Thora Institute: 2007

12/24/2007

A Sick System

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New Address: 1380 E. Capitol Street NE, Washington D.C., 20003.

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Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
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________________________________________________________________________

[A Draft of an op-ed submitted to the New Haven Register.]

Prenatal health care is declining in Connecticut. According to data from the Department of Public Health, the percent of white mothers who failed to receive adequate prenatal care increased from 10 percent to 16 percent between 2000 and 2004 (the date of the most recent data available). The situation was worse for blacks. More than a quarter of black mothers failed to receive adequate prenatal care in 2004, up 8 percentage points from 2000. Hispanic mothers were in a somewhat similar condition to black mothers. More than a quarter of Latina mothers did not receive adequate prenatal care in 2004, up 5 percentage points from 2000.

I take the decline in prenatal care in Connecticut as yet another sign that our health care system is not well. A number of recent reports illustrate this fact. I was alerted to the decline in adequate prenatal care by the Connecticut NAACP’s “A Health Status Report on African Americans in Connecticut” issued this year.

The NAACP report also examined the growing cost of preventable hospitalizations. People without routine medical care tend to end up being rushed by ambulance to emergency rooms when their health care needs are critical. In many cases, these hospitalizations could have been prevented had the patient received routine health care.

In 2000, the cost of preventable hospitalizations was $611 million. By 2004, it had increased 46 percent to $893 million. It is estimated that it will exceed $1.1 billion in 2008. Again, our health care system is not well.

The national picture is quite similar. Large numbers of Americans are unable to obtain needed health care because of the cost. A survey conducted this year by the Rockefeller Foundation found that 17 percent of whites, 20 percent of blacks and 26 percent of Hispanics were unable to see a doctor because of the cost. Eight percent of whites and blacks and 13 percent of Hispanics were unable to take a child to the doctor because of the cost. Twenty percent of all Americans have had to dip into their savings or retirement accounts to pay for medical expenses. Unless our health care system receives a complete overhaul, it seems likely that these numbers will increase.

Many people with health insurance are filled with health care worries. About 40 percent of Americans with health care are worried that they will lose coverage in the near future. The number jumps to almost 60 percent for Hispanics. About half of all people with health care are worried that they might not be able to afford a major hospital stay. Again, for Latinos with health care, it is nearly 60 percent.

What are our options for dealing with an ailing health care system? It seems that if we were to adopt the health care system of just about any other Western developed nation, we would be better off. A recent report by the Commonwealth Fund compares the health care system of the United States with that of Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The U.S. had the lowest overall ranking.

Although the U.S. ranked last, it actually has the highest health care spending per capita. The United Kingdom achieved its top spot by spending less than half of what we do per capita.

Of course, the U.S. will not adopt the health care policy of any other country whole cloth; and we should not. But I have problems with any politician who acts as if there are not important lessons that the U.S. can learn from countries like the United Kingdom that have provided quality health care to all of its citizens at a relatively low cost. Any politician who cavalierly dismisses the practices of Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom as “socialized medicine” simply cannot be thinking about the millions of Americans without health care or even those with health care who are worried that they will not be able to afford it next year.

Not many issues in politics are life and death issues. This one is. Do we have politicians capable enough to take on the challenge of substantive health care reform? Let’s hope so.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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12/17/2007

A Small Step Forward in Criminal Justice Reform

Just One Small Step, Many Bigger Ones are Needed

Excerpts from Adam Liptak, "Whittling Away, but Leaving a Gap," New York Times, December 17, 2007

The United States justice system remains, by international standards at least, exceptionally punitive. And nothing that happened last week will change that.

Unless Congress acts, many thousands of defendants will continue to face vastly different sentences for possessing and selling different types of the same thing.

Paul G. Cassell, an authority on sentencing who was until recently a federal trial judge, said the focus on the sentencing guidelines was in some ways a distraction.

"The mandatory minimums are so draconian," he said. "I'm a believer in a good guidelines system. And I would much rather trade a much tougher guidelines system and get rid of mandatory minimums."

The mandatory minimum sentence for crimes involving five grams of crack--a little more than a sugar packet--remains five years. For powder, the five-year mandatory sentence does not kick in until 500 grams, or more than a pound.

Fifty grams of crack equals a guaranteed 10 years. It takes five kilograms of powder to mandate the same sentence. Five kilos is a lot of cocaine.

Mere possession of a relatively small quantity of crack means a five-year sentence. Possessing five grams of powder cocaine usually results in probation, said Marc Mauer, the executive director of the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group.

Indeed, the maximum sentence for simple possession of any drug but crack, including powder cocaine and heroin, is one year.

Eighty-five percent of people convicted of crack offenses are black.

In summary, the drug most associated with blacks receives the harshest punishment. Somebody ask Juan Williams why is that.

From Black Directions vol. 2, no. 5

Comparing Constructive and Destructive Crime Prevention
High-Quality Pre-Kindergarten vs. Incarceration

On all measures, high-quality pre-kindergarten is a better crime prevention policy than incarceration. Civil rights activists must force elected officials to support constructive crime prevention.

[click on image below for a better view]

See “What’s Wrong with Incarceration” in this issue of Black Directions for a discussion of these points.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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12/10/2007

Tough Questions for the Black-Cultural-Crisis Pundits

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
Barnes & Noble.com Amazon.com

[Find out The Truth about Black Students.]
________________________________________________________________________

[Below is a statement submitted to Blacknews.com.]

