Thora Institute: 2010

11/22/2010

No Economic Recovery in Sight for Communities of Color

We are 7.5 million jobs below where we were at the start of the recession in December 2007. Since that time the labor market grew by about 3.5 million workers. Thus, to get back to where we were before the start of the recession we would need 11 million jobs.

For many communities of color, however, December 2007 was not a period of healthy labor market conditions. It was a typical period of relatively high joblessness. For people of color to experience an employment situation equivalent to whites in December 2007, they would need more jobs above the 11 million. Specifically, Latinos would need an additional 400,000 jobs to have an unemployment rate equal to whites in December 2007. Blacks would need about 2 million jobs to lift their low employment rate (or employment-to-population ratio) up to where it should be. American Indians would need about 200,000 jobs to lift their low employment rate up to a healthy rate. Thus, people of color need roughly 2.6 million jobs more on top of the 11 million for them to experience healthy economic conditions.

In total, therefore, we are nearly 14 million jobs short of a labor market that provides jobs for all communities equitably.

Sadly, few of our elected officials are behaving as if we are facing a massive jobs crisis. If job creation were number one on their agenda, we would be able to point to bold new initiatives for job creation. We cannot.

Last month the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a report on people who have been unemployed for a year or more. Prior to Great Recession, someone who was unemployed for 6 months or more was considered to be unemployed for a long time. Now we can measure long-term unemployment in periods of 12 months or more.

In the second quarter of this year, there were 4.5 million people who were looking for work for a year or more. 3 million of them were white. One million were black. Three quarters of a million were Latinos. Two hundred thousand were Asian.

Asian Americans currently have the highest rates of long-term unemployment, just edging past blacks. Of all of the Asian Americans who were unemployed in the second quarter of this year, 39% were unemployed for a year or more. For African Americans it was 37%.

How much longer will these people have to go without work?

Wall Street has seen an economic recovery, when will Main Street see a real economic recovery?

What are our elected-officials’ plans for addressing this problem?

Right now, there are no answers to these questions.

By the first half of this year, several economists concluded that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act had created over 2 million jobs. This job creation prevented the Great Recession from being a Great Depression. This job creation was vital, but we have not truly recovered yet.

We need about 14 million jobs to achieve full employment in all American communities—including communities of color. Without additional economic stimulus many millions will continue to look, month after month, for jobs that simply do not exist.

11/04/2010

Stopping the Decline of the Black Middle Class

For a brief moment in American history, one could argue that the majority of African Americans were middle class. That moment ended last year.

One definition of “middle class” used by social scientists is twice the poverty level. Individuals who live in households that have an income of at least two times the household’s federal poverty threshold are middle class. By this definition, in 1999 black America became a majority middle-class population. That year, 52.2% of blacks were middle class. Last year, the percent of middle-class blacks slipped down to 49.7%. There is every reason to expect further declines this year and next year.

College-educated blacks—another definition of “black middle class”—have been particularly hard hit during this recession. My organization, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), estimates that this year the unemployment rate for black workers with bachelor’s or higher degrees is on track to be the highest since 1979, the earliest year for which we have data. In 2007, the unemployment rate for college-educated blacks was 1.6 times the rate for college-educated whites. This year it is 2 times the rate for college-educated whites.

If one restricts the focus to recent black college graduates, those under 25 years of age, the picture is similar but worse. Young, recent African-American college graduates had an unemployment rate of 15.4% in the first half of this year. Among recent college graduates, this group had the highest unemployment rate and the highest student-loan debt level. Jobless and burdened with over $30,000 worth of debt is a terrible way to begin one’s adult life, but this is the reality for many young and well-educated African Americans.

Wealth is another indicator that can be used to gauge the health of the black middle class. In 2004, 32.2% of black households had no wealth. EPI estimates that this percentage grew to 39.9% in 2009. In 2004, the median black wealth was a very modest $13,000. By 2009, it had fallen to $2,100. There has been a tremendous decline in wealth in black households likely due to the foreclosure crisis.

Whether one looks at income, wealth or the unemployment rate for the college-educated, the signs are of a black middle class in decline. What can be done?

The economic health of the black middle class is connected to the economic condition of blacks generally and to the health of the American labor force overall. The growth of the black middle class was the flipside of the strong decline in black poverty over the 1990s. We are not likely to see an American economy where black economic conditions improve dramatically without also an improvement in economic conditions for the country as a whole. Therefore, a necessary pre-condition for a strong and growing black middle class is a strong and growing American economy.

Unfortunately, many of the conservatives in Congress are promoting ideas that run the risk of stalling the already very weak economic recovery and accelerating the decline of the black middle class. For example, my colleagues at EPI estimated that Rep. John Boehner’s idea to extend the Bush tax cuts for all and cut domestic spending back to their 2008 level would cause the country to lose 1 million jobs. Policies of this sort will worsen economic conditions not improve them.

An economy where consumers are cutting their spending and businesses are aggressively cutting costs will not grow unless the federal government steps in with stimulus spending. The Recovery Act created over 2 million jobs, but we still have an 11-million-jobs deficit. We can’t create a healthy economy only through tax cuts. We tried this strategy during the George W. Bush administration, and we saw extremely weak job creation.

The federal government has one important option for job creation that can help the black middle class. State and local governments which are generally required to balance their budgets are seeing large fiscal deficits because of the recession. Many of these governments will respond to these deficits by cutting jobs. College-educated blacks are over-represented in state and local government. A large share of the jobs on the chopping block is likely to be black-middle-class jobs. The federal government can, however, provide aid to state and local governments to help reduce the job losses.

The federal government can also help black communities broadly by creating jobs programs as in did in response to the Great Depression. Federal jobs programs can be targeted to depressed communities where there has been a long-term scarcity of jobs. Many urban black communities fit this description.

The Great Recession has hit the black middle class hard. The fiscal crises in state and local government mean a continued loss of middle-class black jobs. The continuing foreclosure crisis means a continued loss of wealth among the black middle class. The black middle class will continue to decline unless the federal government steps in.

