The family unit plays important role in community

I've always been told there is a solution for every problem.

Look hard enough and work hard enough and you'll eventually find that elusive solution.

But the issue of race relations may be that single issue in this nation that currently defies a solution.

From Ferguson to Charlottesville to the next unnamed community, racial division continues to erupt onto the headlines in ways that remind you of the turbulent '60s.

The solution -- if indeed there is one -- seems to start with money. But isn't that often the case?

To correct what many believe is an uneven playing field, social justice warriors argue that more needs to be done to lift from poverty a generation of primarily young men who lack direction and opportunity.

And the course correction is expensive.

On the heels of the Charlottesville, Virginia, carnage this past weekend comes a crime report from St. Louis on homicides. The report shows that more than half of the murder victims there are young black males under the age of 29.

That report alone should serve as a wake-up call for city officials there to search long and hard to reverse this deadly trend.

Innocent residents of some of St. Louis' crime-ridden neighborhood deserve more than living in constant fear. And the whole of society has a stake in the outcome.

But some of the activists working on a solution have a far different take on the problem than I see it.

An executive named Alice Prince who is charged with finding training and employment solutions in St. Louis, said the reason for this crime wave in minority communities is a series of failures.

"Our system has failed them," Prince said. "Our education system has failed them. Our judicial system has failed them. Our justice system has failed them. Our governments just overall, we failed them."

For the sake of argument, I'll accept the failures within all aspects of society to adequately address a problem that has simmered under the surface for decades.

But let me offer one other failure that is at the core of countless problems -- the failure of the family.

Hidden within the dismal crime statistics is this small nugget on the number of young men who were raised in single-parent households.

Combine poverty with a lack of male role models and the odds are stacked against you.

Long before the government and education and justice failures is the failure of the family unit to provide the guidance and moral compass to succeed.

Society can and will search for more solutions to this growing racial gap. We must.

But part of that solution must also include programs and incentives to encourage stronger family units that offer a male role model to lead the way.

Michael Jensen is the publisher of the Standard Democrat in Sikeston, Missouri.