Pundits have been claiming that black America is in a cultural crisis for decades. As the evidence for these claims weakens, the volume has risen. Instead of correcting the pundits’ factual errors and challenging their flawed reasoning, the media have handed the pundits the microphone and stepped out of the way. Below are just five of the questions journalists have failed to ask.

1. A Poverty Question for Mr. Pundit
Census Bureau data indicates that the strong economy of the 1990s led to a nearly 30 percent decline in the black poverty rate. This decline was the biggest since the 1960s. Some see this as evidence that when blacks have the opportunity to leave poverty, they take it. Why, immediately after this historic decline in black poverty, have you been claiming that bad values prevent black poverty from declining?

2. A Crime Question for Mr. Pundit
The Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that the violent crime rate for blacks declined by 67 percent between 1994 and 2004. During the 1960s, violent crime increased. Why do you claim that blacks today have bad values relative to the 1960s when in the 1960s there was a large increase in violent crime and recently there has been a large decline?

3. An Education Question for Mr. Pundit
Several surveys show that black students value education as least as much as white students do. One can look at the National Education Longitudinal Study, the education questions in the 2004 Survey of Income and Program Participation, and Public Agenda’s Reality Check 2006 survey to name a few. The long-term trends tests of the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that black standardized test scores have increased significantly since the 1970s. The Digest of Education statistics shows that the number of blacks receiving bachelor’s degrees have increased by more than 50 percent since 1995.

In spite of (1) attitudinal surveys, (2) test-score trends, and (3) college completion trends showing that black students do value education, you and other pundits continue to condemn black students. What specifically do you see as the flaws in each of the three types of research showing that black students do, in fact, value education?

4. Another Education Question for Mr. Pundit
Current educational research points to a combination of socioeconomic disadvantage and inferior quality education as being responsible for the black-white test-score gap. Regardless of race, students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds tend to do worse in school than students of higher socioeconomic backgrounds. Blacks on average are of lower socioeconomic status than whites.

Black students face the additional disadvantage of attending schools of lower quality than white students. Educational researchers have recently been documenting the lower teacher quality in black schools relative to white schools, for example.

What specifically do you see as the flaws in the research showing that socioeconomic disadvantage and inferior schooling are primarily responsible for the test-score gap?

5. A Rap Question for Mr. Pundit
The majority of rap consumers are not black. Rap scholars state that gangsta rap receives most of its support from young white men. Do you think that gangsta rap reveals the values of the current generation of young white men? Do you think gangsta rap reveals the values of the current generation of young black men?

These are just a small sample of the questions the black-cultural-crisis pundits are not being asked. Is there any journalist out there willing to do the research and fact checking to ask the tough questions?

Sociologist Algernon Austin Offers His Assistance

“In less than 15 minutes, I can show any journalist that the black-cultural-crisis claims are false,” states Dr. Algernon Austin author of “Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals Are Failing Black America.” “I am willing to spend a few minutes with any journalist interested in learning the truth about black America, to the extent that my schedule allows,” he adds. Dr. Austin states that a few minutes examining mainly U.S. government data websites will show that the cultural crisis claims are based on faulty assumptions, bad data analysis and racial stereotypes. Dr. Austin can be reached by e-mail via contact@thorainstitute.com.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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12/03/2007

Almost a Social Panacea: High-Quality Pre-K

Although high-achieving lower-income schoolchildren can be counted in the millions, there should be many more. Specifically, we find that only 28 percent of top-quartile achievers in first grade come from families in America’s lower economic half, while 72 percent come from the top economic half. This finding suggests that disparities at the high end of achievement begin before children enter elementary school, a conclusion consistent with an emerging body of research on the effects that inferior early-childhood education has on school readiness of lower-income children.

Evidence suggests that lower-income children have inadequate access to the high-quality preschool programs that can significantly increase academic ability, cognitive development, social adjustment, and professional achievement.

Joshus S. Wyner, John M. Bridgeland and John J. DiIulio, Jr., Achievement Trap: How America is Failing Millions of High-Achieving Students from Lower-Income Families, Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, 2007.

Barnett and Belfield point out that preschool programs raise academic skills on average, but do not appear to have notably different effects for different groups of children, and so do not strongly enhance social mobility. In such areas as crime, welfare, and teen parenting, however, preschool seems more able to break links between parental behaviors and child outcomes.

Increased investment in preschool, conclude Barnett and Belfield, could raise social mobility. Program expansions targeted to disadvantaged children would help them move up the ladder, as would a more universal set of policies from which disadvantaged children gained disproportionately. Increasing the educational effectiveness of early childhood programs would provide for greater gains in social mobility than increasing participation rates alone.

Summary, W. Steven Barnett and Clive R. Belfield, “Early Childhood Development and Social Mobility,” The Future of Children, vol. 16, no. 2, Fall 2006, pp. 73-98.

High-quality pre-kindergarten is the closest thing to a social panacea there is. Not only does it lead to high educational outcomes, it reduces the likelihood of criminal behavior, teen pregnancy and increases the likelihood of college graduation. It does not, however, end anti-black discrimination in the labor market and elsewhere. We need social activism for that problem.

Head Start should not be confused with high-quality pre-kindergarten. Head Start is not high-quality. It is low quality. The Department of Health and Human Services which administers Head Start has admitted as much. The good news is that our elected officials have done the right thing and are increasing the teacher qualifications for Head Start.

Past research has shown that while Head Start is not high quality pre-kindergarten, the Head Start that black students receive is of particularly low quality. In the article cited above, Barnett and Belfield, show that black students receive fewer educational gains from Head Start than do white students (p. 84).

This issue with Head Start is really just a special case of the larger issue of teacher quality. Black students at all levels attend schools with lower teacher quality than white students. People concerned about black America need to continue to push to see that the quality of black education improves from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.

