Brother Lupe Fiasco: Help Bring The Oppressed Black Youth of Chiraq to Islam.
Brother Lupe Fiasco,
You have been blessed with the religion of Islam. You have expressed your love for the Prophet Muhammad, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, on numerous occasions in interviews and songs. No one can forget your classic track Muhammad(saw) Walks. The time has come for more to learn about his Sunnah so that they can walk in his footsteps.
Speaking of Gang Violence in Chicago, you said “I’m afraid Chicago is dying.” The death of Black Chicago is rooted in a history of white supremacy.
Rsearcher Woosester researcher David Greetham concluded the entire Chicago Housing Authority became a white tool to segregate, confine, and conceal Chicago’s burgeoning African American population.” Additionally, as a result of this history of discriminatory policies, in a study by sociologist Douglas Massey, in American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass, he concluded that Blacks in Chicago at current trends will still be in a segregated state far off into the future in 2042.
In 2016 a report, Young, Black and Out of Work by the University of Illinois Chicago Great Cities Initiative shows the bleak situation facing Young Black men. Here are the facts.
Almost half – 47 percent – of young black men from the ages of 20 and 24 were out of school and unemployed in 2014. For both men and women, age 20 to 24, 41 percent were unemployed and out of school.
University of Chicago economists Neal and Rick, after examining black and white income inequality, unemployment rates, and the increasing number of black men in Chicago who are in prison, concluded: “the Great Recession has left most black men in a position relative to white men that is really no better than the position they occupied only a few years after the Civil Rights Act of 1965.”
As a result of mass unemployment and economic inequality, many of our Black brothers join gangs and partake in self-destructive gang warfare.
In fact, if current trends continue, Blacks in Chicago’s south and westside neighborhoods will still be de facto segregated groups for decades into the future.
John M. Hagedorn writes, “The conditions in Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods came to resemble impoverished Third World countries, and police harassment was ever-present.”
Chicago news station, CBS, interviewed several gang members from the Englewood community on resolving the city’s violence. CBS sent white reporters completely disconnected from the reality of structural racism to ask oppressed Black youth questions like “What makes you guys tick?”. The young Chicagoan responded, “We’ve got to eat…We want to. We want money. Rob, steal and kill. That’s the only way. We didn’t grow up in Beverly Hills. We don’t get it handed to us.” When asked about the solution to the violence, one oppressed Black youth responded “There’s no solution to the violence. Killing, killing is the solution.”
We need you brother Lupe Fiasco to help facilitate to Dawah to Islam and to let the oppressed Black masses know that Islam is indeed the solution.
If Prophet Muhammad,peace be upon him transformed his people from a people steeped in vice, uneducated and without political power, then following his prophetical example could transform black folk into moral leaders, lovers of learning and acquirers of political sovereignty.
Whether this will manifest, depends on whether the Muslims will carry out their obligation of Dawah. We ask you Lupe Fiacso to join the Black Dawah Efforts to help bring Islamic education to Chicago.
Contact brother Hakeem Muhammad at [email protected] to get involved.
