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.
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[Find out The Truth about Black Students.]
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[Below is a statement submitted to Blacknews.com.]
Pundits have been claiming that black America is in a cultural crisis for decades. As the evidence for these claims weakens, the volume has risen. Instead of correcting the pundits’ factual errors and challenging their flawed reasoning, the media have handed the pundits the microphone and stepped out of the way. Below are just five of the questions journalists have failed to ask.
1. A Poverty Question for Mr. Pundit
Census Bureau data indicates that the strong economy of the 1990s led to a nearly 30 percent decline in the black poverty rate. This decline was the biggest since the 1960s. Some see this as evidence that when blacks have the opportunity to leave poverty, they take it. Why, immediately after this historic decline in black poverty, have you been claiming that bad values prevent black poverty from declining?
2. A Crime Question for Mr. Pundit
The Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that the violent crime rate for blacks declined by 67 percent between 1994 and 2004. During the 1960s, violent crime increased. Why do you claim that blacks today have bad values relative to the 1960s when in the 1960s there was a large increase in violent crime and recently there has been a large decline?
3. An Education Question for Mr. Pundit
Several surveys show that black students value education as least as much as white students do. One can look at the National Education Longitudinal Study, the education questions in the 2004 Survey of Income and Program Participation, and Public Agenda’s Reality Check 2006 survey to name a few. The long-term trends tests of the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that black standardized test scores have increased significantly since the 1970s. The Digest of Education statistics shows that the number of blacks receiving bachelor’s degrees have increased by more than 50 percent since 1995.
In spite of (1) attitudinal surveys, (2) test-score trends, and (3) college completion trends showing that black students do value education, you and other pundits continue to condemn black students. What specifically do you see as the flaws in each of the three types of research showing that black students do, in fact, value education?
4. Another Education Question for Mr. Pundit
Current educational research points to a combination of socioeconomic disadvantage and inferior quality education as being responsible for the black-white test-score gap. Regardless of race, students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds tend to do worse in school than students of higher socioeconomic backgrounds. Blacks on average are of lower socioeconomic status than whites.
Black students face the additional disadvantage of attending schools of lower quality than white students. Educational researchers have recently been documenting the lower teacher quality in black schools relative to white schools, for example.
What specifically do you see as the flaws in the research showing that socioeconomic disadvantage and inferior schooling are primarily responsible for the test-score gap?
5. A Rap Question for Mr. Pundit
The majority of rap consumers are not black. Rap scholars state that gangsta rap receives most of its support from young white men. Do you think that gangsta rap reveals the values of the current generation of young white men? Do you think gangsta rap reveals the values of the current generation of young black men?
These are just a small sample of the questions the black-cultural-crisis pundits are not being asked. Is there any journalist out there willing to do the research and fact checking to ask the tough questions?
Sociologist Algernon Austin Offers His Assistance
“In less than 15 minutes, I can show any journalist that the black-cultural-crisis claims are false,” states Dr. Algernon Austin author of “Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals Are Failing Black America.” “I am willing to spend a few minutes with any journalist interested in learning the truth about black America, to the extent that my schedule allows,” he adds. Dr. Austin states that a few minutes examining mainly U.S. government data websites will show that the cultural crisis claims are based on faulty assumptions, bad data analysis and racial stereotypes. Dr. Austin can be reached by e-mail via contact@thorainstitute.com.
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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.
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