THE DISAPPEARING MAN: Crisis of the African American Male

So many tears: Hellions and Thundercats

They say that God gave to Noah a Rainbow for a sign.

No More Water, The Fire Next Time.

Ogun - Unto death

"The real question is, does the nation really care to solve this problem?"

There are nearly 2 million more black adult women than men in America, stark testimony to how often black men die before their time. Worse yet, with nearly another million black men in prison or the military, the reality in most black communities across the country is of an even greater imbalance: a gap of 2.8 million, or 26 percent, according to Census Bureau figures for 2002. The comparable disparity for white people was 8 percent. Perhaps no single statistic so precisely measures the fateful, often fatal price of being a black man in America, or so powerfully conveys how beset black communities are by the violence and disease that leave them bereft of brothers, fathers, husbands and sons. And because the number of black males plummets as they move from their teens to their 20s, the gap first appears with the suddenness of a natural disaster.

"It just distorts the fabric of African-American life," said Roland Anglin, executive director of the New Jersey Public Policy Research Institute, which studies how to improve the quality of life in communities of color. "It's scandalous for us as a society."

Exponentially higher homicide and AIDS rates play their part, especially among younger black men. Even more deadly through middle age and beyond are higher rates of cardiovascular disease and cancer.

"The degree of loss and death that people in those communities are experiencing at a young age is just unfathomable," said Arline Geronimus of the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan.

"We live in a society right now where if you turn 25, you're an old head," said Stanley Edwards, 45, a program developer with the Recreation Department in East Orange, N.J., a small city edging Newark where all the dilemma's manifestations are etched in sharp relief and where three years ago Edwards started Teens Against Violence Everywhere, or TAVE. "When I was growing up, 25, you just started."

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