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.
________________________________________________________________________

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]



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

--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
________________________________________________________________________


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.


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

--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.
________________________________________________________________________


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.



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

--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.
________________________________________________________________________


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.



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

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

Time for a Serious Debate about Drug Legalization

With over 1 out of 30 Americans controlled by the penal system, why not legalize, control, and tax marijuana to change the failed war on drugs into a money making, money saving boost to the economy? Do we really need that many victimless criminals?

In response to this question from his online Town Hall, Obama's answer was a simple no. This answer may have been good for momentarily appeasing some on the political right, but it did not wrestle with the seriousness of the question.

The Huffington Post fleshed out the issue with a remark from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition:

Despite the president's flippant comments today, the grievous harms of marijuana prohibition are no laughing matter. Certainly, the 800,000 people arrested last year on marijuana charges find nothing funny about it, nor do the millions of Americans struggling in this sluggish economy. It would be an enormous economic stimulus if we stopped wasting so much money arresting and locking people up for nonviolent drug offenses and instead brought in new tax revenue from legal sales, just as we did when ended alcohol prohibition 75 years ago during the Great Depression.

From The Economist, March 7th, 2009:

In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to leaglise drugs.

"Least bad" does not mean good. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring (different) risks to consumer countries. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer. But in our view, more would gain.

From Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, March 27th, 2009:

It's an indictment of our fact-averse political culture that a statement of the blindingly obvious could sound so revolutionary. "Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters on her plane Wednesday as she flew to Mexico for an official visit. "Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border . . . causes the deaths of police, of soldiers and civilians."

. . .

First, though, let's be honest with ourselves. This whole disruptive, destabilizing enterprise has one purpose, which is to supply the U.S. market with illegal drugs. As long as the demand exists, entrepreneurs will find a way to meet it. The obvious demand-side solution -- legalization -- would do more harm than good with some drugs, but maybe not with others. We need to examine all options. It's time to put everything on the table, because all we've accomplished so far is to bring the terrible violence of the drug trade ever closer to home.

If we are lucky, some day we will conduct a serious analysis and debate about decriminalizing drugs.

More Than Just Bonuses

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
________________________________________________________________________


The outrage over the AIG bonuses runs the risk of missing the larger point of the increasing income inequality in America. The culture-of-poverty argument about the black poor also misses this development. Since the 1970s, the wealth created by the American economy has been increasingly concentrated among the richest Americans. We can see this shift by looking at the minimum wage and the wages for workers by decile.

In 1968, the minimum wage was $7.63 in 2005 dollars [PDF]. In 2005, it had declined by about a third to $5.15. The minimum wage serves as a floor for all low wages. When it moves up, it pushes up the wages of workers earning just above the minimum wage. When it declines, the reverse happens. These workers at the bottom of the wage distribution are disproportionately black.

In 1975, workers at the 90th percentile of the wage distribution earned 3.8 times [PDF] what workers at the 10th percentile did. By 2005, the ratio had increased to 4.5. A similar trend occurred with the ratio of the 90th percentile and the 50th percentile. That ratio went from 1.9 in 1975 to 2.3 in 2005. Again, the workers in the lower half of the wage distribution are disproportionately black.

When the poverty punditry talks about black poverty without paying any attention to economics, they are "getting it wrong." The increasing income inequality that America has experienced since the 1970s is one reason why the black poverty rate is so high.



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

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

Another Black Public Intellectual Gets 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
________________________________________________________________________

[Stanford University law professor, Richard Thompson Ford, whose bio states that he is a regular contributor to Slate, came to my attention because of his review of William Julius Wilson's new book More Than Just Race in the New York Times Book Review. In Ford's review, he makes all of the "classic" mistakes that I identify in Getting It Wrong. The following is an open letter to him.]


Dear Professor Ford:

The second sentence of your New York Times book review of William Julius Wilson's More Than Just Race states: "The poverty, violence and hopelessness in America’s inner cities have become increasingly dire in the four decades since the height of the civil rights movement." This statement is not correct.

