. In this short time, kids would be able to communicate to a higher being, reflect on their actions, write, or whatever they feel is calming without disturbing anyone else. According to a study done at Michigan University, students who attended private school not only had a higher rate of high school graduates, but also had a higher rate of college/university graduates (more information can be found at http://sitemaker.umich.edu/bur.356/home). This is puzzling news since many private schools do not have the resources or accredited teachers that public schools have. But what private schools do have are smaller class sizes and scheduled prayer time. I understand that there’s not enough money to pay for more teachers-we can barely give the teachers now a good salary. I get it, we’re in a recession. However, something that costs nothing but a few minutes of time is meditation. I know there are people out there who want to hold on to keeping church and state separate and that’s fine; my proposal is not to enforce religion on anyone but for the city leaders to consider using their power to help the inner city youth learn self love and self actualization. For those kids who have a horrible home life and their self esteem is anything below good, meditation time will give these children a time to think about who they are, who they want to be, and the actions to get to that goal. I believe if my solution is installed black youth could become more in tune to self and decipher their emotions which will make them aware of what their impact is on the world, so they will be better equipped to fight racism and crooked police. This may take some time but if we start young teen violence, especially in the inner city, will surely diminish; and plus we all know that racism and crooked police are not going anywhere anytime soon.