ABSTRACT
In the inner-cities of the United States today, ill-educated children live in druginfested, dangerous, even deadly, conditions. Babies are killed by stray bullets in shoot-outs between rival gangs or irate neighbours, and 65 per cent of all live births in large cities are of children born to unwed minority mothers under the age of 18. The number of children killed in New York City and Washington, DC, for example, has reached epidemic proportions, to a point where the life expectancy of young people in the world’s poorest countries (Bangladesh, for example) exceeds that of babies born into American inner-city neighbourhoods. An African-American male living in an urban community is ten times as likely to die before reaching age 25 as a white male in the United States.