The Census Bureau reports that in 1966 the black poverty rate was 41.8 percent. In 2007, it was 24.5 percent, 17.3 percentage points lower than in 1966. The Center for Disease Control's Health, United States, 2008 reports that in 1970 the age-adjusted homicide rate for black men was 78.2 for every 100,000 men. In 2005, it was 37.3 per 100,000. For black females, the 1970 homicide rate was 14.7 and 6.1 in 2005. Many of the leading black public intellectuals are nostalgic for the past, but this is only because they do not accurately remember how rough the 1960s and 1970s were.

Just about every leading black public intellectual who discusses the black poor recently gets these and other basic facts wrong. The consensus among these black elites is that there is an epidemic of bad behavior among lower-income blacks that has led to a big increase in black poverty. Juan Williams states, "too many poor and low-income black people are not taking advantage of opportunities to get themselves out of poverty." Cynthia Tucker claims, "drug use, poor classroom performance and the embrace of outlaw culture have done nothing but cement the black underclass at the bottom of American society." Henry Louis Gates argues that America now has "the largest [black] underclass in our history" and "it’s time to concede that, yes, there is a culture of poverty." You see that your second sentence fits with this theme.

Apparently, none of these commentators took much time to examine the black poverty trends. Over the 1990s, when lower-income blacks were supposedly mired in a culture of poverty, they experienced the largest reduction in black poverty since the 1960s. In 1992, the black poverty rate was 33.4 percent. By 2000, it had reached its lowest level on record, 22.5 percent. The culture-of-poverty idea or the "tangle of pathology" as William Julius Wilson has called it does not help us understand this historic decline in black poverty.

It is my hypothesis that Wilson's work (as well as the work of others over the 1980s and early 1990s) is a major factor in why black public intellectuals keep getting the facts wrong about black America. Wilson's underclass theory shifted the analysis of poverty away from an economic theory of poverty to a cultural theory of poverty. People spend less time looking at economic data and more time looking for "evidence" of bad black behavior which, according to underclass theory, has been on the rise since the 1960s. Gates reported that America has "the largest [black] underclass in our history" in the middle of the historic 1990s decline in black poverty.

Please be aware that I am not just playing a silly game of gotcha. Blacks are much more likely to be poor than whites. But if we wish to reduce black poverty, we absolutely have to understand the 1990s decline. The only way we can have further reductions in black poverty is to know what works. The immensely popular culture-of-poverty idea does not.

You are based at Stanford University. I would like to direct your attention to a short article in Pathways magazine. Pathways is a publication of the Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality. The Winter 2009 issue has a short article discussing research on the change in child poverty over the 1990s in 12 advanced countries including the United States. The Pathways piece concludes: "Much headway against child poverty can be made by combining full employment policy with aggressive income transfers." These are important findings that one sees over and over again in the economic analysis of poverty. Unfortunately, this knowledge seems to have been lost among the leading black public intellectuals in their culture-of-poverty haze. If we wish to reduce black poverty, we need to return to an economic analysis of poverty and heed its lessons.



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

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

Less Crime, Lower Costs: The Smart-on-Crime Approach

We can have lower crime rates, a less expensive criminal justice system, and more humane criminal justice policies. This was the message of a summit convened by Representative Robert Scott of Virginia on March 3rd. Representative Scott brought together a panel of researchers, advocates and criminal justice professionals to highlight smart-on-crime approaches to crime prevention, sentencing and ex-offender reentry. Representatives Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island and John Conyers Jr. of Michigan were also present to show their support for smart-on-crime approaches.

The U.S. criminal justice system is without a doubt the least effective and most expensive criminal justice system among advanced countries. Our incarceration rate is about seven times the rate of other advanced countries. One might think that with this extraordinarily high incarceration rate we would have a relatively low crime rate. This is not the case. We have a slightly above average overall crime rate among advanced nations. In other words, most of the Western developed world has policies that produce both less crime and less incarceration than in the United States. Our tough-on-crime approach has succeeded in providing us with the worst possible outcomes. Although the tough-on-crime approach has failed us for more than three decades, we continue to think that if we become even tougher on crime we will somehow produce different results.

The panelists assembled by Representative Scott showed clearly that there is a better way: smart-on-crime. What smart-on-crime means is that, as a first step, we need to increase our use of scientifically-proven programs that prevent individuals from ever beginning involvement in crime. If we prevent people from ever committing crime, there are fewer crime victims, lower criminal justice costs and more people working instead of languishing in prisons. A society with fewer criminals—not more inmates—is the absolute best for everyone.

