Inner-City Black Youths

Thanks for the columns in Opinion by Jewell Gibbs “Young Black Males: an Endangered Species” (May 29), and J. Stanley Sanders “L.A. as a Firing Range: How to Stop Gang Warfare” (June 5). Both of these articles should be must reading for those interested in the plight of young blacks in the inner city. The columns should also provoke enough concern that there is serious action to develop methods for saving black children. We are now pitted against them which will ensure their continued inability to survive. Perhaps there is not much that can be done to save the current group of adolescents and young adults, but we can be creative in reaching those now in elementary school and in preschool.

There is more that we can do within our community. Police, jails and prisons are not the long-term answers. In a racist society one can never expect the state to provide the leadership; it must come from within the black community, that is, if we care enough.

MAXINE BAKER-JACKSON

Rancho Palos Verdes