And, we don't all live in Ferguson, MO.

We start life in sub-substandard settings. Our neighborhoods are run down, the local food poor, the school properties decaying, the teachers worn out and uncaring.

No successful executives and mentors visit our schools. But, I heard that the CCA pursues the failure rate statistics from my third grade class. They are forecasting the number of cells they will get to add to their penal facilities business.

I am staying the course in school, but will I receive what I need to succeed? Will Common Core provide me enough knowledge and skills to compete and live beyond filling out public assistance forms and hearing people tell me how unqualified I am in an international market?

Most Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) started with little or no money and scarcely a facility; leaking one room shacks or abandoned boxcars. And, my other ancestors (native Americans) were forced onto scrubby land with few resources, “reservations” on space upon which no clear-thinking person would choose to live. From neighborhood education and reservation schools to HBCUs, none is succeeding at moving the majority of us to competitive America. How should our phoenixes rise?

American society has transitioned from agrarian to industrial and now to an information-based economy and my people are being left behind. We don't like reservations. We don't fare well in challenged neighborhoods and related poor resources. We don't like government allowing corporate America to ship our jobs abroad, but supporting for-profit prison industries. We don't like social welfare systems that are funded more effectively than are systems to move us out of poverty. And, we feel clear disdain for police forces of well paid, well armed white males who (with clear consciences and majority support) make sure that we are docile, incarcerated or dead.

We are angry, and we don't all live in Ferguson, MO.