N.Y. Times Story Explores How Plight of Black Men in America Worsening
Date: Monday, March 20, 2006
By Michael H. Cottman
Black men in America are facing worsening educational, social and economic conditions and are becoming even more disconnected from mainstream society, according to an article published Monday in The New York Times.
The Times reported Monday that studies by some of the nation’s top scholars suggest that poorly educated black men are in dire straights, far worse than previous analysis has shown.
“Especially in the country’s inner cities, the studies show, finishing high school is the exception … and prison is almost routine, with incarceration rates climbing for blacks, even as urban crime rates have declined,” the Times said.
“Although the problems afflicting poor black men have been known for decades,” the newspaper said, “the new data paints a more extensive and sobering picture of the challenges they face.”
According to the Times, here are some new findings about today’s poor black men:
- The share of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly, with only a slight pause during the economic peak of the late 1990’s. In 2000, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20’s were jobless – that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72 percent, compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts. Even when high school graduates were included, half of black men in their 20’s were jobless in 2004, up from 46 percent in 2000.
- Incarceration rates climbed in the 1990’s and reached historic highs in the past few years. In 1995, 16 percent of black men in their 20’s who did not attend college were in jail or prison; by 2004, 21 percent were incarcerated. By their mid-30’s, 6 in 10 black men who had dropped out of school had spent time in prison.
- In the inner cities, more than half of all black men do not finish high school.
“We must treat this problem as a national emergency, because it is,” Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, told Monday. Black congressional leaders who were working in their respective districts Monday read the* Times* story with interest, expressed concerns and talked of “warning signs” that have been ignored over the years.
Rep. Mel Watt, (D-NC) chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said even though the statistics are startling, it shines a light on a tremendous problem for all to see.
“We’ve been talking for years about how dismal things are for black males and that if we weren’t careful, we would reach a tipping point, and things would get worse,” Watt told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “Well, maybe this suggests we have reached that tipping point.”
Watt said he is concerned about many of the troubling statistics quotes in the Times article, but especially the analysis regarding education and the drop-out rates. He said there should be more serious focus on black males at early ages in public schools.
By fourth grade, Watt said, black males lose interest in school and many drop out without learning to read. He said there is no greater correlation to crime than illiteracy.
For years, Watt said, he has pushed for sentencing reform that would benefit black males who are incarcerated. He said many black men are serving mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug crimes, not serious offenses, and when they are released, they do not receive counseling or proper job training.
“We need to be more aggressive about re-entry programs,” Watt said, “and helping black males return to the community in a more thoughtful way.”
Five years ago, Watt said, members of the Congressional Black Caucus met with President George W. Bush and raised the issue of sentencing reform and other issues related to black males.
“The president is aware of the issue and said he wanted to address mandatory minimums, and five years later, he hasn’t done anything,” Watt said. “They know what problems are. They just don’t care.”
Watt said Bush has refused to address sentencing reform because he succumbed to pressure by right-wing conservatives who want to “increase jail time, lock away people and throw away the key.” A White House spokesman was not available for comment.
Meanwhile Rep. Cummings, who lives in Baltimore’s inner city, said the Bush administration should declare the state of black males a national emergency.
“I live in the inner city,” Cummings said, “and I’ve lived in the inner city all my life. It’s not unusual to see 125 black men standing on Pennsylvania Avenue in Baltimore in the middle of the day. Black men are not simply being left behind, they are being completely left out.”
He said black Americans “have to make the issue a national emergency and push the rest of society to do so.”
Cummings said America must find ways to deal with problems facing black males more effectively and said everyday he listens to a black man complain of not being able to find work.
The congressman added that 20 years ago, he commissioned a report on black males, recalling that he said then he hoped the report didn’t end up on a shelf collecting dust. “And today,” Cummings said, “the problem is worse.”
Bishop Ira Combs, pastor of Greater Way Bible Temple in Jackson, Michigan, said the most effective way to reach black males is through the nation’s black churches and social-service programs funded by the White House’s faith-based initiatives.
“When the church partners with business and economic institutions to nurture black males out of dysfunctional and at-risk lifestyles, most of the time it’s a successful arrangement,” Combs told Monday. Combs, who counsels black men through his church prison programs and has met with Bush at the White House, blamed Democrats for “playing politics,” saying many Democrats use the argument of separation between church and state to keep black pastors from accepting federal funding through White House initiatives.
“Liberals believe the church shouldn’t be involved and not have access to federal dollars,” Combs said. “We’ve been hoodwinked.”
Combs said, however, that solutions to problems facing black males will only come about if black folks from all backgrounds and party affiliations, Democrats and Republicans, meet on a regular basis. And he added that many black mega-churches in America have the resources – and the responsibility – to help black males in communities all across the country.
“There are many black churches that are wealthy,” Combs said. “They have the talents and the skills.”
According to the* Times*, many of the new studies go beyond the traditional approaches to looking at the plight of black men, especially determining the scope of unemployment. For example, the newspaper said, unemployment rates can be misleading because they do not include those not seeking work or incarcerated.
The Times also reported that arrests of black men climbed dramatically during the crack epidemic of the 1980’s, but the newspaper said that since then, the political shift toward harsher punishments has accounted for the continued growth in the prison population.
By their mid-30’s, according to the Times, 30 percent of black men with no more than a high school education have served time in prison. Among black dropouts in their late 20’s, more are in prison on a given day – 34 percent – than are working – 30 percent – according to the Times article.
US INCOMES REVEAL RACIAL DIVIDE
CNN, Nov. 13, 2007
WASHINGTON (AP) – Decades after the civil rights movement, the income gap between black and white families in the United States has grown, says a new study that tracked the incomes of some 2,300 families for more than 30 years.
Incomes have increased among both black and white families in the past three decades – mainly because more women are in the work force. But the increase was greater among whites, according to the study being released Tuesday.
One reason for the growing disparity: Incomes among black men have actually declined in the past three decades, when adjusted for inflation. They were offset only by gains among black women.
Incomes among white men, meanwhile, were relatively stagnant, while those of white women increased more than fivefold.
“Overall, incomes are going up. But not all children are benefiting equally from the American dream,” said Julia Isaacs, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
Isaacs wrote a series of three reports that looked at the incomes of parents in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and of their grown children 30 years later. Isaacs compared the incomes of parents who were in their 30s with the incomes of their children, once they reached the same age group.
Perhaps most disturbing, middle-income black families do not appear to be passing on higher incomes to their children in the same way that white families have, Isaacs said.
Parents have long hoped that their children would grow up to be more successful than they were. Hopes were especially high for black children who came of age following the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
The reports found that about two-thirds of the children surveyed grew up to have higher family incomes than their parents had 30 years earlier.
Grown black children were just as likely as whites to have higher incomes than their parents. However, incomes among whites increased more than those of their black counterparts.
The result: In 2004, a typical black family had an income that was only 58 percent of a typical white family’s. In 1974, median black incomes were 63 percent those of whites.
“Too many Americans, whites and even some blacks, think that the playing field has indeed leveled,” said Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League. It has not, he added.
Morial blamed the disparities on inadequate schools in black neighborhoods, workplace discrimination and too many black families with only one parent.
“The public policy commitment to this has been sketchy over the last 30 years,” Morial said. “There has not been a real focus on this.”
Isaacs compiled the reports for the Economic Mobility Project, a collaboration of senior economists and researchers from four Washington think tanks that span the ideological spectrum. The project is funded and managed by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Isaacs used survey data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, which is conducted at the University of Michigan.