10/06/2010

On Poverty, Privilege, and Inequality

Poverty

Petula Dvorak and Nicholas D. Kristof write about the deep damage done to children growing up poor:

"The no of poverty in kids' lives today means no new clothes, no bed, no sleeping past 5 a.m. or we won't have time to take three buses to get to your school, no telling the guard at the Metro station that we're sleeping there tonight, no after-school tutoring program designed just for you, because, the truth is, we can't afford to get you there and back every day.

This is the daily reality for thousands of our children, especially African American children growing up in the District." --Petula Dvorak, "The Grinding Reality of Growing Up Poor."

"Pregnant women in low-income areas tend to be more exposed to anxiety, depression, chemicals and toxins from car exhaust to pesticides, and they’re more likely to drink or smoke and less likely to take vitamin supplements, eat healthy food and get meticulous pre-natal care.

The result is children who start life at a disadvantage — for kids facing stresses before birth appear to have lower educational attainment, lower incomes and worse health throughout their lives. If that’s true, then even early childhood education may be a bit late as a way to break the cycles of poverty." --Nicolas D. Kristof, "At Risk from the Womb."

Privilege

This summer, the New York Times published an article which attempted to illustrate how difficult the labor market is even for high-achieving students from elite colleges. The article also provided a glimpse into the life of privilege.

The featured student, Scott Nicholson, had "no college debt (his grandparents paid all his tuition and board)." His father and grandfather were able to get jobs because they knew the right people.

They said it was connections more than perseverance that got them started — the father in 1976 when a friend who had just opened a factory hired him, and the grandfather in 1946 through an Army buddy whose father-in-law owned a brokerage firm in nearby Worcester and needed another stock broker.

From these accidental starts, careers unfolded and lasted. David Nicholson, now the general manager of a company that makes tools, is still in manufacturing. William Nicholson spent the next 48 years, until his retirement, as a stock broker. “Scott has got to find somebody who knows someone,” the grandfather said, “someone who can get him to the head of the line.”

Few Americans, and even fewer black Americans, have had access to this level of wealth and job connections in their family.

and Inequality: America on the Way to a Becoming a Banana Republic

Steven Pearlstein on "The Costs of Rising Income Inequality."

If you asked Americans how much of the nation's pretax income goes to the top 10 percent of households, it is unlikely they would come anywhere close to 50 percent, which is where it was just before the bubble burst in 2007. That's according to groundbreaking research by economists Thomas Piketty, of the Paris School of Economics, and Emmanuel Saez, of the University of California at Berkeley, who last week won one of this year's MacArthur Foundation "genius" grants.

It wasn't always that way. From World War II until 1976, considered by many as the "golden years" for the U.S. economy, the top 10 percent of the population took home less than a third of the income generated by the private economy. But since then, according to Saez and Piketty, virtually all of the benefits of economic growth have gone to households that, in today's terms, earn more than $110,000 a year.

Even within that top "decile," the distribution is remarkably skewed. By 2007, the top 1 percent of households took home 23 percent of the national income after a 15-year run in which they captured more than half - yes, you read that right, more than half - of the country's economic growth. As Tim Noah noted recently in a wonderful series of articles in Slate, that's the kind of income distribution you'd associate with a banana republic or a sub-Saharan kleptocracy, not the world's oldest democracy and wealthiest market economy.

9/23/2010

Joblessness, Discrimination, and Black Poverty

Don't miss the One Nation Working Together march on Washington D.C., October 2, 2010.

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The African-American poverty rate rose to 25.8 percent in 2009. That the poverty rate would increase from 2008 to 2009 was not a surprise. Black workers lost jobs in 2009. When blacks lose work black poverty increases. Alternatively, when blacks find work poverty declines. The highest employment rate for African Americans on record was in 2000 and the lowest African-American poverty rate on record was in 2000.

If we want to lower the black poverty rate we need (1) strong job creation like we had in the late 1990s, and (2) we need to make certain that blacks truly have equal employment opportunity. It is necessary to do more to ensure equal opportunity because researchers still find that employers show a strong preference in favor of white job applicants. When white and black “testers” apply to the same jobs presenting equivalent qualifications, the white testers receive more interviews and more job offers.

While job creation and anti-discrimination as anti-poverty prescriptions for African Americans may strike many as basic and commonsensical, they are rarely mentioned these days in discussions about reducing black poverty. One hears just about everything other than calls for more jobs and more equal opportunity.
Take for example, the soon-to-be-former mayor of Washington D.C., Adrian Fenty. When asked during his recent primary election campaign what his top priority for addressing poverty in D.C. is, Fenty’s answer was education reform. He stated, “I believe that education is the great equalizer,” and that higher educational achievement would allow people to “be able to overcome barriers that perpetuate poverty.”

D.C. has a high poverty rate and about 3 out of every 4 poor residents are African American. But Fenty’s answer did not demonstrate a good understanding of black joblessness and poverty.

While improving educational outcomes for blacks is a valuable and important goal, it is a very weak anti-poverty program. At every educational level blacks are more likely to be unemployed and to earn less than whites. Blacks with college degrees are nearly twice as likely to be unemployed as whites with college degrees. Thus, even if blacks had the same educational profile as whites one would still expect blacks to be plagued with a higher rate of joblessness and consequently a higher rate of poverty.

Another misdiagnosis of the problem of black poverty is to see it as simply due to the high rate of female single-parent households among blacks. James T. Patterson argues that female single-parent households ultimately lead children in these families to joblessness and poverty. Patterson and others making this argument fail to mention that we have seen declines in the black poverty rate as the share of female single-parent households have increased. There was a large drop in the black poverty rate from 1990 to 2000 but no reduction in the share of female single-parent households. Now, that we’ve had two presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and one Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, who spent at least part of their childhood in fatherless households we should begin to be more careful and critical in our thinking about these families.