In the 1950s and 1960s, black leaders targeted the inferior education that black students receive as a major civil rights issue. Current research still identifies blacks as receiving inferior education and still points to this inferior education as a major factor in black students’ lower educational outcomes. The current generation of black leaders, however, rather than condemn the fact that blacks still receive an inferior education increasingly spend their time condemning black students based on false racial stereotypes.

It’s time for some new black leaders.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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11/26/2007

Is Rap Music Dying?

N.W.A's first album, N.W.A. and the Posse, was a party-oriented jam record that largely went ignored upon its 1987 release. . . . Late in 1988, N.W.A delivered Straight Outta Compton, a vicious hardcore record that became an underground hit with virtually no support from radio, the press, or MTV. N.W.A became notorious for their hardcore lyrics . . .

. . . Efil4zaggin was teeming with dense, funky soundscapes and ridiculously violent and misogynist lyrics. Naturally, the lyrics provoked outrage from many critics and conservative watchdogs, but that only increased the group's predominately male, white suburban audience.

(From "N.W.A." by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Allmusic.com)

According to Neil Strauss (The Vibe History of Hip Hop, p. 258), Dr. Dre of N.W.A. made a brilliant marketing move early in the history of the group. Dre decided that N.W.A. could not compete with the political rap of Public Enemy and other groups. Rather than attempt to be a lesser version of Public Enemy, N.W.A. decided to become the anti-Public Enemy. This strategic move to gangsta rap brought tremendous success to N.W.A. and its individual members.

Gangsta rap appeals to America’s appetite for sex and violence. It is probably also effective because it plays on longstanding stereotypes of blacks as hyper-sexual, violent and criminal. From a business perspective, gangsta-ism is a masterful marketing strategy.

Sexism can be profitable too. As Russell Simmons stated in Essence ("What They're Saying"), “We live in a very sexist society. Popular culture exaggerates everything, including this kind of sexism, for profit. That’s the nature of capitalist society and entertainment.”

Whether gangsta-ism and other characteristics of rap are good for black people generally or for American society as a whole is another question. Americans are increasingly saying that rap is not a good thing. Whether this will change the character of rap or affect the amount of rap Americans purchase is yet another question.

As early as 1993, in the National Black Politics Study, a majority of blacks agreed that “rap music is a destructive force in the black community.” More recently, the Black Youth Project Survey found that a majority of black, white and Hispanic youth think that there is too much sex and violence in rap.

Another recent survey on black attitudes by the Pew Research Center, also shows strong disapproval of rap. A majority of whites and blacks agree that “rap is having a bad influence” on society. These findings will likely provide encouragement to the prominent critics of rap.

The fact that so many blacks are critical of rap shows that we cannot jump to the conclusion that rap represents black values. The relationship of the music to the values of the people making is also more complicated than some critics will admit. For example, one record executive states (in "What They're Saying"), “I have a 7-year-old daughter, and she can’t listen to my music. She can’t listen to it in the car, not in the room, and she can’t watch videos.”

Last year, rap sales declined sharply. Will this trend continue? Will rap change? Only time will tell.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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11/18/2007

Whites & Rap Remix

Black Directions v2n6: Will White Rap Fans Help or Hurt Black America?

To order this issue send a check or money order for $9 made out to “Thora Institute LLC” to “White Rap Fans,” Thora Institute LLC, P.O. Box 367, New Haven, CT 06513-0367.

To keep abreast of the latest high-quality social science research on black America, subscribe to the Black Directions newsletter. Send a check or money order for $36 (33% off) made out to “Thora Institute LLC” for a year’s Black Directions subscription (six issues) to Thora Institute LLC, P.O. Box 367, New Haven, CT 06513-0367. Only Black Directions separates the myths from the facts about black America.

Share this article with a friend. Use the email icon below.

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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11/12/2007

Will White Rap Fans Help or Hurt Black America?

From Black Directions v2n6

Eighty percent of hip-hop consumers are white according to the Simmons Lathan Media Group. In the various debates about rap, too little attention has been paid to this majority-white consumer base. Are white rap fans a force for “achieving Martin Luther King’s dream” as Bakari Kitwana argues? Or are they merely fans of stereotypical images of blacks as Bill Yousman declares?

Rap has been a vehicle for serious commentary about racial inequality and American society. But the heyday of political rap was more than a decade ago. Further, researchers have found that references to alcohol, drugs and violence in rap have increased along with the growing popularity of rap music. Today, even Kitwana admits, one can find a parade of negative stereotypes of blacks on display in rap music. Much of the music, the critics charge, has become a modern-day minstrel show. Thus, one can ask, will white rap fans help or hurt black America? Do whites who love rap love black people or merely negative stereotypes of black people?

In addition to helping or hurting black America, there is, of course, a third alternative. Rap music may be just pop music and may not make much of a difference one way or another.

This issue of Black Directions reviews the social-scientific literature on the effect of rap music on white racial attitudes. Additionally, the Thora Institute conducts its own statistical analysis of white rap fans.

To order this issue send a check or money order for $9 made out to “Thora Institute LLC” to “White Rap Fans,” Thora Institute LLC, P.O. Box 367, New Haven, CT 06513-0367.

To keep abreast of the latest high-quality social science research on black America, subscribe to the Black Directions newsletter. Send a check or money order for $36 (33% off) made out to “Thora Institute LLC” for a year’s Black Directions subscription (six issues) to Thora Institute LLC, P.O. Box 367, New Haven, CT 06513-0367. Only Black Directions separates the myths from the facts about black America.

