(Corrects program's title in headline.)

April 22 (Bloomberg) -- Since HBO network's acclaimed series ``The Wire'' ended last month, I have had a lingering complaint: Why was the show never nominated for an Emmy?

This oversight is puzzling in light of season four's story line surrounding four black teenage boys who struggle to stay in middle school while enduring the insults and temptations of a neglected, crime-ridden Baltimore neighborhood.

Surely, you're thinking, there must be more urgent issues to cover than an expired HBO series being snubbed at the Emmys.

Perhaps. But consider the metaphor. When someone creates a remarkable television show about the lives of largely overlooked and ignored black young men, the show itself is largely overlooked and ignored.

I won't push the metaphor too far. The program's slight is a mere shame. That our nation has no comprehensive response to the high numbers of young minority males who drop out, are unemployed or who get caught up in the criminal justice system is a disgrace.

``Over the last two decades, the economy did great, and low- skilled women, helped by public policy, latched on to it,'' says Ronald B. Mincy, a professor of social policy at Columbia University in New York. ``But young black men were falling farther back.''

While our failure starts with our unwillingness to pass a quality early-education program for all disadvantaged children from birth to age 5, at least poor toddlers are treated as sympathetic and deserving in the rhetoric of most politicians. Yet, when the same children are forced to fend for themselves in violent and decaying neighborhoods with inferior schools and end up opting for destructive activities, too often these young men are simply blamed for making ``poor choices.''

No Exemption

Certainly there is no exemption from individual responsibility for violent behavior. There also should be no exemption from our collective responsibility to work with families, schools and neighborhoods to provide these young men with more constructive options to build their futures.

``We're pumping out boys with no honest alternative, and of course their neighborhoods offer many other alternatives,'' says Gary Orfield, a professor of education who researches urban policy at the University of California in Los Angeles.

The most-provocative, heartbreaking and in some ways most- optimistic moments in ``The Wire'' came from its capacity to make viewers feel the lack of constructive alternatives available to young minority men from poor, broken neighborhoods and dysfunctional families.

The heartbreak was crystallized in the story line of the responsible and talented 14-year-old Michael, who alone cares for his kid brother and turns away from drugs, only to conclude that a gang job is his only option to provide for his younger sibling.

Ray of Optimism

Then there's the brilliant, sensitive Duquon, who lacks the toughness to make it on the drug corners or the opportunities to devote his talents to a debate team or school theater. He, in turn, finds the only family and job he can among junk collectors, who also teach him how to shoot up.

The ray of optimism that shines through these dark tales is simply this: At each step on their way on the wrong path these young men craved the positive options that could have prevented their tragic endings.

There lies the show's fundamental challenge to its viewers: What can we do to offer more positive choices?

There are no easy answers, but consider three frameworks.

First, there are early intervention efforts like the federal Gear Up, PROJECT GRAD and I Have a Dream. These programs reach disadvantaged youth at an early age with long-term mentoring and academic support.

Graduation Rate

The Washington state Gear Up program has been so successful that even though its students started off among the most disadvantaged in the state, 73 percent of its graduates went on to attend college -- a rate 16 percentage points above the state average.

Second, the so-called new environment approach seen in programs such as Job Corps and the National Guard's Youth ChalleNGe rely on residential centers to provide focused education and training to at-risk youth. Job Corps has been proven to increase work hours and earnings among its participants, and Youth ChalleNGe reports that 84 percent of participants were either employed or continuing their education after completing the program.

Finally there is the so-called community-saturation model, where a critical mass of employment, education, or internship opportunities is concentrated in poor neighborhoods to provide young people with the peer support they need to make constructive choices socially tenable. This was the philosophy of the Youth Opportunity Grants pioneered in Bill Clinton's administration, but which were eliminated during the last few years.

Not Perfect

None of these policies is perfect, nor can these programs realize their potential without new resources and the grass-roots commitment of millions of mentors, tutors, faith-based organizations, community leaders and employers.

In one of the most-haunting scenes in ``The Wire,'' Duquon, after having failed to find a way back into school or into a real job, asks a reformed gang banger now running a boxing gym for kids if there is any way out.

``How do you get there from here?'' he asks. ``I wish I knew,'' his older friend replies.

All of us might ask why we aren't providing these young men with opportunities to have a chance to make better choices.

(Gene Sperling, formerly President Bill Clinton's top economic adviser, is a Bloomberg News columnist. He is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and is advising Hillary Clinton in her bid for the 2008 presidential nomination. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Gene Sperling in Washington at gsperling@cfr.org

Last Updated: April 22, 2008 04:14 EDT