Along with female single-parent households, there are other arguments that suggest that it is the values and behaviors of blacks that cause high black poverty rates. A different Patterson, Orlando Patterson, claims that the problems facing young black men lie in their addiction to “hanging out on the street after school, shopping and dressing sharply, sexual conquests, party drugs, hip-hop music and culture.”

Orlando Patterson’s assertions are driven more by popular stereotypes than serious data analysis. We can find more reliable data on youth from Daniel Kuehn and Marla McDaniel of the Urban Institute. These scholars analyzed data from a nationally-representative survey of youth. Contrary to Orlando Patterson’s assertions, they do not find a greater rate of “adolescent risk behaviors” among blacks; they find less. They report, [PDF] “Low-income African American youth engage in fewer risk behaviors during adolescence (3.1 cumulative risks) than low-income white youth (3.9 cumulative risks). Low-income African American youth are less likely to use alcohol by age 13, sell drugs, steal less than $50, destroy property, or run away than low-income white youth.”

Despite engaging in fewer risk behaviors than white youth, black youth have more difficulties in the labor market, and they will grow up to have a higher rate of poverty. The reason for their high poverty rate is because they cannot find work. One reason why they cannot find work is because they are black.

It is time for the country to face the facts. Blacks have a high rate of poverty because of their high rate of joblessness. Their joblessness stems from the fact that there are not enough jobs and not enough of a commitment to equal employment opportunity.

9/08/2010

The Rich Get Richer While the Pain Trickles Down

Top group takes large slice of income growth: "38.7% of all of the income growth accrued to the upper 1% over the 1979-2007 period: a greater share than the 36.3% share received by the entire bottom 90% of the population."

The Pain Trickles Down: Washington D.C.Street Sense writer, Jeff McNeil (September 1-14th issue), points out that when unemployment rises and people's weekly wages fall they give less to the homeless. Even those who are surviving on the margins of society find themselves living on even thinner margins.

Lost Income, Lost Friends - and Loss of Self- respect: The Impact of Long-term Unemployment [PDF]: Black workers have higher rate of long-term unemployment--being unemployed for more than six months--than whites or Hispanics. Consequently, blacks report more personal and interpersonal problems stemming from long-term unemployment.

Another challenge for the unemployed: Public library budget cuts: "Public libraries around the country are facing budget cuts that are forcing them to reduce hours, scale back book purchases, or close altogether. Such cuts will make it more difficult for millions of unemployed workers to access the resources and technology needed to find jobs."

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

8/23/2010

Courtland Milloy Gets It Right

H. Westley Clark, director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, made an observation about black youths some years ago that stuck with me: "From the age of 18 to 25, our kids go from being below the national average when it comes to crime and substance abuse to being above the national average," he said.

"There are certain things in our community that seem to be working until that kid reaches 16 or 17. Then, all of a sudden, their involvement in crime and substance abuse shoots up. So what happens? What in our community suddenly disappears?"

One answer is that other youths make a relatively smooth transition into the labor force but black youth do not. Marc Mauer addresses this in Race to Incarcerate.

While there are no dramatic differences in the degree to which black and whites become involved in violent offending at some point, there are significant differences in how long these violent behaviors persist. The NYS [National Youth Survey] data reveal that black males are nearly twice as likely as white males to continue committing violent offenses into their twenties and nearly four times as likely to be involved by their late twenties.

. . . The primary reason why young offenders cease their criminal activities, whether they be occasional or frequent, is essentially because, as they reach their twenties, many of them get married, go to college, find jobs, and generally take on adult roles, which they come to find more rewarding that street life.

But, for large numbers of young black men, these more positive lifestyle options are limited or more difficult to attain. . . . An analysis of the NYS data finds, for example, that among 18-20-year-old youth who are employed or living in a stable relationship with a spouse or partner, there are no significant differences in the persistence of offending by race, but that among black males who fail to attain this status, violent offending is more likely to continue. Thus, a key question becomes the degree of access to legitimate employment among males in their late teens and early twenties. (p. 181)

The labor market is not friendly to black youth. The figure below shows the findings of a report from the Center for Labor Market Studies. For all racial groups, teens from poorer families are less likely to be employed than middle class teens. Hispanic teens, however, are less likely to be employed than white teens, and black teens are less likely to be employed than Hispanic teens. The race effect is so strong for blacks that black middle-class are less likely to be employed than poor white teens. This data is for Illinois only, but national data is very similar. What this means is that for teens, if you wish to find a job, it is better to grow up in a poor white family than a middle class black family.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

8/11/2010

Still Not Post-Racial Yet: White Men Still Better Off than Asian Americans in U.S. Labor Market

The blog 8asians recently posted an article stating that Asian men have the highest salary. This statement is both correct and misleading at the same time. It is correct that Asian American men have the highest median wage. But to the extent that it suggests that Asian Americans are economically advantaged relative to whites, it is incorrect.

As I pointed out in my examination of Asian American unemployment over the recession, Asian Americans experience hidden disadvantages in the U.S. labor market. To see this disadvantage, one must disaggregate the data by education level. The Asian American unemployment disadvantage appears upon examining those with a bachelor's degree or higher level of education. In 2009, the annual unemployment rate for Asian Americans with a bachelor's degree was 6.7 percent. For whites with a bachelor's degree is was 2.1 percentage points lower at 4.6 percent.

A larger share of Asian Americans has a college degree than other groups, including whites. People with college degrees are more likely to be employed and, on average, have higher earnings than people without college degrees. The high educational attainment of Asian Americans means that their aggregate statistics, like the overall unemployment rate or the median income for the entire group, looks better than the aggregate statistics for whites. But the picture changes when one compares Asian Americans with whites of the same educational level.