Share this article with a friend. Use the email icon below.

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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11/05/2007

The Number One Black Civil Rights Issue

Black Directions v2n5: Criminal Justice Reform

As important as it is to address racial disparities in sentencing, this issue is just the tip of the iceberg for criminal justice reform. We need a complete overall of the criminal justice system to undo the damage and waste caused by more than 30 years of tough-on-crime and war-on-drugs legislation. The harm of these failed policies has been born most heavily by blacks.

In 1970, the incarceration rate in the United States was about average for a developed, Western country. Today, it is about seven times the average. Are we seven times safer than we were in 1970? Not even close.

America has the toughest criminal justice policies and the highest incarceration rate in the West. Are we the safest country? Not at all.

Tough-on-crime policies are extremely expensive; weaken black communities economically, politically and socially; and do precious little to reduce crime. It is time for civil rights activists to insist that we engage in constructive crime prevention instead of continuing the destructive crime prevention of tough-on-crime and war-on-drugs policies.

High-quality pre-kindergarten education has been proven to reduce crime. It is more effective at crime prevention than incarceration, and it has none of incarceration’s negative effects. Providing jobs for poor black youth will reduce crime, and it too has none of the negative effects of incarceration. We need to invest in and develop more constructive crime prevention policies. Three decades of tough-on-crime and war-on-drugs policies have proven them to be harmful, inefficient and extremely expensive. The current issue of Black Directions begins the necessary discussion on fundamental criminal justice reform.

What’s in the current Black Directions

Comparing Constructive and Destructive Crime Prevention

The Three Biggest Myths about Blacks and Drugs

Clifford Thornton’s Plan to Stop 90% of Drug-Related Violence

The Flaws of Relying on Incarceration for Crime Prevention

To order this issue send a check or money order for $9 made out to “Thora Institute LLC” to “Criminal Justice Reform,” Thora Institute LLC, P.O. Box 367, New Haven, CT 06513-0367.

To keep abreast of the latest high-quality social science research on black America, subscribe to the Black Directions newsletter. Send a check or money order for $36 (33% off) made out to “Thora Institute LLC” for a year’s Black Directions subscription (six issues) to Thora Institute LLC, P.O. Box 367, New Haven, CT 06513-0367. Only Black Directions separates the myths from the facts about black America.

Share this article with a friend. Use the email icon below.

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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10/29/2007

The College Affordability Crisis Is Not Going Away

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
Barnes & Noble.com Amazon.com

[Find out The Truth about Black Students.]
________________________________________________________________________

[This past week the New York Times illustrated that when some people show their underwear it is high fashion. When other people do it, it is a criminal offense. The Times also reported that college costs are still rising which prompted a re-post of this piece from last year below.]

Ninety-two percent of black students believe that a college education is important for success today. Ninety-six percent of their parents feel the same. These were among the findings of a study commissioned by the Sallie Mae Fund. The study examined the views of high school students and their parents in five cities.

While many commentators have been fixated on the erroneous idea that black students do not value education, the truly important educational issues have received little attention. One issue that has been neglected is the impact of the skyrocketing cost of college on black students’ college graduation rate.

The good news is that in 2004, 22 percent more blacks received bachelor’s degrees than just four years earlier. The bad news is that the black college graduation rate is still 20 percentage points lower than the white rate.

The cost of college is not the only factor behind this difference in college graduation rates, but it is an important one. Many blacks know very little about financial aid. Some black students do not even attempt to go to college because they don’t know how they would pay for it.

The large increase in the cost of college and changes in financial aid practices have greatly increased the economic burden of higher education on low-income families. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education found that it costs the poorest 20 percent of families 16 percent more of their family income to send a child to college today than in 1992. The middle 20 percent of families spend 5 percent more of their family income and the top 20 percent, 1 percent more. The Center also found that colleges now give more grant aid to middle- and upper-income students than low-income students.

Many low-income black students are placed in a difficult bind to pay for college. Reasonably, they are reluctant to acquire a great deal of debt. The average black college student graduates with over $20,000 worth. But they do not have any good alternatives. The maximum Pell Grant award for low-income students only covers about one-third of the costs of a four-year college today, but it covered nearly three-quarters in the 1970s. The vast majority of students who receive the grant do not even receive the maximum award.

In a desire to avoid debt, low-income black students may select a college that they can attend part-time and commute to. These decisions would allow them to save and earn money by staying at home and working part-time. While these are economically rational decisions, they all make it more likely that the student does not graduate from college.

It is often a difficult process for black students who are the first in their family to go to college and who are used to a predominantly black environment to become acculturated to a predominantly white college. Black students who are fully immersed in college life by attending full-time and by living on campus appear to better make the adjustments and attachments they need to help them stay in college. Students who try to save money by enrolling part-time and commuting may end up with perhaps less college debt but also no college diploma.

Low-income students of any race should not be forced to choose between large college debts and a college diploma. We need to find ways to reduce college costs and increase the amounts of grant aid going to low-income students. In 2004, the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education gave 36 states an “F” grade for college affordability. This year there were 43 “Fs”. Hopefully, we will recognize the magnitude of this crisis and act soon. If we do, we will make big strides in increasing the numbers of blacks who graduate from college and ease the burden on all low-income college students.

References
“Higher and Higher Education: Trends in Access, Affordability, and Debt,” Demos Policy Brief #1, Winter 2007.

Patricia Somers, “The Persistence of African American College Students: How National Data Inform a Hopwood-Proof Retention Strategy,” in The Academic Achievement of Minority Students: Perspectives, Practices, and Prescriptions, ed. Sheila T. Gregory (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2000), 249-265.

