Young black males.

From ages 13 to 30, scholars tell us, they are perhaps one of the most misunderstood and threatened groups in the United States.

Last spring, experts at Columbia, Princeton and Harvard, in three separate studies, looked more closely at the life patterns of young black men and drew a dismal picture of their future.

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If they're from the inner-city, the studies warn, being black and poor and poorly educated is a cocktail that puts them at risk of being locked out of the American mainstream, forever.

Without a decent education, in a nation where high-tech skills are growing in demand, young black males are the most likely to drop out of school, be unemployed and serve time in jail.

The young men are complex. They are in crisis. They are ignored.

For much of society, unaware of their struggles and hopes, they are like the generation of black men Ralph Ellison wrote about 50 years ago -- a generation of invisible men.

Even in an era of Barack Obama, Mike Tomlin and other black men who are crashing professional barriers, there are millions of young black men in their shadows. There are few who understand how to stop them from being hobbled by their circumstances. Their potential to be fully productive is shaped by a history of racism, fractured families and a cultural milieu too heavy on gangsta rap and thug life. The outcome restricts their potential to be more. They become invisible even to themselves.

Giving voice to young black men

Beginning in June, the Post-Gazette will offer a series of stories on the perils and successes of young black men who are most at risk and reveal how they live in society.

We try to give voice to this group because the point at which they find themselves is particularly troubling.

Once they leave school, nearly three-quarters of black men in their 20s are incarcerated or jobless, an unemployment rate much higher than that of similarly situated white and Hispanic youth, according to a report from the Urban Institute.

A black man is more than six times as likely as a white man to be murdered. The trend is most stark among black men 14 to 24 years old: They were implicated in a quarter of the nation's homicides and accounted for 15 percent of the homicide victims in 2002, although they were just 1.2 percent of the population, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Also, black men are nine times as likely as white men to die from AIDS.

Community leaders have cried out for better interventions. Fix the schools. Provide more jobs.

But solving the problem is more basic than that, said the Rev. Hurbert Hutchinson, of Shiloh Community Baptist Church, a growing congregation centered in Homewood.

"It is up to us to raise our own children," he said, calling on African-American parents as individuals and as a community to provide more moral guidance and discipline to combat media and peer pressure. "You have to be a police in your home first. The police chief is not responsible for my son. We have to come together and work together. If we don't, we pay the consequences."

Community input sought

We need your help. Please call or email us with your stories of young black men who you know have struggled with being a school dropout, unemployment or being disconnected from family. Call us, too, and talk about the young black male who has succeeded against all the odds to enter into college, start a business, maintain a positive presence as a young father or who was mentored by an individual or program you'd like to brag about. Perhaps, your thoughts and stories can become part of what we'll cover.

Send your thoughts and information to invisiblemen@post-gazette.com