Brian Bumbarger of the Prevention Research Center at Penn State University presented the audience with a menu [PDF] of rigorously-evaluated programs that prevent youth from engaging in criminal activity. Big Brothers/Big Sisters reduces youths’ likelihood of becoming involved in crime and increases student test scores. For a societal standpoint, when the criminal-justice savings are factored in, any investment in Big Brothers/Big Sisters ultimately pays for itself. The Nurse-Family Partnership program targets at-risk pregnant mothers for prenatal health care and for personal-development and parenting-skills training. This program reduces the likelihood of substance abuse and child abuse by the mother and dramatically improves child outcomes. For every dollar invested in this program, the societal financial benefit is over $3. It was mentioned at the summit that many youth in foster care end up in prison. But when foster care is paired with effective treatment programs through Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care the likelihood of a child in foster care becoming involved in crime is significantly reduced. For every dollar spent on this program, the societal benefit is more than $11. These are just a few of the options we have if we ever decide that we are serious about reducing crime and saving money.

The better an ex-offender reintegrates into mainstream society, the more likely the person is to give up on criminal activities permanently. Unfortunately, as part of our tough-on-crime mentality, we continue to devise ways to prevent the formerly incarcerated from living normal lives. Even after an individual has done the time for a particular crime, we find ways to punish them over and over again. At the summit, Margaret Love of the American Bar Association reported on an over-200-page report [PDF] which documents all of the federal laws and regulations that limit the access of people who have paid their debt to society to housing, voting, employment and social benefits. These tough-on-crime policies ultimately work to increase crime by preventing the reintegration of the formerly incarcerated.

One of the most important things to keep someone who was incarcerated from re-offending is a job. The Eastern District of Missouri has redefined the role of probation officers as Doug Burris, the chief probation officer, reported. In that district, the probation officers actively assist the formerly incarcerated in finding work. The officers have been highly successful at finding ex-offenders work and keeping them from re-offending. An evaluation of the Eastern District's program found that while the recidivism rate was 68 percent nationally, it was only 15 percent in the Eastern District. Jobs fight crime.

Representative Scott has done the country a service by highlighting the work of many people who are developing smart-on-crime strategies. These strategies will make our communities safer and save us money—if we ever manage to wean ourselves off of the failed tough-on-crime approach.

Do We Need to Talk about Race?

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
________________________________________________________________________


Attorney General Eric Holder makes a number of interesting points in his remarks on Black History Month. Ultimately, though, I am always sour on the idea of conversations on race. The call to "have a conversation about race" is really a call to discuss why is there racial inequality in America. For Holder, it is specifically a question about black social and economic disadvantage.

I'm not convinced that many Americans know enough of the facts around black inequality to have a useful discussion. I've been pointing out, for example, that few of the leading black public intellectuals even know the basic facts about black poverty. For example, in his recent book, Juan Williams states, “too many poor and low-income black people are not taking advantage of opportunities to get themselves out of poverty,” in complete ignorance of the historic decline in black poverty over the 1990s. I think that most of the discussions that Williams' work has engendered has been harmful to black people.

I much prefer Holder's call for Americans to study black history. I would add that we also need to study the black present. If we could have discussions within and after some serious study of the issues that would be better.

Holder's remarks were greeted with hostility by many. This development is not completely surprising. The racial "conversations" in the online commentary to articles on racial inequality that I have noticed have often been hostile and at times blatantly racist. This fact reveals another problem with the "talk about race" idea.

People assume that if people talk honestly about racial inequality they will be able to come to a shared understanding and a happy compromise about the issues. They do not imagine a situation where everyone becomes more narrow-minded and hateful. But this alternative is certainly a possibility.

DuBois once phrased the question of black disadvantage as "How does it feel to be a problem?" pointing out how that question can be hurtful and inspire defensiveness. And the reversal of the question is "How does it feel to be an oppressor?" This question does not put whites at ease either. There is a reason people are avoiding the discussions Holder is calling for. These discussions can go wrong easily.

A better approach would be to try to have discussions about solutions to the causes of black inequality. For example, Holder mentions that racial relations have changed since the Brown decision. He should have also mentioned that our schools, however, are still separate and unequal. I wish that he had called for not an open discussion on "race" but for a discussion about what can be done to make our schools more integrated and equal. Even this discussion could go bad quickly, but I think the odds of it being productive are higher than a random open discussion.

We do need to have discussions on racial inequality to end racial inequality, but it is a minefield. People engaging in these discussions need to educate themselves and proceed with empathy and caution.



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

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

Hardships of the African-American Unemployed

Read about the hardships of the African-American unemployed.

Conservative Leaders Still Reject Reality

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
________________________________________________________________________

[A senior advisor to president George W. Bush] said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
Ron Suskind, 2004

"By almost every measure available . . . this recession is steeper than any in the last 40 years, including the harsh recession of the early 1980s," states Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute, an organization that I also work for. By every measure except for the way conservative members of Congress have been behaving. They have played petty politics in holding up the economic recovery package while the rate of job losses has increased to about a half a million a month. Everyone seems to realize that we needed urgent action--a month ago--but them.

The global economic meltdown basically started in the United States, but the United States has lagged in implementing an economic stimulus package. The Center for American Progress reports that Argentina, Australia, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia and South Korea have all passed stimulus packages ahead of the United States.

Conservative leaders are big on tax cuts, but the record of tax cuts in stimulating the economy is poor. The Bush administration cut taxes and yet the Bush years had the worst record for economic growth since World War II. Even the conservative economist and former Ronald Reagan advisor, Martin Feldstein, acknowledges that tax cuts are very weak when it comes to stimulating the economy. He states, "Experience shows that the money from such temporary, lump-sum tax cuts is largely saved or used to pay down debt. Only about 15 percent of last year's tax rebates led to additional spending." He adds, "The proposed business tax cuts are also likely to do little to increase business investment and employment." For those of us in the "reality-based community," pushing for more tax cuts in the recovery package and less spending, makes the package worse not better.

Conservative leaders do not seem to get that the point of a stimulus package is too spend money to jumpstart the economy. John McCain recently condemned the recovery package by saying, “This is not a stimulus bill; it is a spending bill.” Consumers are cutting back spending and businesses are cutting back spending causing the economy to tank. The point of a stimulus package is for the government to step in and increase spending rapidly in the hopes ending the downward economic spiral. Conservative leaders think that by limiting the amount of spending in the stimulus package they are somehow being fiscally responsible. How is prolonging and deepening an already severe recession fiscally responsible?

Judging from the statements of Rush Limbaugh, we cannot be certain that conservative leaders even know that we are facing a severe economic crisis. Last month, Limbaugh wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

There's a serious debate in this country as to how best to end the recession. The average recession will last five to 11 months; the average recovery will last six years. Recessions will end on their own if they're left alone. What can make the recession worse is the wrong kind of government intervention.

The current recession began in December of 2007, 13 months ago. In January, the U.S. economy lost nearly 600,000 jobs. This month was the worst so far for job losses. We have lost 3.6 million jobs in total and the recession is not likely to end any time soon, so why is Limbaugh even discussing recessions that last 11 months or less?

There are now 2.2 million blacks unemployed. Without an effective stimulus we could add another million blacks to the ranks of the unemployed before the economy begins to recover. Someone, somehow needs to get conservative leaders back into the "reality-based community" or else they will continue to make matters worse.



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

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

America's Schools: Still Separate, Still Unequal

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
________________________________________________________________________

What the hell good is Brown V. Board of Education if nobody wants it?
--Bill Cosby, Address at the NAACP' on the 50th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education

Fifty-five years after the Brown decision, blacks and Latinos in American schools are more segregated than they have been in more than four decades.

Schools remain highly unequal, sometimes in terms of dollars and very frequently in terms of teachers, curriculum, peer groups, connections with colleges and jobs, and other key aspects of schooling.
--Gary Orfield, Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society

One regularly hears people speak as if we have in fact achieved the goals of the Brown decision. We have not.

America's schools remain stubbornly segregated and unequal as Gary Orfield documents in Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge. By the standard of integrated and equal education, we have been moving backward, further away from the Promised Land of racial equality.

