...shift the focus “from rap stars, sports personalities and celebrities to successful businessmen, lawyers and doctors”.
There aren't any. None identifiable, for sure. (More importanly, no engineers, either.)
Anybody sucessfull isn't drawing attention to their ethnicity because they wouldn't be sucessful if it was a factor they considered.
P.S. The best way to deal with prejudice is lots of interbreeding. I've done my bit.

Quijote, Marbella,

Interesting. I grew up in Barbados where aspiring to become a professional was the norm, becoming a singing star or athlete was the exception. Upon returning to the UK as an adult, I was quite shocked to be told that I had ideas above my station and to face the solid barriers to entry to various professions which were erected the second my race became evident.

Yes, things have changed tremendously in the past 20 years and very much for the better. The boys who need help are the offspring of those who were left behind and who have accepted the credo that only music, sport and crime are acceptable routes to success. Tragically, they appear to be preying on those in their midst who do not join them. Protecting that minority should be the first priority.

Maureen, London,

it could just be that 'black' culture does not lend itself particularly well to upward mobility, stability, or foresight. In the same way the German and Japanese cultures tend to rank highly in obedience, perhaps black cultures tend to rank low in obedience but high in risk appetite or low intelligence.

it could be that these traits are due to oppression from the white man. but why dont Asians and Orientals suffer in the same way?

Is it possible that black men, who commit 95% of all violent crime, are just born that way?

Finally, am i being racist, or just having a Darkus Howe moment?

Rowley, london,

At a time in your life when you're not sure who you really are (and perhaps afraid of finding out) it can be so easy to take pointers from the loudest voice around - often a violent one. BUT rap and hip-hop aren't simply vehicles for violence. Extremely talented (and successful) artists like Lauryn Hill can, and have, rapped about things like gender equality, drugs and gun crime, absentee fathers, and even - shock horror - love. Besides, I think it's obvious that it would be impossible to really 'restrict' rap to adults. I think that of all the various factors important in the problems faced by young black men today (and I speak as a young black man), the single most important is the absence of father figures. So called 'role models' are often distant celebrities whose lives are too removed, or too different from the norm, to inspire. What black teenage boys (and often girls) need is someone close by, to deomonstrate that (and how) a mature, responsible lifestyle can be lived happily.

O.N.N., Stockport, England

Man is a tribal animal, that's how he evolved, in small, isolated tribes, protecting and supporting his own, whilst repelling the attacks of others. This mode of behaviour is an integral part of basic Human nature and cannot be undone by passing laws against it. Causing hugely different tribes, differentiated by easily identifiable physical features or by aggressive religion to live cheek by jowl with one another in a crowded, already overpopulated island was foolishness of the highest magnitude and has, of course, already lead to the disintegration of Britain into a large number of mutually hostile areas (Balkanisation if you like). Things are likely to continue to worsen whatever method of social engineering is attempted by those who should have known better all along. Not all problems have easy, painless, bloodless solutions unfortunately, and I do not pretend to have one.

Roger Cole, Carson City, Nevada.

We are all "tribal" like it or not.

Dave, Knysna,

I worked at a social service agency in Chicago for four years and the clients were almost exclusively poor black kids 17-21 years old from very tough (unimaginably tough by British standards) neighborhoods.

The program was always bringing in black lawyers, brain surgeons, judges, etc to talk to the kids and motivate them. It was a complete failure. Even a well meaning twenty-one year old who has never worked a day in his life and dropped out of school at fifteen looks at some high powered lawyer and says "you've go to be kidding me, this will never happen".

What did finally work was bringing in small businessmen who had come from the same neighborhoods as the kids. Men who owned 3 man electrical contracting firms, roofing companies and the like. They could tell the kids that even though they didn't live in mansions, they made pretty good, honest money and didn't have to worry about the police kicking in their doors at 2 in the morning. Reality really motivated the kids. Try it.

Gerald Joyce, Chicago, USA

I actually like rap music. It's not boring - at it's best, it's the most compelling, energetic mode of current popular music.

And therein lies the problem.

Music is very, very important to teenagers. There are many white teenagers who don eye make-up in homage to goth and "emo" bands. They deliberately blur the lines between their lives and those of their muscial heroes.

Put this in the context of black teenage boys and you have a major problem. They don't mope around pretending to be some morbid, ethereal rocker. Like their rap idols, they pretend to be some crack-selling, gun toting gangster from L.A.

As I say, rap is a compelling art form. But it should be restricted to adults, because it has brainwashed a generation of young black boys into a criminal lifestyle.

James, Lewisham, England

Same story for this side of the lake.

DanO, Mount Vernon, USA

It is impossible to address problems which you are not even allowed to discuss properly. "Gang culture" seems to be the latest euphemism for black teenage male violence.

B Grant, Leicester,

The situation cant change because 'they' wont change.

dan, london,

This article is a dêja vu of 30 years ago. Tell us something new.

Francis Tuttle, Madrid,

The BBC has worked tirelessly to promote black role models, far beyond what the proportion of the population would warrant. The unofficial term among BBC staff is 'blonking' - blacks on camera. And it hasn't worked because the idea of role models comes from 1970s psychobabble when psychology thought that most learning was done by imitation. Nobody believes imitation is so important any more and the notion of role models is outdated nonsense.

John Ledbury, Kings Lynn, England

so what's the point?!

kittykitten, London,

So what's your point exactly? If "blackness" is hard to define then so is "whiteness" and then they don't, and shouldn't, mean very much anyway. If you keep thinking, however, you'll come to the conclusion that any collective identity is poison and only individual identity has any value. White, Muslim, Christian, Black, British, Australian etc, etc. All poison.

James , Canberra, Australia.