The wage report discussed on 8asians.com does not allow one to disaggregate the data by sex, race, and education level. But the Census Bureau does provide this disaggregation in its detailed income tables. We can compare white and Asian American full-time, year-round male workers with each other by education level. The median income for non-Hispanic white male high school graduates in 2008 was $42,234. For Asian American male high school graduates it was 21 percent lower at $33,358. Comparing individuals with bachelor's degrees, white males earned $71,672 and Asian males $63,172, or 12 percent less. When one disaggregates by educational level, the apparent Asian American advantage turns to an Asian American disadvantage.

One comment in response to the 8asians.com piece (on the New American Media re-posting of the article) stated that since Asian American men work harder, they deserve to have the highest salary. There are a number of problems with this statement, but if one assumes that Asian American men work the hardest, the disaggregated income data suggests that they are not being rewarded for their hard work.

Asian American "success" stories are often used to argue that the United States is a post-racial society where anyone can be successful provided that they are willing to work hard. The reality is, of course, more complicated than that. The Asian American "success" stories sometimes do not look at all like success stories when one disaggregates the data. And while hard work matters, and there are a great deal of opportunities for people of all races in this society, the playing field is still not level. In 2010, it is still easier for one to be economically successful if one is white and male.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

8/02/2010

Fourteen Examples of Racism in Criminal Justice System

Bill Quigley dissects blackness and the criminal justice system:

The biggest crime in the U.S. criminal justice system is that it is a race-based institution where African-Americans are directly targeted and punished in a much more aggressive way than white people.

Saying the US criminal system is racist may be politically controversial in some circles. But the facts are overwhelming. No real debate about that. Below I set out numerous examples of these facts.

The question is - are these facts the mistakes of an otherwise good system, or are they evidence that the racist criminal justice system is working exactly as intended? Is the US criminal justice system operated to marginalize and control millions of African Americans?

7/14/2010

America Becomes a Little More Like Paris

6/30/2010

Republicans Attack the Deceased Justice Thurgood Marshall

From Dana Milbank, "Kagan may get confirmed, but Thurgood Marshall can forget it," Washington Post, June 29, 2010:

As confirmation hearings opened Monday afternoon, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee took the unusual approach of attacking Kagan because she admired the late justice Thurgood Marshall, for whom she clerked more than two decades ago.

"Justice Marshall's judicial philosophy," said Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, "is not what I would consider to be mainstream." Kyl -- the lone member of the panel in shirtsleeves for the big event -- was ready for a scrap. Marshall "might be the epitome of a results-oriented judge," he said.

Stephanie Jones comes to the defense in "Thurgood Marshall's legacy deserves cheers, not sneers," Washington Post, June 30, 2010:

It was Marshall who, with Howard Law School Dean Charles Hamilton Houston, his mentor, conceived and then painstakingly effectuated the jurisprudence that led to the striking down of the odious "separate but equal" doctrine that threatened to destroy this country. While many decry "activist judges" (by which they seem to mean judges who uphold civil rights for minorities and women), those judges who undermine civil rights often demonstrate the most extreme forms of activism. Judges such as those who declared in Plessy v. Ferguson that racial segregation was constitutionally sound turned the Constitution on its head and made a mockery of equal protection. Those activist judges subjected an entire segment of Americans to more than half a century of state-imposed degradation, subjugation and humiliation.

6/21/2010

Black College Enrollment Up Because of the Recession

The Pew Research Center has found a significant increase in college enrollment from 2007 to 2008. It attributes this increase to primarily to a surge in minority enrollment. The enrollment of first-time, full-time, first-year college students increased 15 percent for Hispanics, 8 percent for blacks, 6 percent for Asians, and 3 percent for whites.

This increase is only apparent with data from postsecondary institutions on first-time, full-time, first-year college students. Other data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the broader category of 18- to 24-year olds enrolled in college finds a decline in college enrollment for blacks. It is possible that the numbers for first-year students are up while the total enrollment numbers are down.

Minorities and the Recession-Era College Enrollment Boom

College Enrollment Hits All-Time High, Fueled by Community College Surge

6/14/2010

Metropolitan Unemployment by Race

African American unemployment rates

"The black unemployment rate in both the Detroit and Minneapolis metropolitan areas was just over 20% (see Table 4). These were the highest rates for blacks. Washington D.C. had the lowest black metro unemployment rate in 2009, 8.1%. Fourteen of the metro areas had black unemployment rates that exceeded 11.3%. None was less than 7.3%. By contrast, in 11 of the 18 metro areas analyzed for blacks, whites had unemployment rates below 7.3%.

"The black-white unemployment ratio was highest in Minneapolis and Memphis. In these metropolitan areas, the black unemployment rate was three times the white rate. In both of these cities the black-white gap was also over 10 percentage points. The black-white ratio was lowest in Detroit, but blacks were still 1.5 times as likely to be unemployed as whites. On average, blacks were twice as likely to be unemployed as whites."

--From Algernon Austin, "Uneven Pain: Unemployment by Metropolitan Area and Race," Issue Brief #278 (Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute, 2010).

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Hear Algernon Austin and others discuss the 3-to-1 black-white unemployment disparity in the Minneapolis metro area on Minnesota Public Radio.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

6/06/2010

Hispanics Now Lead in Teen Births

Of the major racial/ethnic groups, black teens used to have the highest teen birth rate. Between 1990 and 2008, however, the black teen birth rate was nearly cut in half. Hispanics experienced a much smaller decline which left them with the highest teen birth rate.

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that roughly 1-in-4 Hispanic 19 year old females are mothers, but 1-in-5 black 19-year-old females are mothers. The comparable white rate is about 1-in-10.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

5/31/2010

Moynihan and Patterson Get It Wrong

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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One would have hoped that the fact that two presidents (i.e., Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) and one Supreme Court Justice (i.e., Sonia Sotomayor) spent at least part of their childhoods in fatherless households would lead to a more careful and critical examination of female single-parent families. Unfortunately, this has not occurred.

James T. Patterson's New York Times op-ed, "The Moynihan Future" is built on the presumption, taken from the “Moynihan Report,” that a female single-parent family is a bad or dysfunctional family. From there, Patterson presumes that the problems facing blacks are to a large degree due to the fact that a large share of black families are female single-parent families. Patterson is wrong in both presumptions.

The share of black nonmarital births has risen dramatically since the 1960s. Patterson observes that nearly three-quarters of births among blacks today are out-of-wedlock. But while the rise in nonmarital births is real, the decline of black America has not occurred.

The lowest black poverty rate on record, 22.5 percent, occurred in 2000, 35 years after the “Moynihan Report.” The black poverty rate was twice as high the year Moynihan wrote his report. In 1970, 58.4 percent of blacks 25 to 29 years old obtained a high school diploma or GED. In 2009, 88.9 percent of blacks in this age group completed high school. In the 1970s, black communities were almost four times as violent as they are today. Black nonmarital births have increased and the black poverty rate has declined, black educational attainment has increased, and the black violent crime rate has decreased.

Moynihan and Patterson's claims fail utterly when one looks at these simple metrics. Nonmarital births have increased and negative outcomes have decreased for blacks. A number of more sophisticated studies also reject the implicit stigmatization of black female single-parent families in Moynihan and Patterson's arguments.

The most convincing one that I have found is based on a longitudinal study of children in Chicago.¹ The children studied are almost all poor and almost all black. The statistical analysis conducted by the researchers allows one to compare two-parent and single-parent families across eight outcomes based on different aspects of education, employment, income and incarceration.

In none of the outcomes is there a negative effect on children from being raised by a single parent. None.

Moynihan was right that nonmarital births would increase, but he was wrong about everything else.

Of course, it is true that blacks are still much worse off than whites. But focusing on female single-parent families is a distraction from the real issues.

Patterson needs to ponder why is it that blacks with college degrees do so much worse in the labor market than similarly educated whites. And, why does the United States have the most brutal and socially destructive criminal justice system in the West with black men as its main target?

When Patterson finds answers to these questions he will not only understand the cause of black socioeconomic inequality today, he will also understand why black nonmarital birth rates are so high. Unemployed or incarcerated black men are not good marriage prospects.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Notes
1. See Suh-Ruu Ou, Joshua P. Mersky, Arthur J. Reynolds, Kristy M. Kohler, "Alterable Predictors of Educational Attainment, Income, and Crime: Findings from an Inner-City Cohort," Social Service Review (March 2007): 85-127.

For some additional research showing that female single-parent families are not the cause of black-white inequality, see Juan Battle, Wanda Alderman-Swain, and Alia R. Tyner, “Using an Intersectionality Model to Explain the Educational Outcomes from Black Students in a Variety of Family Configurations,” Race, Gender & Class 12(1), January 2005: 126-151; Thomas DeLeire, and Leonard M. Lopoo, Family Structure and the Economic Mobility of Children (Washington D.C.: Economic Mobility Project 2010); Keith Finlay, and David Neumark, "Is Marriage Always Good for Children? Evidence from Families Affected by Incarceration," Working Paper 13928, (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research 2008); Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., Thomas D. Cook, Jacquelynne Eccles, Glen H. Elder, Jr., and Arnold Sameroff, Managing to Make It: Urban Families and Adolescent Success, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1999); Donna K. Ginther, and Robert A. Pollak, “Family Structure and Children’s Educational Outcomes: Blended Families, Stylized Facts, and Descriptive Regressions,” Demography 14(4), November 2004: 671-696; Gary Painter, and David I. Levine, “Daddies, Devotion, and Dollars: How Do They Matter for Youth?” The American Journal of Economics and Sociology 63(4), October 2004: 813-850.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

5/23/2010

What Obama Did Not Say at Hampton University: Education Alone is Not Enough

And first and foremost, your education can fortify you against the uncertainties of a 21st century economy. . . .

Jobs today often require at least a bachelor’s degree, and that degree is even more important in tough times like these. In fact, the unemployment rate for folks who’ve never gone to college is over twice as high as for folks with a college degree or more.

--Remarks by President Barack Obama at Hampton University Commencement, 2010

While it is imperative that the educational attainment of black Americans be increased, education alone is not enough for black economic security. It is true that the more educated are more likely to be employed. But when looks at the issue conscious of race, the story changes.

The figure below shows the annual average unemployment rates for blacks and whites in 2009 by education level. More educated blacks are more likely to be employed than less educated blacks. The same is true for whites.

But when one compares blacks and whites with each other, it is clear that whites have a distinct advantage. Blacks with high school diplomas have unemployment rates that are equivalent to white high school dropouts. Blacks with college degrees only do modestly better at finding work than whites with high school diplomas.

More education is necessary but not sufficient to secure equal opportunity for blacks in the labor market. A strong commitment to ensuring racial justice is required across the nation. As the Tea Party becomes stronger, however, America's already weak commitment to ensuring equal opportunity will get even weaker.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

5/18/2010

Understanding Poverty in America

Listening to the popular American conventional wisdom on poverty, one would assume that high rates of poverty are a unique American disease caused by the supposed dysfunction of the black American population. One does not hear that, in fact, most rich countries have high rates of poverty--before taxes and transfers.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) provides data that allows one to compare poverty in the United States with other countries. For international comparative purposes, I define the poverty rate as the percent of the population that has to live on less than 50 percent of the median income. This definition is common in comparative analyses.

By this definition, before taxes and transfers, the United States’ poverty rate does not standout. The United States falls in the middle of the pack among rich countries. Examining 23 rich OECD countries, the United States was the 12th highest.

In the United States, in the mid-2000s, 26.3 percent of the population was in poverty before taxes and transfers. In Italy, Germany, Belgium and Greece about a third of the population was poor before taxes and transfers. France, Australia, Sweden, and Japan all had higher rates of poverty. The United Kingdom tied with the United States.

Where the United States stood out was in the poverty rate after taxes and transfers. In most countries, people understand that capitalism produces inequality, that the rich have advantages over poorer citizens, that poverty is damaging to people's lives, and that more equal societies have better social outcomes. In these societies, people use taxes and transfers to produce a more equitable and better functioning society.

After taxes and transfers, the United States had the highest poverty rate among rich OECD countries. After taxes and transfers, the U.S. poverty rate was 17.1 percent. Japan was the next closest with 14.9 percent. Although the United Kingdom had exactly the same poverty rate as the United States before taxes and transfers, the UK poverty rate dropped to 8.3 percent after taxes and transfers--half the U.S. rate. Sweden which had a higher before-taxes-and-transfers poverty rate than the United States, dropped its poverty rate to 5.3 percent after taxes and transfers--tied for the lowest with Denmark.

The United States has such a high poverty rate after taxes and transfers because we choose to. We are far richer than nearly all of the other rich OECD countries, but we are also far stingier. We like our capitalism brutal. As the Tea Party gains more power, expect an even more brutal country, with more poverty.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

5/03/2010

America's Upside Down Politics

One group is managing pretty well despite the Great Recession, and many of them benefit from big government social programs like medicare and social security. This group, however, is angry as hell and rails against "big government."

Another group is being hammered by the Great Recession, and they are being disproportionately hurt by cuts in government spending, yet, they are relatively quiet and convinced that everything is going to be alright.

This is the upside-down world of American politics. The former group is the Tea Party movement, and the latter group are blacks.

A New York Times/CBS poll finds that the members of the Tea Party movement are more likely than the general public to be doing well financially. They also tend to be white and over 45 years old.

Perhaps the most illuminating finding of the New York Times research into the movement is this:

Tea Party supporters said they did not want to cut Medicare or Social Security — the biggest domestic programs, suggesting instead a focus on “waste.”
Some defended being on Social Security while fighting big government by saying that since they had paid into the system, they deserved the benefits.

Others could not explain the contradiction.

“That’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” asked Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.” She added, “I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”

For Tea Partiers, "big government" does not refer to the biggest government programs--the military, social security, and medicare--it refers to any program that might disproportionately benefit people who are not white and well-off--no matter how small the program.
In a word, when they say they want to take back "their" country, they mean it. In their view, the government is supposed to be for the white middle class and the white middle class only. All other people need to find some other country to live in.

Blacks are being hammered financially by the Great Recession. They are experiencing massive job, income, home, and wealth losses. The government programs that they would turn to in these times of need are being cut or eyed for cuts. Instead of protesting so that politicians are motivated to do something to help them, blacks are still stuck in Obama-euphoria land. They are more likely to say that things are better off now than five years ago, when this is clearly not true.

Because the screaming wheel gets the oil, the well-off and white Tea Party folks will shape American politics and the quiet black masses will not. The government will do more to help and to appease the white and comfortable while enacting policies that neglect or harm people of color.When will blacks wake up and see that they are being hit hardest by the Great Recession?

4/25/2010

Will Obama be Arrested in Arizona?

Please change your bookmarks to the new URL: http://thorainstitute.blogspot.com.

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A law enforcement officer, without a warrant, may arrest a person if the officer has probable cause to believe that the person has committed any public offense that makes the person removable from the United States.
--State of Arizona, Senate Bill 1070

Come August, in Arizona, anyone who doesn't look “American” can be subject to arrest if they do not have papers indicating that they have permission to be in the United States.

Do black Americans look “American”?

Twenty percent of Americans think Barack Obama was born in another country, and, presumably, that his birth certificate from Hawaii is fraudulent. If someone believes these things then she could also believe that Obama is an illegal immigrant, since in her eyes, Obama is not a citizen but is pretending to be one.

Do any of these “birthers” work for Arizona law enforcement? Would they try to arrest Obama if he enters the state? The movement seems to have people crazy enough to attempt it.

The Arizona law, “SB 1070,” could be applied to blacks generally and not just to Obama. There are black immigrants in the United States. Many of them are here legally, some are not. Does this mean that any and all blacks in Arizona are subject to arrest until their legal residence in the United States can be established?

Yes, there are white immigrants too, but I’m doubtful that Arizona law enforcement will expend too much energy chasing after illegal white immigrants. I’m not sure what they will do about blacks with atypical names, dress or accents. Will they assume that these blacks are illegal until proven otherwise as SB 1070 seems to encourage?

Blacks in Arizona should keep track of whether this travesty of legislation is being applied to blacks. If it is, there should be protests and lawsuits. (Of course, even if it isn’t applied to blacks, it should be repealed.)

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

4/19/2010

Thora Institute Re-Engineering

There will be some changes made to the programming of this site this week. With luck, everything will proceed smoothly.

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4/13/2010

Take from the Poor, Give to the Rich

We have “reformed” our welfare system based on the assumption that everyone who wants to obtain a job that can lift themselves and their family out of poverty can obtain one. These are flawed assumptions. In 2007, when we had a moderately strong economy, more than one-in-four people with jobs did not earn enough to keep a family out of poverty.

The current economy is extremely weak. We have an unemployment rate of 9.7 percent. There are over 5 job seekers for every job opening. No matter how hard people try to find work, there simply are not enough jobs. As Timothy M. Smeeding has remarked, today “we have a work-based safety net without any work.”

But this reality has not stopped the engines of “welfare reform.” The New York Times reports that “Rhode Island has the nation’s third-highest unemployment rate, but the welfare rolls here continue to decline because of the time limits and stringent work requirements.” Nationally, “Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of Americans receiving benefits under the main federal-state welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, has increased less than 10 percent, even though unemployment has nearly doubled and the number of people receiving food stamps has grown more than 40 percent, to 39 million.”

The authors of Battered by the Storm report:

The percentage of poor children receiving temporary assistance under the main federal “welfare” program has fallen from 62 percent in 1995 to 22 percent in 2008. TANF benefits in 2008 averaged only 29 percent of the money needed to reach the official poverty line.

We should not be surprised to see further declines in aid to poor families.

Not everyone is suffering however. The Economic Policy Institute reports that the richest 400 families have seen their tax rate decline by 10 percentage points and their income has quadrupled since 1992. These families have a median income of $345 million. In a separate Economic Snapshot, the Institute states:

In 1979, the top 10% of families received 67.0% of all income generated by assets such as stocks, bonds and real estate. By 2006, that share had risen to 81.3%. By contrast, the share of capital income that went to the other 90% of families has fallen from 33.0% in 1979 to 18.7% in 2006. The portion of capital income going to the top 1% of families has gradually increased from 38.0% in 1979, so that by 2006 this small group received more than half – 57.7% -- of all capital income.

So, the poor are getting poorer, and the rich are getting richer.

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

4/05/2010

The Fluidity of Racial Classification

Obama classifies himself as black, though he clearly could say that he is biracial or mixed race. His decision on his race is due to sociological, cultural, psychological or political factors.

Obama is not unusual. On the same Pew Research Center survey about perceptions of Obama's race only 1 percent of the people surveyed identified racially as mixed, yet 16 percent say that they are, in fact, racially mixed.

There is a difference between one's identity and one's ancestry. Obama's ancestry based on the race of his parents is black and white. But his identity is black. Similarly there are lots of people who have parents, grandparents and great-grandparents with racial identities that differ from their own. From an ancestry standpoint they are mixed, but in their day-to-day lives they may not interact with people based on the racial identities of all of their known ancestors. So, for example, a black person can claim to be racially mixed because of an American Indian grandparent, but still identify only as black on the Census.

Race is a complex and continually changing phenomenon. Because society changes, race changes. Because people can change psychologically over their life-span, individuals' racial identities can change over their lives also. Obama may one day decide that he should identify as biracial and not as black, for example.

U.S.-born Americans are not culturally uniform in their thinking about race. The foreign-born population brings even more radically different thinking about race. The Census Bureau has to reduce this complex issue and all of these conflicting ideas into one single multiple choice question. It can't be done. Since we probably don't want them asking us 20 questions about the meaning of race in our lives, we should probably cut them a little slack.

(For a more detailed discussion of the meaning of race, see my book Achieving Blackness.)

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Algernon Austin. All Rights Reserved.

3/30/2010

Chronic Unemployment in Black America

"In recent testimony before the Congressional Black Caucus, EPI's Algernon Austin focused on jobless rates in Illinois to illustrate the major difference between unemployment rates for black and white workers. He estimated that even before the recession started, black workers in Chicago were almost four times as likely as white workers to be unemployed." Read more.

3/23/2010

Update on Hate

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 macro-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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Sensational individual acts of racist violence or hatred too often serve to obscure the far more common and pervasive impersonal acts of institutional racial discrimination. We do seem to be experiencing an upsurge of racist violence and hatred by individuals and organized groups. This significant upsurge is worth noting.

Chip Berlet on “Angry Voters, Right-Wing Populism, & Racial Violence”:

We are in the midst of one of the most significant right-wing populist rebellions in US history as illustrated by the Tea Party and Patriot movements. Will religious and progressive activists provide a voice and outlet for populist fear and anger or will these dispossessed voices find a home among the potentially violent elements of the far right?

Mark Potok on “Rage on the Right”:

[Last year] Furious anti-immigrant vigilante groups soared by nearly 80%, adding some 136 new groups during 2009. And, most remarkably of all, so-called "Patriot" groups — militias and other organizations that see the federal government as part of a plot to impose “one-world government” on liberty-loving Americans — came roaring back after years out of the limelight.

Bob Herbert on the recent ugliness:

A group of lowlifes at a Tea Party rally in Columbus, Ohio, last week taunted and humiliated a man who was sitting on the ground with a sign that said he had Parkinson’s disease. The disgusting behavior was captured on a widely circulated videotape. One of the Tea Party protesters leaned over the man and sneered: “If you’re looking for a handout, you’re in the wrong end of town.”

You might be a racist if you have a swastika tattoo:

Mr. Brunjes, 18, said he first gave his friend a lightning-bolt tattoo in May 2008, and then a star, using ink, a needle and thread. About a month and a half later, he said, he gave him a third one on his right upper thigh: a swastika. The two friends did not discuss why.

3/08/2010

Will You Stand Up and Be Counted?

Worth Viewing/Reading

Brookings report: Counting for Dollars:The Role of the Decennial Census in the Geographic Distribution of Federal Funds.

Algernon Austin talks about minority unemployment on PBS Newshour.

NYC Police Department targets black and Latino youth.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

3/01/2010

Older Blacks and the Great Recession

From AARP:

African Americans age 45+ have been forced to make increasingly difficult decisions to cope with this economic downturn—decisions that could have serious long-term consequences. A third (34%) stopped putting money into a 401(k), IRA or other retirement account, and a quarter (26%) prematurely withdrew funds from their retirement nest eggs to pay for living expenses, including mortgage or rent, health care, education expenses, and for other reasons. More than three in ten (31%) have cut back on their medications, and 28% have carried a higher balance on their credit cards during the past 12 months.

This economic recession has had a devastating impact on the African American community. The survey, found that over the last 12 months, a third (33%) of African Americans 45+ had problems paying rent or mortgage, and 44% had problems paying for essential items, such as food and utilities. Nearly twice as many African Americans 45+ lost a job than the general population (18% vs. 10%), and almost one in four (23%) lost their employer-sponsored health insurance.

Read the full summary.

2/22/2010

The Continuing Damage of the Great Recession

“We have a work-based safety net without any work.”

Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.

Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed.

Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives — potentially for years to come.

. . .

“American business is about maximizing shareholder value. . . . You basically don’t want workers.”

Full story: Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs, New York Times.

Black Women Evicted from Apartments

Here and in swaths of many cities, evictions from rental properties are so common that they are part of the texture of life. New research is showing that eviction is a particular burden on low-income black women, often single mothers, who have an easier time renting apartments than their male counterparts, but are vulnerable to losing them because their wages or public benefits have not kept up with the cost of housing.

And evictions, in turn, can easily throw families into cascades of turmoil and debt.

“Just as incarceration has become typical in the lives of poor black men, eviction has become typical in the lives of poor black women,” said Matthew Desmond, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin whose research on trends in Milwaukee since 2002 provides a rare portrait of gender patterns in inner-city rentals.

Full story: A Sight All Too Familiar in Poor Neighborhoods, New York Times.

Nothing for an Able-Bodied Black Man Down on His Luck

I have to find a place to stay. . . .

Now, before I landed in my current stitch, I checked out every state program I could find. Help for immigrant refugees, help for families, for women, for long-term homeless, for minors – nothing for an able-bodied man down on his luck. And when I say “down on his luck,” I mean it. I’ve been unemployed, with a few short stints of employment, for three-and-a-half years –- so long I don’t qualify for unemployment.

Full story: Young, Black, Male, Single--and Homeless in San Jose, New America Media.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

2/15/2010

Black America's Unrequited Love

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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The conventional wisdom is that because of a rise in interracial relationships, all Americans will be brown in the future. Henry Louis Gates Jr., for example, recently stated, "I’m looking forward to the time when we all look like Polynesians." Current data, however, suggests that the most we might see in the future is the beige-ing--not the browning--of the white population. Additionally, we can expect to see a phenotypic black population into the foreseeable future because while blacks seem somewhat open to interracial relationships, non-blacks prefer whites over blacks. In the American "melting pot," blacks are the least loved group.

While blacks appear to be the most racially tolerant Americans, they are the least tolerated racial group. These are the conclusions suggested by a recent Pew Research Center survey on racial attitudes. Blacks are more likely to accept an interracial marriage by a family member than are whites and Hispanics. But whites and Hispanics view blacks as the least desirable group for interracial marriage.

Given a choice between an Asian or a black person as a relative, whites choose Asians. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of all whites are "fine" with a family member marrying an Asian, but only 64 percent are comfortable with a family member marrying a black person.

Hispanics are more positive toward interracial marriage and toward blacks than whites. The highest rate of acceptance of interracial marriage whites express is 73 percent. The lowest rate of acceptance for Hispanics is 73 percent for a family member marrying a black person. The highest rate of acceptance for Hispanics is 81 percent for a family member marrying a white person. While Hispanics are more accepting of blacks than whites, they still express a greater rate of support for a white person joining the family than a black person.

Interestingly, when one examines blacks' preferences for specific groups, blacks show no favoritism toward any group. Among blacks, the acceptance rate for whites and Asians is 80 percent and 81 percent for Hispanics.

The Pew Research Center data is an attitude survey. It records what people say they would do which may be different from what they actually do. It also asks about a family member and not about the interviewee. A person might accept a family member marrying someone of another race while they think that interracial marriage is unacceptable for themselves.

There is data that provides some insight into people's actual racial preferences for love and marriage. The dating website OkCupid conducted an analysis of response rates to first-contact messages from potential male and female suitors. The analysis took account of compatibility, attractiveness and height. The OkCupid analyst found that white, Hispanic and Asian women on average revealed strong preferences for white men. Black women had the lowest response rates. In the online dating world, white men have a distinct advantage. Blacks are disadvantaged and especially black women.

Interracial marriage data from the 2000 Census paints a picture similar to OkCupid's findings. Asian and Hispanic women have higher rates of intermarriage than white and black women. More than one-in-five married Asian women (22 percent) were married to non-Asian men. Eighteen of the 22 percent of Asian women were married to white men. The overall out-marriage rate for Hispanics was a little lower, 18 percent, with 15 percent of Hispanic women married to white men. Only 4 percent of black women were married to non-blacks, and only 2 percent were married to white men. Asian and Hispanic women are much more likely to marry outside of their race than black women and when they do marry outside of their racial group in the vast majority of cases it is to a white man.

The picture for married men of color differed from that of women. While Asian women were the most likely to be married to someone of another race, among men, Hispanic men were the most likely to marry outside of their group. Fifteen percent of Hispanic men married non-Hispanics with the vast majority (13 out of the 15 percent) marrying white women. Black and Asian men were equally likely to marry outside of their race with an out-marriage rate of 9 percent for both. Six percent of black men married white women and 7 percent of Asian men did the same.

The attitudinal data shows non-blacks less accepting of interracial marriage with blacks compared to other groups. The online dating data shows that blacks and particularly black women are seen as less desirable for romantic relationships. The marriage data shows that black women have very low marriage rates to non-blacks and to white men specifically. If there is a mixed-race future for America, at present, it looks like it will largely exclude blacks.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

2/01/2010

Black College Enrollment Takes a Dip

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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"The share of 18- to 24-year-olds attending college in the United States hit an all-time high in October 2008," reported the Pew Research Center. This rise was "driven by a recession-era surge in enrollments at community colleges." This rise was also largely confined to white students.

Many white students, faced with the terrible job market of the Great Recession, appear to be heading off to college. Community colleges are receiving the biggest boost in enrollment by white students probably because community colleges are much more affordable than four-year colleges.

We don't see this trend among black or Hispanic students. The figure above shows that black youth have had the largest decline in college enrollment. This is in contrast to the fairly steady rise in black college enrollment since 1967. (See the black-triangle trend line in the figure below.) The downturn this year may be due to the fact that blacks have been hit first and worst by economic crisis.

Whites, on average, have higher incomes, much more wealth, lower foreclosure rates, and lower unemployment rates than blacks. The average cost of community college, at $6,750 per year, may be affordable for many whites, but it may well be beyond to reach of many blacks during this recession. Without a swift and strong economic recovery, we can expect to see black-white educational disparities increase.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2010 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved.