Short Takes: Unemployment, Incarceration, Discrimination Enforcement

A New Lecture: “Anti-Black Discrimination in the Age of Obama” by Dr. Algernon Austin

The simplistic idea that impoverished African Americans have only themselves to blame for their poverty, due to their poor cultural values—a notion advanced by many, including black public figures such as Bill Cosby—is believable only if a blind eye is turned to those inconvenient things social scientists like to call “facts.” Algernon Austin soundly refutes the “culture of poverty” argument by paying careful attention to marco-economic data about long-term poverty trends and sociological case studies about persistent discrimination. In other words, unlike the glib punditry, Austin actually looks at the “facts.”
--Dr. Andrew Hartman, professor and audience member, Illinois State University

Contact Dr. Austin to arrange a speaking engagement.
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Among College-Educated, Blacks Hit Hardest by Recession

Fifteen months into a deep recession, college-educated white workers still had a relatively low unemployment rate of 3.8% in March of this year. The same could not be said for African Americans with four-year degrees. The March 2009 unemployment rate for college-educated blacks was 7.2%—almost twice as high as the white rate—and up 4.5 percentage points from March 2007, before the start of the current recession (see chart). Hispanics and Asian Americans with college degrees were in between, both with March 2009 unemployment rates of 5%. [Read More]

Decline in Blacks Incarcerated for Drug Offenses

• The number of African Americans in state prisons for a drug offense declined by 21.6% from 1999-2005, a reduction of more than 31,000 persons.
• The number of whites incarcerated for a drug offense rose significantly during this period, an increase of 42.6%, representing an additional 21,000 persons in prison.

[Read the report summary] [Full report, PDF]

Among the things too many of the pundits missed was the large decline in crime over the 1990s. A new report, The Changing Racial Dynamic of the War on Drugs reveals another facet of that decline--the decline in blacks incarcerated for drug offenses. In 1999, 144,700 blacks were in state prison for drug offenses. In 2005, the number was 113,500. This change reduced the shared of blacks incarcerated in state prisons for drug offenses from 57.6 percent to 44.8 percent. This is a substantial decline and it should be celebrated.

Nonetheless, there are still too many blacks--as well as people of other races--incarcerated for drug offenses. Marc Mauer, the author of the report, observes "the number of people incarcerated for a drug offense is [still] greater than the number incarcerated for all offenses in 1980." He adds:

Overall, two-thirds of persons incarcerated for a drug offense in state prison are African American or Latino. These figures are far out of proportion to the degree that these groups use or sell drugs. A wealth of research demonstrates that much of this disparity is fueled by disparate law enforcement practices. In effect, police agencies have frequently targeted drug law violations in low-income communities of color for enforcement operations, while substance abuse in communities with substantial resources is more likely to be addressed as a family or public health problem.

While the number and share of blacks incarcerated for drug offenses declined, the number and share for whites increased. These findings did not completely surprise me because, in 2007, I noted the following in an op-ed [PDF]:

Another important source is the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN). DAWN tracks illicit drug use among visitors to emergency rooms in major metropolitan areas. DAWN’s numbers for substance abuse increased by nearly 50 percent between 1995 and 2002. A large part of this increase was due to white people. The number of whites visiting emergency rooms with cocaine in their system, for example, doubled from about 40,000 in 1995 to about 80,000 in 2002. There were no significant increases among blacks or Hispanics.

The trends that Mauer found among whites matches the trends in the DAWN database.

Discrimination Cases Up, Number of Anti-Discrimination Enforcers Down

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charged with enforcing the nation's job discrimination laws, is facing its largest caseload in at least a quarter-century with sharply diminished staffing and resources, according to commission and union officials.

More than 95,400 charges of job bias in the private sector were filed in fiscal year 2008, up 15.2 percent from the previous year and up 26 percent from 2006. But the size of the EEOC staff, which is responsible for investigating the complaints, has steadily decreased in size and now numbers 2,192, down from approximately 2,850 in 2000. [Read more] [Some graphs]



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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2009 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Getting Behind the Black-White Achievement Gap

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
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More than half a century after the Brown decision, the majority of black students still attend racially segregated and inferior schools. By a variety of measures, but perhaps most importantly in terms of teacher quality, the larger the percentage of black students in the school the lower the overall quality of teachers. Teacher quality matters for academic achievement. Below are some short takes on some other factors that lead to lower academic achievement among blacks.

Black children are much more likely to grow up in poverty or to suffer from economic hardship than white children. Anyone who discounts the social and economic disadvantage that black children experience when thinking about the black-white academic-achievement gap is simply getting it wrong.

Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research by Gordon Dahl and Lance Lochner (Working Paper 14599, December 2008) reconfirms the finding that family income matters for academic achievement. Dahl and Lochner use a methodology that strengthens the causal claim that increases in family income lead to higher academic achievement for children. The researchers also find that “achievement for minorities (blacks or Hispanics) responds more to additional income than does achievement for whites. Achievement for children with low educated mothers increases more with income than does the achievement of children with more educated mothers.” Therefore, socioeconomic disadvantage appears to be a greater factor in low black student achievement than in low white student achievement. The researchers also find that income matters more the younger the child is and that income levels have to be maintained to have a continued effect.

A study discussed in The Economist, April 4th 2009, suggests ideas to fill in some of the missing pieces in Dahl and Lochner’s research. The study by Gary Evans and Michelle Schamberg from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that poor children are more likely to experience stress and that stress makes it harder for children to learn. The stress relationship suggests why a income level has to be maintained overtime to have a persistent effect. Increasing income one year and removing it another year is likely to increase stress the second year and lower academic achievement. The higher income must be maintained to sustain the lower stress level.

The Evans and Schamberg study was done on a sample of white youth only. One could imagine that black youth, poor and non-poor, might have higher stress levels than comparable white youth because of racial prejudice and discrimination. Additionally, even controlling for income, black families have much less wealth than whites and thus, in this sense, are still poorer than white families. The evidence is very strong that the socioeconomic disparities between black and white students are a factor behind the academic achievement gap.

Children in middle-class families are advantaged not only in income but they also tend to have more highly-educated parents, attend higher-quality schools from pre-kindergarten to college, and they also have more intellectually enriching extracurricular activities. Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times reviewed the research on class and I.Q. this past week.

A number of studies have shown that I.Q. is malleable and responsive to education and one's social environment. Kristof reported that "when poor children are adopted into upper-middle-class households, their I.Q.’s rise by 12 to 18 points, depending on the study." Also, "The Milwaukee Project . . . took African-American children considered at risk for mental retardation and assigned them randomly either to a control group that received no help or to a group that enjoyed intensive day care and education from 6 months of age until they left to enter first grade. By age 5, the children in the program averaged an I.Q. of 110, compared with 83 for children in the control group. Even years later in adolescence, those children were still 10 points ahead in I.Q."

I am generally skeptical of attempts to improve black outcomes through self-esteem. Many pop psychologists making this claim fail to note that blacks have higher global self-esteem than whites. On the other hand, blacks may have lower self-esteem related to academic matters specifically. The work on "stereotype threat" shows that black students can be psyched-out by racial stereotypes when taking an exam and do worse than they are capable of. It seems that researchers have found a way to psyche-up black students so that they perform to their full potential.

It is clear that black students face a number of social, economic and even psychological disadvantages that affect their academic performance. When intellectuals and policymakers ignore these facts they are doing a tremendous disservice to black students.


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2009 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Restaurant Work in NYC: Tough Jobs for Women and People of Color

A New Lecture: “Anti-Black Discrimination in the Age of Obama” by Dr. Algernon Austin

The simplistic idea that impoverished African Americans have only themselves to blame for their poverty, due to their poor cultural values—a notion advanced by many, including black public figures such as Bill Cosby—is believable only if a blind eye is turned to those inconvenient things social scientists like to call “facts.” Algernon Austin soundly refutes the “culture of poverty” argument by paying careful attention to marco-economic data about long-term poverty trends and sociological case studies about persistent discrimination. In other words, unlike the glib punditry, Austin actually looks at the “facts.”
--Dr. Andrew Hartman, professor and audience member, Illinois State University

Contact Dr. Austin to arrange a speaking engagement.
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Restaurant workers rate their work among the lowest in job satisfaction. A new report The Great Service Divide: Occupational Segregation and Inequality in the New York City Restaurant Industry [PDF] by the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York shows some reasons why this might be—particularly for women and people of color. The report documents in great detail racial and gender-based discrimination both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Although “the [restaurant] industry employed an estimated 12.8 million workers nationwide, making it the nation’s largest employer outside of government,” reading The Great Service Divide one gets that sense that the industry still operates by the rules of the Wild West. Employers and high-paid restaurant workers seem to be able to do whatever they want, at least in New York City.

Practices toward women are blatantly sexist, if not outright violations of sex discrimination law. Here are some actual “job descriptions”:

Hello Ladies!: “Do you have a fit appearance? Are you naturally cute or just drop dead gorgeous? Like being flirtatious? Is provocative and demure your natural aura? Like to get a little wild? Please respond with recent picture (must be within the last 3 months)…”

Wine Enthusiast: “…Seeking attractive, outgoing, wine enthusiast to recommend and serve fine wines… enjoy stimulating conversation with upscale clientele… experience a plus, but not necessary, will train. Please forward resume with photo.”

The authors of the report point out that when employers rely heavily on appearance for the women they hire but not for men, they are, in fact, violating the law.