Given the miraculous success of Barack Obama winning the presidency, some people believe that America has finally overcome racial discrimination. But Obama's achievement is only the removal of one obstacle on the path to equality. There are still many more, including institutionalized inferior education.

Obtaining equal and integrated education for black students may be the most difficult challenge in the struggle for black civil rights. Equal educational opportunity was one of the first goals of the Civil Rights Movement. Many believed that the Brown decision would cause America to provide integrated and equal education for blacks. This did not happen. The majority of black students remain in segregated and unequal schools.

The figure below shows that nearly three quarters of black students attend majority nonwhite schools. Thirty-nine percent attend schools that are 90 or more percent nonwhite.
Source:Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge, p. 26.

Majority nonwhite schools tend to be of lower quality than majority white schools. For example, an analysis of teacher quality from Illinois below shows that even with recent improvements, majority nonwhite schools had much lower teacher quality (ITAC) ratings than majority white schools. The solid black line is the average score for majority white schools. The other lines indicate increasing percentages of nonwhite students as one moves further below the line for majority-white schools. Today, as in the past, the best American schools go to white students, the worst to black students.

Source:Leveling Up: Narrowing the Teacher Academic Capital Gap in Illinois [PDF]



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

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

Improving Obama's stimulus plan

Current economic conditions call for massive federal investment in the economy. Thankfully, President Obama is aware of this fact. But there is some debate as to whether his plan will make a big enough dent in the expected job losses.

What else could Obama do to stimulate the economy? What projects could he add to increase the size of the plan? See some ideas here.

Back to the 1980s? Let’s Hope Not.

The December unemployment rate for the nation as a whole was 7.2 percent. This rate is a 16-year high. Rightly, many people view this level of unemployment as a national emergency. In December the black unemployment rate was 11.9 percent. If 7.2 percent is an emergency, what should we call 11.9 percent?

Since 1972, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the black unemployment rate, only once has the black unemployment rate been lower than 7.2 percent—only once in almost 40 years. In March of 2000 the black unemployment rate was 7 percent, the lowest level on record, and still in emergency territory by my measure. In the great economic year of 2000, the economic condition of black America was still critical by national standards.

The good economy days of 2000 are long gone. Without an effective federal stimulus, the Economic Policy Institute, an organization I work for, forecasts that by next year the national unemployment rate will reach 10.2 percent and the black unemployment rate 18.2 percent. For black teens, the projected unemployment rate is 55.7 percent.

The last time blacks faced such a dire jobs crisis was in the early 1980s when the country experienced back-to-back recessions in 1980 and 1981. The black poverty rate spiked upwards. The crack cocaine economy and its attendant deaths and disorder spread through black communities. By the end of the 1980s, teen pregnancies increased. Black educational progress stalled.

Will an 18.2 percent black unemployment rate produce similar results in the 2010s? Let’s not try to find out.

President-elect Obama’s economic recovery plan so far looks good, and it just might keep us from returning to the unemployment rates of the early 1980s. Even if we were not in the middle of a deep recession, we would need many of the investments he is calling for to strengthen the U.S. economy. In a sense, it is great that the recession might force us to make many of the infrastructure and other investments that we have been putting off.

Although some people are shocked at the price tag of the economic recovery plan, the real worry from my standpoint is whether the plan is big enough. According to the projections [PDF] from Obama’s economic advisors, with the stimulus, the national unemployment rate will be about 8 percent in 2009. That level of unemployment would translate to about a 14 percent black unemployment rate. That rate of unemployment still paints an ugly economic picture for black America.

Further, the projections from Obama’s advisors might be too optimistic. Without the stimulus, they see the national unemployment rate peaking at 9 percent. My organization and others expect the peak without stimulus to be higher. If the Obama estimate is too low, even with the stimulus we could experience a black unemployment rate above 14 percent.

In the best economic times, black America needs a recovery and reinvestment plan. Faced with one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression, blacks desperately need it.

How Successful Are Black Immigrants?

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
________________________________________________________________________


Proponents of "model minority" stories about black immigrants always fail to compare black immigrants to white immigrants and to U.S.-born whites. When this comparison is done the picture changes dramatically. Two recent reports allow us to make these comparisons.

In the Fiscal Policy Institute's report Working for a Better Life, the researchers provide the wages of U.S.-born and foreign-born workers in New York City by race (p. 32). The figure below shows that among workers with a high school degree foreign-born whites earn significantly more an hour ($14.28) than foreign-born blacks ($12.39). Among workers with a college degree, both groups earn about the same amount. Whether high-school or college educated, U.S.-born whites earn significantly more than white and black foreign-born workers.

The Integration of Immigrants and Their Families in Maryland by the Urban Institute allows us to compare the occupational success of immigrants from Europe and Africa in Maryland (p. 36). Immigrants from both Europe and Africa can be of any race, but African immigrants will likely be disproportionately black and European immigrants likely disproportionately white.

The figure below shows that European immigrants with non-U.S. college degrees are much more successful than similarly educated African immigrants at finding skilled work. Among immigrants in the United States for 10 years of less, 41 percent of Africans with non-U.S. college degrees were doing unskilled work. Only 12 percent of similar Europeans were in these occupations.

These analyses are fairly simple. More complex multivariate analyses could change the picture. The story one gets from looking at employment rates, family income and other economic indicators also could be quite different.

Nonetheless, in the comparisons discussed above, black immigrants seem far from a "model minority." In New York City, white immigrants appear to earn slightly more than black immigrants among similarly educated immigrants. In Maryland, it seems that college-educated white immigrants obtain better jobs than college-educated black immigrants. Once again it looks like American society might not be race-blind after all.



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

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

Crime and College: A Second Look at the Numbers

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
________________________________________________________________________

Is the Black Teen Murder Rate Increasing?

I agree with James Alan Fox that we should be spending more on preventing crime in black communities and that we need to find ways to keep illegal guns off the streets. But Steven Levitt makes a convincing argument that Fox is exaggerating the increase in the number of homicides by black teens. Fox is mainly capturing the fact that their are more black teens today than seven years ago. There has been only a very slight increase in the homicide rate for black teens. Will the homicide rate increase as the economy worsens? Sadly, I think that it will. Let's hope that I'm wrong.

Has the Growth in Higher Education Stalled for Hispanics and Blacks?

The American Council on Education claims that this is the case but I'm not convinced. See the piece below. I do think that we need to work to increase the rates of Hispanics and blacks obtaining college degrees, regardless.

35 Years Old and Still in School

For many Americans, their formal schooling years do not end in their twenties. The failure to recognize this fact was the source of an error made in a new report by the American Council on Education (ACE). In a press release and newsletter, ACE incorrectly claims that younger adults are obtaining less post-secondary education than their parents. The report compares 25 to 29 year olds to adults 30 and older and finds that for some racial groups, the older adults have a higher percentage of college degrees. The supposed decline was observed for Hispanic Americans and American Indians. African Americans showed no difference between older and younger adults. For whites and Asian Americans, the younger group had a higher share of college degrees.

The full report Minorities in Higher Education 2008 contradicts the claim of declining educational attainment. ACE finds that college enrollment among African Americans rose by 46 percent between 1995 and 2005. For Hispanics it was even higher, up 66 percent. These increases suggest that black and Latino young adults today should have more college education than in the past, not less. This is in fact the case.

The best way to assess the trend in post-secondary education is to compare 25 to 29 years olds year-to-year. By comparing different age groups, ACE creates an apples-to-oranges comparison. If there was a decline in minority youth seeking higher education, an analysis of individuals in the same age group would reveal it.

The tables below show that for Hispanics and blacks there has been an increase in the percent of 25-to-29 year olds with an associate's degree or higher from 2000 to 2007. We see no signs of a stalling when we restrict the analysis to individuals of the same age. It is also worth noting that for 2000 and 2007, the highest rate of college degree attainment is not 25-to-29 year olds. This is the first problem with comparing 25-to-29 year olds to older adults.




The second problem is that the growth in college degrees by age category from 2000 to 2007 is not largest for the 25-to-29 year olds. For Hispanics, the biggest growth in college degrees is among the 50+--4 percentage points. For blacks, it is among the 35-to-39 year olds--7 percentage points. Simply, what we are seeing is not a decline in degrees earned by 25-to-29 year olds, but large increases for minority adults 30 years old and above.

Since the 1980s, about one-in-four students enrolled in America’s colleges and universities have been 30 years old or over. It would be nice to think that all of these older students were in school simply for the love of learning, but it is more likely that they were trying to find a way to increase their earnings.

In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, Americans without a college degree could find a job that paid a good wage. Additionally, over these decades, the wages of these jobs increased significantly. Once one had a good job, there was no need to obtain more education as a means to higher earnings.

Since the 1970s, good jobs for those without a college degree have been harder and harder to find. The danger of being stuck in low-wage occupations is acute for Hispanics, blacks and American Indians. As a result, many Americans return to school as a step in trying to improve their financial situation. Many people need to find a new job requiring a higher educational credential to experience any significant increase in income. Low wage growth is ultimately the likely reason why Americans in their 30s are better educated than Americans in their 20s.


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

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2008 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

NYTimes: A Plea for Sensible Gun Regulation

From the New York Times, December 23, 2008:

"For years, the gun lobby has defeated new gun control laws partly by arguing that stronger laws do not deter crime. A study prepared by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a bipartisan group headed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York and Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston, should finally put that myth to rest.

"The study analyzed trace data for guns used in connection with crimes during 2007. The data reveal a strong correlation between weak state gun laws and higher rates of in-state murders, police slayings and sales of guns used in crimes in other states."

Read the full editorial.

How Black Public Intellectuals Are Failing Black Students

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
________________________________________________________________________


For the past 20 years or so, the leading black public intellectuals have used their command of the national media to condemn black students for supposedly not valuing education. For example, the NPR and Fox News correspondent, Juan Williams’ recent book claims that there is a “culture of failure” among black students.

There are two tragedies here. First, black students are being falsely condemned. The attitudinal data, the test-score trends and the college enrollment trends all show black students to value education at least as much—if not more than—white students. The second tragedy is that all of the energy the black public intellectuals have expended beating up on black students has not been used to help black students cope with the many educational disadvantages that they face.

Generally, black students do worse in school than white students because they are raised in families and communities that are socioeconomically disadvantaged relative to white students. Additionally, these disadvantaged students are then sent to schools that are of lower quality than the schools white students attend.

Thankfully, there are educational leaders and policy makers who don’t bother to listen to the misinformation about black students. Maryland, for example, has recognized that teacher quality matters and has made investments in recent years with the goal of improving teacher quality. There appears to have been a big payoff to black students. For example, in 2004, 53.2 percent of black six-graders were proficient on the state reading test. By 2008, the proficiency rate had increased to 72.4 percent. In math, the 2004 proficiency rate was 30.2 percent. By 2008, it had increased to 61.2 percent. These are very large gains in a short period of time.

I have not seen a very careful analysis of the data, so it is possible that factors other than the increased spending on teachers may have led to these increases. The academic research, however, generally does show a strong positive relationship between teacher quality and student achievement.

Although, black students have posted big test-score gains in a short period of time in Maryland, they are still the lowest scoring student group. It appears that all students have benefited from better teaching. Blacks were the lowest scoring racial group in 2004, and all groups increased their test scores—not just blacks. The reforms were statewide; they were not targeted to black students. Because all groups advanced, black students were not able to close the achievement gaps. Even with better schools, black students still come from families and communities that are disadvantaged.

People like Juan Williams should be drawing attention to the very impressive increases in test scores among black students in Maryland. They should be using their media power to move the other 49 states and the District of Columbia to improve teacher quality for black students in those states. Additionally, Williams should be pointing out that not only do black students need better schools, they also need other programs to reduce the socioeconomic disparities between black and white families and communities.


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

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2008 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

How to Combat Housing Segregation; What the Auto Bailout Means for Blacks

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
________________________________________________________________________

Combat Housing Segregation and Support Diversity

by Margery Austin Turner

"Research strongly suggests that Americans want more residential integration than we are getting. But a self-perpetuating combination of inequities, fears, and inertia work against this goal. Given the complexity of the factors sustaining residential segregation in urban America today, the federal government should take the lead on a three-pronged strategy: (1) enforcement to combat persistent discrimination, (2) education on the availability and desirability of diverse neighborhoods, and (3) incentives to encourage and nurture residential diversity. Each is essential to achieving the full potential of the other two."

[Read the full statement]

African Americans are especially at risk in the auto crisis

by Robert E. Scott and Christian Dorsey

"African Americans earn much higher wages in auto industry jobs than in other parts of the economy, and the loss of these solid, middle-class jobs would be a devastating blow. Hourly wages for African Americans in the motor vehicle industry averaged $17.08 (excluding fringe benefits) in 2007, versus economy-wide average wages for African American of $15.44 per hour."

[Read the full article]

William Raspberry Gets 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
________________________________________________________________________


Sadly, William Raspberry has to be added to the too-long list of leading black public intellectuals who have their facts wrong about black America. In November, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Raspberry in which he argued, "Many black children -- and too many of their parents -- don't value education" and "Black communities are beset by crime and violence but, again, less because of racism than because of lack of discipline in those communities." Raspberry is wrong on both counts.

First, black students and their parents value education at least as much as white students, if not more than white students. I've been trying to get the punditry and the media to look at the actual data for a few years now. For example, in a recent lecture that I gave to the Education Policy Forum in Washington D.C., I pointed out that data from the Monitoring the Future survey, the National Educational Longitudinal Study, the Survey of Income Program Participation, Public Agenda's Reality Check survey and a number of other surveys all show black students to value education at least as much as white students. Most of these surveys, in fact, show black students to have stronger pro-school attitudes than white students.

The test-score trends also support this view. Although black students still have significantly lower test scores than white students, the gap has declined since the 1970s. The long-term trends National Assessment of Educational Progress, the General Social Survey vocabulary test, National Assessment of Adult Literacy and a variety of cognitive tests all show that black students standardized test scores have increased at a rate faster than white students over the last 40 years. If black students were rejecting education as much as Raspberry and others believe, it is not likely that this closing of the gap would have occurred.

Finally, black students have had strong growth in their enrollment and completion of college. Years ago, in the book, The Black-White Test-Score Gap, Christopher Jencks showed that when black and white students have equal levels of academic achievement in high school, black students are more likely to graduate from college. This result is what one would expect if black students valued education more than white students--which is exactly what the attitudinal survey data suggests.

Where this generation of black punditry goes wrong is that they fail to appreciate the degree of socioeconomic disadvantage the average black student faces relative to the average white student. A large black-white achievement gap already exists by first grade. This is because relative to white students, black students are much more likely to grow up in poverty, live in families with much less wealth (as opposed to income), have less-educated parents, have been born with a low birth weight, have a mother who is suffering from depression, and I could go on and on. These and other factors put black children behind from the earliest days of formal schooling. And then, to add insult to injury, we put these disadvantaged students in schools that are of significantly lower quality than the schools white students attend. This school-quality disadvantage increases the black-white achievement gap. And then to add further insult to injury, a generation of black public intellectuals decide it is black students who need to be condemned in this picture.

Raspberry is also wrong in his take on crime in black communities. Raspberry assumes that crime in black communities has been increasing because of a lack of discipline due to absent fathers. There may be lots of real and fictional crime stories in the media, but the facts are that from 1993 to 2004 we saw a strong and steady decline in violent crime in black communities. The data is also fairly strong that, again, black socioeconomic disadvantage lies at the root of the higher crime rates in black communities. See the list of references below for some recent research on this issue.

Raspberry's larger point was that we need to begin to shift our energies away from a focus on civil rights concerns like equal quality education and criminal justice reform to the issue of moral uplift in the black community. If one looks clearly at the evidence, it is clear that he is wrong on that point too.

Socioeconomic Disadvantage and Crime: References

• Eric D. Gould, Bruce A. Weinberg and David B. Mustard, “Crime Rates and Local Labor Market Opportunities in the United States, 1979-1997,” The Review of Economics and Statistics 84(1), February 2002: 45-61.


• Jeff Grogger, “Market Wages and Youth Crime,” Journal of Labor Economics 16(4), October 1998: 756-791.


• Morgan Kelly, “Inequality and Crime,” The Review of Economics and Statistics 82(4), November 2000: 530-539.


• Jens Ludwig, Greg Duncan and Paul Hirshfield, “Urban Poverty and Juvenile Crime: Evidence from a Randomized Housing-Mobility Experiment,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 116(2), May 2001: 655-679.

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

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2008 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved.