Echoing Cosby

Bob Herbert is an African-American who writes a column for The New York Times. As he's a liberal, I rarely find one of his works to cite. He has recently written a column about the sad condition of African-American men and boys. Echoing similar comments by Bill Cosby, he says:

The aspect of this crisis that is probably the most important and simultaneously the most difficult to recognize is that the heroic efforts needed to alleviate it will not come from the government or the wider American society. This is a job that will require a campaign on the scale of the civil rights movement, and it will have to be initiated by the black community.

His proposed solutions are statist; that's what I expect from a liberal. But his diagnosis of the problem seems reasonable. You might find his column interesting.