In addition to the sexism of job descriptions for women that read like escort ads, there are other gender-related problems. It is mainly white men who decide who is and is not attractive, which means that it is mainly white women, U.S.-born and European-born, who are deemed attractive. Generally, it is only the most exceptionally beautiful nonwhite women, by mainstream standards, who make it into the higher-paying front-of-the-house positions in the elite New York City restaurants.

After reading the “job descriptions,” it is not surprising to find that women experience sexual harassment.

One woman recalled her employer saying, “Come in something low cut, something sexy baby.” Another female recounted a similar experience, stating she was sent home for coming in with a turtleneck. When asked what happened when sexual harassment occurred, one male worker said, “Obviously management’s not going to do anything about it because it’s management doing it most of the time…It’s huge, and it stems from the top.”

Because sexism and sexual harassment seems to pervade the industry, many women feel that there is little that they can do about it.

The Great Service Divide also documents discrimination through audit or matched pair tests. When sending matched pairs of white and testers of color out to apply for work, testers of color were less likely to be granted an interview and those who did receive interviews were then less likely to be hired as waiters or waitresses in New York City’s elite restaurants. The tests were designed so that the person of color would be slightly more qualified than the white person.

Analyzing 2000 Census data, the researchers found that female workers earned 21.8 percent less than comparable male workers. Workers of color earned 11.6 percent less than white workers, and immigrant workers earned 9.7 percent less than non-immigrants.

The Great Service Divide provides a rich and insightful look into the scary world of New York City restaurant work. As the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York shows, the restaurant industry needs a great deal of monitoring and regulation. The report concludes with detailed policies for employers and policymakers.



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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2009 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Formerly Incarcerated Black Women and the Anti-Black Labor Market

Dr. Algernon Austin is available to lecture on "Anti-Black Discrimination in the Age of Obama." Analyzing and reviewing unemployment data, audit studies, and wage analyses, he shows that it is not a "culture of failure" that holds blacks back, but persistent anti-black discrimination.

Contact him for more details.
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In 2007, there were over 200,000 women in prison or in jail. Of these women, nearly a third were black, giving black women an incarceration rate that approached four times the white female rate (see Prison Inmates at Midyear 2007, [PDF] Tables 9 and 10). The large and growing numbers of women, and particularly women of color, in America's prisons and jails led researchers at Henderson Center for Social Justice at the UC Berkeley School of Law to assess the effect of a criminal record and race on women's employment prospects [PDF]. This question has been asked of men, but to my knowledge this was the first investigation of these issues for women.

The study builds on the work of some recent discrimination studies that have received a fair amount of media attention. It employs a variation of the paired-tester or audit methodology. This methodology presents equivalent information from job applicants in the same manner to employers. The job applicants are therefore the same as candidates except for race or a criminal record. By doing this testing, researchers can determine is employers tend to be biased based on race or a criminal record.

Probably the most famous of the recent paired-tester research is by Devah Pager and Bruce Western. They found that formerly incarcerated men were less likely to receive call-backs for interviews or job offers from employers. Black men were also less likely to receive favorable responses than white men. The surprising finding was that black men without a criminal record were treated about the same as white men with a criminal record.

Instead of using actual people to visit employers and apply for jobs, the Henderson Center researchers decided upon another now famous methodology. They sent similar résumés to employers but with names commonly assumed to be of a particular racial group. This technique was used by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan in their study, "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal?" Bertrand and Mullainathan found that "white" names received 50 percent more callbacks for interviews than "black" names.

The Henderson Center researchers sent out comparable résumés to employers in the Bay Area of California with a subtle indications that some of the women were formerly incarcerated. They found, as the research of men did, that a criminal record significantly lowered the rates of positive responses.

The study was not large enough for strong conclusions on racial disparities, but it does suggest that black women have the most difficult time finding work in the Bay Area labor market. Résumés with "black" names were less likely to receive callbacks for an interview than those with "white" names. Among the formerly incarcerated, "black" résumés also did worse than "white" ones. The surprise in this study is that "black" women with and without a criminal record appeared to do equally poorly. In other words, it appeared as if all "black" women were treated as if they were black ex-offenders. Unlike in the study of men, "white" women with a record did better than, not equal to, "black" women. Again, because of the relatively small sample size, there is a potentially large margin of error in these findings. We need other researchers to replicate and refine this study with a larger sample to provide us with more solid results.

Some people believe that anti-black discrimination in the labor market is something that ended in the 1960s. If it does exist today, these people say that it is just a few bad apples. Collectively, these studies and as well as a large body of additional research shows that anti-black discrimination continues to be a reality across the country.

The data for the Pager and Western studies were collected in 2001 and 2004 in Milwaukee and New York City respectively. The data for the Bertrand and Mullainathan study was collected from 2001 to 2002 in Boston and Chicago. The data for the Henderson Center study was collected in 2008 in the Bay Area of California. The only way someone arrives at the idea that America is post-racial is by making a conscious effort to ignore all of the research showing the contrary.



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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2009 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved.