STOP OUTSOURCING THE 'HOOD Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Tannette Johnson-Elie suggests that technical skills accompany prosperity.

Study after study shows that the disinterest among young Americans in basic sciences has become a severe career handicap.

This poses a major dilemma for employers, as their labor force ages and the demand for scientists and engineers is projected to rise dramatically over the next five years.

The problem has not gone unnoticed in Milwaukee, where a conference is planned next week to bring professionals together to find ways to motivate young people to choose high-tech careers.

Her focus is on the black community.

Where will the workers come from? That's a tough question, given that it's hard to get young people interested in science and math in a culture that says you should be anything but studious.

A leading Democratic politician, Illinois Sen.-elect Barack Obama, speaking at this summer's Democratic convention, exhorted black parents "to turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white."

Let's not forget how Bill Cosby has castigated some black parents for allowing their kids to embrace hip-hop culture and not promoting the basics - reading, writing and arithmetic.

"They think they're hip. They can't read; they can't write," the entertainer is quoted as saying. "They're laughing and giggling and they're going nowhere."

Minority kids, and all girls for that matter, are not being steered toward science and math. That may help to explain why engineering and other science-related fields are dominated by white men today.

Make that middle-aged white men? Have you seen what passes for a young white guy these days?