Watson Scott Swail and Dennis Holmes, “Minority Student Persistence: A Model for Colleges and Universities,” in The Academic Achievement of Minority Students: Perspectives, Practices, and Prescriptions, ed. Sheila T. Gregory (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2000), 391-433.

“A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education,” U.S. Department of Education, 2006.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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10/22/2007

A Flawed Concept: “Black-on-Black Crime”

10/15/2007

The Burden of a Flawed Health Care System

Source: The Rockefeller Foundation, American Worker Survey, Q8c.

About a fifth of blacks with health coverage have worries about their ability to meet their basic health care needs. Worrying about being able to afford adequate health coverage should be the concern of people without health insurance. If we were to include the blacks who were “fairly worried” and “slightly worried” to the totals, it would amount to about half of blacks with health insurance. If people with health coverage do not feel secure about their access to health care, what does that tell us about our health care system?

Contact your elected officials and tell them it is high time that the U.S. joined the Western, developed world and provided health care for all.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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10/08/2007

American Health Care: Very Expensive, Very Low-Quality

Source: Karen Davis et al., Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An International Update on the Comparative Performance of American Health Care, The Commonwealth Fund, May 2007, p. viii.

The U.S, spends more than twice as much per capita on health care as the United Kingdom, yet a recent report ranked the U.K.’s health system first and the U.S.’s last among six nations. We pay the most to get the least.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An International Update on the Comparative Performance of American Health Care by Karen Davis et al. compares the health care systems in Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. The researchers compare the countries on the quality of care, access, efficiency, equity, and the promotion of healthy living. The U.S. scored last on access, efficiency, equity, and the promotion of healthy living. On quality of care the U.S. was second to last.

The report states:

The most notable way the U.S. differs from other countries is the absence of universal health insurance coverage. Other nations ensure the accessibility of care through universal health insurance systems and through better ties between patients and the physician practices that serve as their long-term “medical home.” It is not surprising, therefore, that the U.S. substantially underperforms other countries on measures of access to care and equity in health care between populations with above-average and below-average incomes.

With the inclusion of physician survey data in the analysis, it is also apparent that the U.S. is lagging in adoption of information technology and national policies that promote quality improvement. The U.S. can learn from what physicians and patients have to say about practices that can lead to better management of chronic conditions and better coordination of care. Information systems in countries like Germany, New Zealand, and the U.K. enhance the ability of physicians to monitor chronic conditions and medication use. These countries also routinely employ non-physician clinicians such as nurses to assist with managing patients with chronic diseases.

For decades, nations in the developed world have provided high-quality, inexpensive health care to all of their citizens. The U.S. stands alone with an expensive, low-quality health care system than covers fewer and fewer of its citizens each year.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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10/01/2007

Separate and Unequal Nursing Home Care for Blacks

Wednesday, October 3, 2007 ON
THE TERRORDOME: Lies and Truth About Fears of “Acting White”

CJSR FM88
www.cjsr.com
6 PM Mountain Time

Sociologist Algernon Austin, author of Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals are Failing Black America, discusses lies and truth about Afrikamerica, and the surprising identity of who is spreading the lies. We’ll hear from Austin about which distortions are being disseminated about Afrikan Americans and how careful research and straightforward reading of easily available evidence demands an overturning of many popular myths, including the notion that Black students avoid their studies for fear of “acting White.” That’s all on tonight’s edition of The Terrordome: The Afrika All-World News Service.

Check out all the details on THE BRO-LOG!

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From Separate and Unequal: Racial Segregation and Disparities in Quality Across U.S. Nursing Homes:

"Black residents," the authors of a study published in Health Affairs (September/October 2007) report "are more likely to live in poor-quality nursing homes." Blacks reside in highly segregated nursing home facilities. The highest nursing-home segregation was found in the Midwest.

"Black nursing home residents were 1.41 times as likely as whites to be in facilities cited with a deficiency causing actual harm or immediate jeopardy to residents, and 1.7 times as likely to be in a nursing home that was subsequently terminated from Medicare and Medicaid participation because of poor quality. In addition, blacks were 1.12 times as likely as whites to reside in a nursing home that was greatly understaffed, and 2.64 times as likely to be in a facility housing predominantly Medicaid residents."

9/24/2007

Blacks and America’s Religious Divides

Adapted from Many Americans Uneasy with Mix of Religion and Politics, Pew Research Center, 2006, p. 10.

Most Americans believe that the will of the people should determine U.S. laws. Blacks are almost evenly divided with half saying that the Bible should determine U.S. laws and 48 percent saying the people’s will. On this issue black Protestants look more like white evangelicals than white mainline Protestants.

Black clergy appear to be more politically-engaged than white clergy—mainline and evangelical. Black clergy speak out more on Iraq, homosexuality, the environment, evolution, the death penalty and immigration than white clergy. Unfortunately, these quantitative findings do not tell us much about what clergy are actually saying about these topics.

Fifty-nine percent of black Protestants are opposed to abortion; 36 percent of them think it should be allowed. This split is similar to the split among white evangelicals. Black Protestants also look similar to white evangelicals on the issue of gay marriage. Seventy-four percent of black Protestants oppose gay marriage. Seventy-eight percent of white feel the same.

Adapted from Pragmatic Americans Liberal and Conservative on Social Issues, Pew Research Center, 2006, p. 4, 8.

