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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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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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.

The Fluidity of Racial Classification

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
________________________________________________________________________


Many people are upset with the Census Bureau over the race question. Although 50,000 people told the Census Bureau that they wished to be identified as "Negro" on the 2000 Census, some other blacks are upset that "Negro" is on the 2010 Census.

Many Latinos and non-Latinos think being Latino is a race, but it is not a race according to the Census Bureau definition. Latinos who look "white" are supposed to check "white." Those who look "black" are supposed to check "black." Those who identify as American Indian are supposed to check "American Indian." Latinos, like everyone else, also have the option of checking "white" AND "black" AND "American Indian" or any other racial combination that works for them.

Some Arabs are upset that there is no Arab race and that they will in many cases be compelled to check "white." They are calling for Arabs to write-in "Arab."

And, then there are other folks who are upset that there even is a race question. They say we are all human beings, so why don't we just stop talking and thinking and classifying based on race.

What a mess.

What all of this confusion indicates is that race is not biology in any simple, direct or definitive way. It is not skin color--no matter how many times people say "skin color" to mean race. If it were skin color then Latinos and Arabs would have no problem classifying themselves as white if they were light complexioned. And the many Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who have a darker skin complexion than Barack Obama would classify themselves as black and not as Asian.

Race is sociological, cultural, psychological and political, much more than it is biological. Take the example of Barack Obama. What race is he? Well, it depends to a degree on who is answering the question. The Pew Research Center finds that 53 percent of whites say he is "mixed race" while 55 percent of blacks say he is black. Hispanics are even more likely than whites to say the Obama is mixed race with 61 percent classifying him so. So, the perception of Obama's race varies by sociological, cultural, psychological and political factors while his biology, of course, remains the same.

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.

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.

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.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

Will You Stand Up and Be Counted?

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 2010 Census is coming! Will you stand up and be counted?

Every missing black person translates to a loss of roughly $13,000 in federal dollars for his community until the next census in 2020. This is a lot of money. On the 2010 Census you only need to answer ten easy questions to earn that money for your community. Will you stand up and be counted?

Blacks have lower income, less wealth and higher poverty rates than whites. On top of all of this the black completion rate of the 2000 Census was lower than the white completion rate. This means that poorer black communities lose out on desperately needed federal dollars.

On the 2000 Census, my predominantly black community had a completion rate of about 65 percent. The predominantly white community nearby had a completion rate of over 80 percent. My community probably lost out on federal funds. (Map the participation rate of your community here.)

If you are not counted by the government, not only does your community lose money, you are more easily ignored and neglected. Political representation in the U.S. House of Representatives is determined by the census counts. Entrepreneurs determine where to locate businesses based on census data. Public policies and social programs are created based on census data. If you are not counted you are more likely to be ignored.

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.

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.

The Continuing Damage of the Great Recession

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.
________________________________________________________________________

“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.

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
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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.

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.

The Worst and the Most Expensive Health Care

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
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The number of Americans under age 65 without health insurance coverage rose to 45.7 million in 2008. Although 2009 data is not yet available, there is every reason to assume that the number of Americans without health insurance continued to grow in 2009. And that it will continue to grow in 2010, and in 2011, and so on. It spite of this dreadful trend, it seems that some are determined to do nothing. What's more, they are determined to stop anyone who tries to address the problem.

Among rich nations, the United States, without question, has the worst health care system. We are the only rich nation that this problem of the uninsured. In Australia, everyone has health care. In Japan, everyone has health care. In Switzerland, everyone has health care. In the United States, almost 50 million do without.

Not only do we have a large population that lacks good access to health care, we pay more for it. Other rich countries pay less per capita in health care costs than we do. The Australians and the Swiss pay about half what we pay per capita. The Japanese pay even less. Again, these countries cover their entire population. We don't.

If we do not find a way to reduce the cost of health care and slow its growth, health care will bankrupt the country. By the end of the century, rising Medicare and Medicaid costs are projected to cripple the federal government. A step in the right direction would be to make our health care system more like Australia’s or Switzerland’s or Japan’s which could cut current costs in half.

The final cherry-on-top of our health care dysfunction is that we have some of the worst health outcomes among rich countries. We have the highest infant mortality rate, the highest obesity rate, and, in life expectancy, we are near the bottom. Americans should be screaming for health care reform, not against it.

If reason played a role in American politics, we would have spent part of last year being educated about how other countries manage to provide health care for all, pay less than we do, and deliver high quality health care. (See PBS' Frontline: Sick around the World for what this education effort would look like.) The fact of the matter is that different countries do different things to provide universal health care. We could have reviewed a menu of options and voted for what we liked. That would have been the reasonable thing to do.

Reason, however, does not seem to work in American politics. Now, it seems that the only way the American health care system will ever be reformed is when the millions of uninsured mobilize and organize and demand it from our politicians. Until then, petty politics will ensure that we continue to have the worst and the most expensive health care.


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

On Crime and Gentrification

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.
________________________________________________________________________


It is easy to get the impression that America—and black communities in particular—are more violent than ever. We are regularly treated to gruesome crime stories on television news programs, and they often feature black perpetrators. When we are not watching the news, Law and Order, CSI, NCIS and other crime dramas fill our minds with murder and mayhem. When we go to the movies or play video games, the smorgasbord of crime and violence continues.

But contrary to popular perception, American crimes rates—including crime rates in black communities—are at historically low levels. What we see on television and movie screens is a very, very distorted picture of reality. Lori Dorfman of the Berkeley Media Studies Group finds [PDF] that the “news media report crime, especially violent crime, out of proportion to its actual occurrence.” Further, she adds, “the proportion of crime committed by people of color (usually African Americans) is over-reported.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has recently reported that its preliminary estimate for violent crime in 2009 was down 4.4 percent from 2008. The FBI data shows that violent crime rate has declined fairly steadily since 1991. Crime stories sell, so more and more companies—including news networks—are selling crime stories. But the increase in crime stories is not matched by a real increase in crime.

The FBI data is based on reports from participating law enforcement agencies. Not every crime is reported to the police however. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is a better source for overall crime trends. This survey too shows a strong downward trend.


Examining NCVS violent crime data from 1973 to 2007, one sees that the peak year for violent crime among blacks was 1981—nearly three decades ago. The black violent crime victimization rate fluctuated from then until 1993. Since 1993, the violent crime rate in black communities has declined by 70 percent! White communities experienced a similar decline—68 percent.

Although on average white communities continue to be safer than black communities, many black communities today are safer than white communities were in the 1970s and 1980s. The violent crime victimization rate for blacks in 2007 was 10.3 per 1,000 persons. In the 1970s, the victimization rate for whites averaged 19.5 per 1,000 persons—nearly twice the 2007 black rate.

I believe that one consequence of the fact many black communities are much safer today than in the past is gentrification. The New York Times recently reported that blacks are no longer the majority in Harlem. Gentrification of black neighborhoods has occurred across the country. I’ve seen it in Brooklyn, in Chicago, in D.C. and have heard of it occurring in many other cities.

Rents and homes in these black neighborhoods have always been less expensive than in similar white neighborhoods. What has changed was that over the 1990s and into the 2000s these neighborhoods have become much safer, as safe as or safer than many white neighborhoods were in the 1970s and 1980s. Relatively safe neighborhoods and lower rents = gentrification.

Of course, the national crime trends can differ significantly from local trends. Further, no violence is trivial, and black communities can and should still be much safer than they are today. With these caveats in mind, we should be able to take a moment and appreciate the positive development of a record low violent crime rate in black America.

Harry Reid Has No Reason to Apologize

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
________________________________________________________________________


Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-NV) simply told the truth, in my view. I don’t see what he has to apologize for.

According to the Washington Post, the book Game Change states that when assessing the strengths of then candidate Barack Obama in 2008, Reid said that he “believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama -- a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one’. ” There is nothing offensive or even controversial here.

It seems that some people are upset because they have deluded themselves into thinking that America is a post-racial society. Reid’s remarks show an awareness that blackness poses challenges for success with the broad American electorate.

Recent research reported on in Newsweek’s The Gaggle blog, supports Harry Reid. Eugene Caruso of the University of Chicago told Newsweek:

“There’s a long history in Western society of associating lightness with good and darkness with bad. Throughout history, throughout literature, et cetera. And we know now that these associations sometimes apply to the color of a person’s skin, and in addition to associating goodness with white, there’s some recent research in implicit attitudes suggesting that at an unconscious level people have a strong tendency to associate America with white.”

Caruso did research which found that research “participants who’d seen a darkened photo [of a candidate] just a few minutes earlier reported that they were less likely to vote for the candidate than those who’d seen the lightened photo.” Thus, based on Caruso’s research, Reid is correct to think that voters would be more favorably disposed to a light-skinned black candidate than a dark-skinned one.

The term “Negro” is old-fashioned, but since Reid is, well, not young, I don’t find anything offensive about his use of it. I’m not sure that the use of idioms and accents associated with blacks should be called a “dialect,” but Reid’s use of word is appropriate according to Dictionary.com. So, I cannot find any fault here either.

I am not aware of any research on people’s attitudes or voting behavior and “Negro dialects.” (This does not mean that there is none, just that I’m not currently aware of any.) But given the existence of anti-black attitudes in American society, it is not much of a stretch to assume that speech characteristics common to blacks would also be subject to negative stigma. This is not a radical idea if one knows that we do not live in a colorblind society. I would bet that Reid is correct on his “Negro dialect” opinion also.

All of this amounts to acknowledgment that black candidates for elected office can have challenges that white candidates do not. The whiter they are in appearance the better. But, of course, most blacks do not look white. George W. Bush and other white candidates might be able to deviate wildly from the Standard American dialect, but black candidates who wish to be elected should stick to Standard American as much as possible, especially when they are appearing before nonblack audiences.

Representative James E. Clyburn (D-SC) said it well when he told the New York Times: “I am one of those who wish to one day live in a color-blind nation. But the fact is that none of us do today.”


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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