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My Perspective

 

My Talks


My Articles


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A Message to My White Friends: Please Use Your Outside Voices!

Over the past year, as the country has vacillated between expressions of division and hatred, I have received a number of text messages, social media messages and phone calls from people I would like to believe are friends. They also happen to be white.

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Raymond Jetson: I’ve arrived at 65, and nothing is as I expected

Looking eye to eye, 65 appears a lot different from the stolen glances on my journey made it appear. The dissonance between what I expected and what I am experiencing is both internal and external. Neither my feelings nor the world around me are what I thought they would be.

RAJ

Raymond Jetson: Change is coming, driven by our young activists

Eight minutes and 46 seconds. Rarely has so much transpired in so little time.

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A Call to Older Black Men: It's Time to Fight for Youth

Just a few weeks ago, 24 African-American teenage boys from a local high school in my Baton Rouge, La. community were recommended for suspension. Their crime: participating in a “fight club.”

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Reclaim elders as leaders and mentors

Last week, Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome and Chief Murphy Paul announced a plan to establish an advisory council to the chief, “to advise and support the police chief in another effort to improve community-police relations and boost law enforcement transparency.”

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Hundreds learn how to be mentors to Baton Rouge youths at Saturday training session

An effort to form a band of 1,000 mentors in Baton Rouge got underway Saturday with a program focused on training people to better understand issues faced by young black men and finding ways to help them succeed.