If the America continues to wrestle with issues at the intersection of religion and politics, there could be a realignment of the black political landscape. Many blacks’ religious beliefs appear to align with that of white evangelicals. A sizeable minority of blacks though may support positions more generally accepted by white mainline Protestants.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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9/17/2007

What Journalists Need to Know about the SAT

The SAT vs. The long-term trend NAEP

Not everyone goes to college. Of those who do go to college, not everyone takes the SAT. Some take the ACT. Some do not take the SAT or the ACT, because it is not required by their college. For this reason, it is incorrect to think that the SAT provides a good picture of the academic achievement of all high school seniors.

The types of students who take the SAT have changed over time. Children of high socioeconomic status have the longest history taking the SAT. Over time more students of more modest socioeconomic backgrounds have taken the SAT.

This changing SAT demographic matters because socioeconomic background is correlated with SAT scores. (See the relationship of parental education to SAT scores.) As the composition of the students taking the test changes, comparisons to earlier groups of test-takers become less valid. It is difficult to know whether changes in SAT scores over time are due to the changing demographics of the test-takers or to changes in academic achievement.

As if this wasn’t a big enough problem, the SAT has been redesigned recently. These redesigns also make comparisons across time problematic.

For all of these reasons and more, the SAT is a bad measure for trying to assess the academic achievement of students and trends in student achievement. Nonetheless, year after year, journalists continue to use the SAT in this way.

A far better tool for tracking students’ academic achievement over time is the long-term trend scores of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The long-term trend NAEP tests are given to nationally representative samples of 9 year olds, 13 year olds, and 17 year olds every four years. Unlike the SAT, NAEP scores for 17 year olds really do allow us to make conclusions about high school seniors nationally.

There are several versions of the NAEP tests. There is the national, state, urban district and long-term trend. The long-term trend, like its name suggests, is ideal for making assessments of black student achievement over time. The test does not change and the sample is always nationally representative of students.

Over the last 30 years, black students at all three age levels have increased their long-term math and reading NAEP scores. Over the last 10 years, only black 9 year olds and 13 year olds have increased their NAEP scores. The 17-year-olds’ scores have been flat. (White 17 year-olds’ NAEP scores have been flat too.) During this time period, however, the black math SAT scores have improved. While the black students who take the SAT appear to be doing better academically, black seniors in general have stagnated since the mid-1990s. If we want to know how black students are progressing academically, the long-term trend NAEP is the far better measure.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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9/09/2007

Race to Incarcerate: Fashion Policing

Is the Rise of Fashion Policing a Sign of a Deeper Problem?

Once upon a time, the idea of a “fashion police” was just an amusing metaphor. Not anymore. A small but growing number of communities, mainly in the South, are indeed requiring police to fine or jail people for the fashion of wearing their pants low enough to reveal their underwear. A Stratford, Connecticut councilman, Alvin O’Neal, recently proposed a similar law. Wisely, the town council rejected the legislation.

These laws do not make sense. They are not what they claim to be about. If one is offended by the public display of people in underwear then shouldn’t Victoria’s Secret and Calvin Klein underwear ads be high on one’s hit list. Of course, Victoria’s Secret and Calvin Klein are just the most prominent among the underwear advertisers. Even this newspaper distributes advertising with pictures of people in underwear. As pervasive as underwear advertising is, one hears no mention of calls to ban this advertising among those who claim to be offended by the sight of underwear.

Of course, one should not stop at advertising. Swimming suits look remarkably like underwear. Revealing those would have to be outlawed too. So, maybe the anti-underwear lawmakers will propose banning swimming next.

Nicole Kidman and the editors of Vanity Fair who have Kidman showing her bra on the cover of this month’s issue should be fined or jailed also. And all of the other magazines showing bras or bikinis on their covers, from Sports Illustrated for the Swimsuit Issue to Shape magazine, would have to be punished also.

It is not unusual for people to be offended by new fashion styles. In the 1960s, adults were scandalized by men’s long hair, big afros, and mini-skirts. In the 1970s, the spiked and neon dyed hair and torn clothes of punks shocked many. In the 1980s, Madonna made bras and bustiers outerwear causing some outrage. In the 1990s, droopy pants arrived. The shock, anger, and outrage that followed were not surprising. The idea to put people in jail for their sagging pants is.

How did we get here? Why is it that at this point in time criminalizing fashion seems like a good idea to some lawmakers? How did people become so cavalier about restricting American’s rights to freedom of expression? These laws seem to be symptoms of a deeper problem.

The fact of the matter is that these laws are not about decency in the sense that they have been crafted. Councilman Alvin O’Neal revealed as much when he stated, “We’re not out to get plumbers whose pants creep down while working on your pipes.” But why not? Why is the top of a plumber’s butt okay but boxer shorts are not? Boxer shorts are in fact clothing, which should be preferable to an actual butt partially exposed by a plumber. O’Neal’s preference for actual partial nudity over boxer shorts, shows that this has nothing to do with protecting our eyes.

The idea that the problem is that this style may have arisen in prisons is not very convincing. Many of the most violent criminal gang members have tattoos, but I haven’t heard of anyone trying to outlaw tattoos. At least, not yet.

What are these laws really about, then? These laws seem crafted to hurt a despised population, not to protect the public from the “harm” of seeing people’s underwear. The lawmakers seem to have little respect for the rights of the type of people who they believe expose their boxer shorts, but they still do have respect for the rights and needs of the type of people they think become plumbers.

Maybe I am wrong about this issue. Maybe it is simply that fewer Americans value our freedoms today. After all, Congress recently expanded the government’s powers to spy on Americans without a warrant, weakening our Fourth Amendment rights. Maybe we simply value our freedoms less today than in the past.

My parents often were not happy with my choice of clothing and grooming. Since they have passed, my older brother has taken over their role. Every time I see him, he tells me I need to get a haircut. Every time! This is his right. This is a legitimate type of pressure for him to exert to get me to meet his standards. I, however, still don’t conform enough for his tastes. As recalcitrant as my brother thinks I am, he has never considered it a criminal offense.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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9/03/2007

The Myth of the Black Teen Suicide Epidemic

from the files of Mike Males

[The assertion of a black teen suicide epidemic has never been very well supported by the official statistics. In the 2001 article below, Mike Males goes even further and argues that the official statistics were distorted. Please note that this 2001 article does not address the recent report of an increase in the suicide rate in 2004. MSNBC has a discussion of the recent trend. Note the graph in the middle of the MSNBC article “Official Suicide Rate Down.”]

Recent alarms that suicide is skyrocketing among teenagers, especially African Americans, demonstrate that the only way to present youth issues fairly today is to avoid repeating secondhand statistics, no matter how apparently trustworthy the source. Authorities, from the US Centers for Disease Control to African-American physician Alvin Poussaint to media reports, assert that teenagers (particularly black males) are blowing themselves away in record numbers. From these chilling statistics, theories abound: modern youths are causing, and suffering, unprecedented, horrific dangers. More programs, more psychiatric interventions, more forced institutionalizations, and more abrogation of teenagers’ rights are advanced in the name of protecting them from their rising urge to self-destruct.

In fact, the entire premise of a teen suicide epidemic, especially among blacks, is a textbook lesson in statistical malpractice. The same references interest groups miscite actually show that modern teens, especially African Americans, are less likely to die by their own hand than at any time in at least half a century, and probably ever. How, then, have authorities manufactured the frightening image of rising adolescent self-destruction? By omitting massive changes in how deaths are classified. Consider the following vital statistics compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics:

In 1970, 1,352 black teens (age 10-19) died from self-inflicted causes (drug overdoses, poisonings, falls, drownings, gunshots, hangings, suffocations, sharp instruments, and individual traffic crashes). Of these, 103 deaths were ruled suicides, 1,080 were ruled “accidents,” and 169 were ruled “undetermined” as to intent (that is, the coroner couldn’t figure out whether the person died accidentally or purposely).

In 1980, 767 black teenagers died from these same self-inflicted causes. Of these, 117 were ruled suicides, 596 were ruled “accidents,” and 54 were ruled “undetermined.”

In 1998, just 639 black teenagers died from these self-inflicted causes. Of these, 222 were ruled suicides, 375 were ruled “accidents,” and 42 were ruled “undetermined.”

Can you see what is happening here? On one hand, the total number of black teenage self-destructive deaths plummeted (1,352 in 1970, 639 in 1998). On the other, the number of black teenage deaths ruled as suicides leaped (103 in 1970, 222 in 1998). So, how can black teen suicide have “doubled” at the same time only half as many black teens are killing themselves? Let us consider a powerful possibility the experts overlooked.

In order to certify a death as a “suicide,” a coroner must provide solid evidence (by a note, or investigation) that the death was intentionally caused. For lack of expertise or interest, pressure from families, religious concerns, insurance considerations, and other reasons, coroners are reluctant to rule a death (particularly a youthful death) as a suicide. A number of scientific studies have found that coroners of past decades ruled hundreds of self-inflicted teenage deaths as “accidents” (or as “undetermined” as to intent) that, given today’s more sophisticated diagnostic techniques, would be ruled suicides. Especially in southern and rural areas, expending coroner time and money to investigate whether a black teen death was an accident or a suicide wasn’t a priority. So, as Poussaint correctly suggests (in a point that refutes his claim of a modern "crisis"), black suicide has been “historically underreported.”

A startling example: in 1970, coroners ruled 169 black teenage deaths as “undetermined” because they couldn’t (or didn’t bother to) ascertain whether a suspicious, self-inflicted gunshot wound or drug overdose was accidental or intentional. In 1998, the number of black teenage deaths ruled as “undetermined” had fallen to just 42. Note that the supposed “increase” in black teen suicides (up 119 since 1970) almost perfectly matches the “decline” in black teenage “undetermined” deaths (down 127) -- even without allowing for the bigger decline in self-inflicted deaths ruled as “accidents” (down 705)!

More evidence: in California, where coroners traditionally called in suicide experts to accurately certify questionable deaths, black teenage suicide DECLINED by 40 percent over the last three decades. Meanwhile, in southern states, black teen suicides skyrocketed” from a scattering in 1970 to scores today. If some new, generational stressors are raising teen suicide, why is it falling sharply in California? These are the kinds of complications officials and experts are duty-bound to resolve before issuing alarming statements on emotional topics such as teen suicide -- yet they did not.

Whatever the politics, the bottom line is straightforward. In 1998, there were 800,000 more black teenagers in the population than in 1970. Yet, among black teen males, suicidal deaths fell sharply, from 1,093 in 1970 to 549 in 1998. Among black teenage girls, the drop in self-demise was even larger: 259 deaths in 1970, just 78 in 1998.

By rate, then, today’s average black teen male is 57 percent, and today’s average black teen female is 73 percent, less like to take his/her own life than their counterparts of 30 years ago. In fact, fewer black teens died by self-destructive means in 1998 than in 1950, when the black youth population was only one-third as large!

Two conclusions are evident. First, the teenage suicide “epidemic” is an artifact of changes in death classification, not an increase in youthful demise. Second, the reality is that teens display spectacular declines in self-inflicted hazard. Rarely do epidemiologists record such rapid decreases in fatalities over such a short period. Yet, the media and experts blare an incessant dirge that this increasingly healthy, resilient generation is killing itself at unheard-of rates.

Many groups justify their political tactic of “creating a crisis” as necessary to preserving support for the unquestionably fine, underfunded suicide prevention and mental health programs some youths need. But in the end, the myth of a teen suicide epidemic is not benign, no matter how humanely couched. It frightens the public that all young people are lethally out of control. It activates psychiatric industries lathering to profit, programs gearing up to manage, moralists eager to censor, police girding to suppress. Perhaps most disturbing, the “teen suicide” hype exposes the alarming extent to which major interests freely reduce young people to mere commodities to advance pet agendas when we should be pondering why--despite overcrowded schools, defunded services, dead-end jobs, and incessant denigration by their elders--today's younger generation is NOT descending into self-hatred and suicide.

More details can be found at Mike Males’ website http://home.earthlink.net/~mmales/.

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8/27/2007

Can We Become “Smart on Crime”?

Marc Mauer, Race to Incarcerate, rev. and updated (New York: The New Press, 2006).

Everything one would want to know about the “war on drugs” and the “tough on crime” movement is presented in Marc Mauer’s Race to Incarcerate. The book is decidedly against our criminal justice policies of the last 35 years, but it is based on a very careful and balanced examination of the data and research.

The United States has an incarceration rate about seven times higher than other Western developed nations. The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the developed world—and it is still rising. In 2004, the U.S. incarceration rate was eight times France’s, seven and a half times Germany’s and six and a quarter times Canada’s. Mauer argues that this does not have to be the case.

Prior to the 1970s, the U.S. incarceration rate was on par with other Western developed nations. But since the initiation of the “war on drugs” and the “tough on crime” mentality we have had a strong and steady increase in America’s incarceration rate.

Some might argue that it is incarceration that prevents the U.S. from having a higher crime rate. Over the 1990s, there was a very strong decline in crime rates across the country. Today, crime rates are still at a relatively low level in spite of a slight rise in some areas. Is the high U.S. incarceration rate keeping the crime rate low?

Since the early 1970s, the incarceration rate has only gone up yet the crime rate has both increased and decreased. From 1970 to 1980, the crime rate and the incarceration rate both increased. From 1984 to 1991, again, both rates increased. The U.S. has seen long periods where the crime rate increased and the incarceration rate increased. If incarceration had a powerful negative effect on the crime rate, the crime rate would decrease with large increases in the incarceration rate. This has not been the case.

Mauer’s argument is not that there should be no incarceration, but rather that we should be, as others have called it, “smart on crime” rather than “tough on crime.” “Tough on crime” policies have been largely counterproductive. High incarceration rates and other “tough on crime” policies may actually increase the crime rate in the long term.

A large part of the increase in the number of prisoners has been of low-level, non-violent drug offenders. For individuals with substance abuse problems, drug-treatment is far better than incarceration. Mauer states:

A 1994 study conducted by the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs . . . found that every dollar invested in substance abuse treatment generated seven dollars in savings, primarily through reductions in crime and reduced hospitalizations. (175)

Other studies have concurred that increasing drug treatment is a far “smarter” strategy for dealing with drug addicts that incarceration. For nonviolent property crime offenses, community service and other types of alternatives to incarceration are “smarter” responses.

One way that our criminal justice polices may increase crime is that in our “tough on crime” mentality, we actually make it difficult for ex-offenders to desist from criminal behavior. Rather than providing opportunities for ex-offenders to become employed, we make it more difficult for them and thus increase the likelihood that they return to crime. “In 1994, Congress prohibited inmates from receiving Pell grants for higher-education courses” (200). The more educated ex-offenders are the more likely they will be able to find a job. Many states also prohibit ex-offenders from obtaining a license for many jobs such as becoming a barber or doing asbestos removal (199). Jobs like becoming a barber or an asbestos remover are among the few jobs that the average ex-offender actually has a decent chance of obtaining. Preventing ex-offenders from becoming socially-integrated, employed individuals amounts to begging them to return to criminal behavior. These policies are certifiably “stupid on crime.”

Our “stupid on crime” mentality leads us to over-fund pro-incarceration policies and under-fund crime-reduction policies. For example, early in the Clinton Administration, Congress decided against a $60 billion economic program to create jobs in Los Angeles after the Los Angeles riots. More jobs would have likely reduced Los Angeles crime rates. That program, however, was deemed too expensive. A year later,

Congress . . . determined that they could in fact allocate $30 billion to these communities. This time, though, the appropriation took the form of a massive crime bill loaded with sixty new death penalty offenses, $8 billion in prison construction, “three strikes” sentencing, and other provisions certain to escalate the prison population (185).

Congress decided that the country could not afford job creation and crime prevention for poor black communities, but it could afford to increase criminal justice expenditures to put more blacks in prison.

Our criminal justice policies are, in part, the product of anti-black attitudes. This might seem like an extreme and unfair characterization until one reads Mauer’s review of racial attitudes and support for “tough on crime” policies. Researchers have found that if crime is perceived as being disproportionately committed by blacks, whites are more supportive of harsher punishment. Anti-black prejudice is also correlated with greater support for the death penalty. Another study finds that the size of a state’s black population better predicts the incarceration rate than the actual violent crime rate. Anti-black bias is a significant factor in our criminal justice policies.

As some have argued, reforming the criminal justice system is the number one black civil rights struggle of this generation. The so-called civil rights leadership, however, did not get the memo.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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