Art Pick of the Week BY PETER FRANK “New Orleans based-artist Dawn DeDeaux suggest that the expected source of the ‘trouble’ is itself troubled, yet manifests its own tragic nobility. The focus of her darkly dramatic Soul Shadows: Urban Warrior Myths is the young African-American male. She populates the corridors of her catacomb-like – or…
Consider some sad facts of contemporary life in the United States. Violence has replaced communicable diseases as the leading cause of death among young people in the United States during the past generation. Young African-American men are about nine times as likely as European Americans to be victims of homicide. About nine out of ten of African-American victims are killed by other African-American youths. Moreover, the prison population of African-American youths has been mushrooming. Because of such statistics, social commentators have been concerned about “the vanishing African-American male.”