Powerful Words

Deserving of high praise and support. And not because he's black, but because he's telling a hard truth:

• A member of the McClendon family is blaming the "thug mentality" in the black community for the slaying of his parents and said black leaders have "to wake up" to change it and "come to grips that our pathologies run deep."
  
  Theodore McClendon early this morning posted a 3-minute videoclip entitled "AddressingThug-Life" on the Facebook social networking site in which he also said that "this kind of intimidation has to stop."
  
  
• "My parents happened to be the unfortunate victim of their immaturity and their thugism, and quite frankly to their primitive nature," he said. "We got to change this. Unless we change this we are doomed to have an uncivilized society. We are doomed to live in a quagmire of primordial existence. Unless we change it.
  
  "But we got to admit it. That's where black leaders have to wake up. Black leaders have to come to grips that our pathologies run deep.
  
  "Despite the causes of black pathologies, we must understand they exist. We need to address them rather than to blame external forces, blame economics, blame the white man. Blame something that's not going to solve anything.
  
  "You got to admit our shortcomings... That's what we got to do."

The first step to recovery is admitting there is a problem. And guess what? There's a big problem in this community and it's going to take big words, bigger ideas and huge actions to solve it. Not money, not empty promises, not blaming the bogeyman.

The elder McClendons appear to have raised some straight thinking, straight talking, stand up men who speak their mind. Let that be their legacy. RIP.