Defending Affirmative Action; Post-Racialism Is Dead

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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________________________________________________________________________

Tim Wise Defends Affirmative Action

Post-Racialism is Dead

For those of us who actually looked at the data on racial discrimination [PDF], "post-racialism" never made any sense. But for a moment, many people actually seriously considered that we might be a post-racial nation. Now, as charges of racism fly left and right, it is finally clear that we are not there yet. Not only are we not post-racial, but it seems that we need to worry about the re-emergence of the Confederacy. Below are statements by major columnists renouncing post-racialism.

• The one lesson that everyone took away from the latest “national conversation about race” is the same one we’ve taken away from every other “national conversation” in the past couple of years. America has not transcended race. America is not postracial. So we can all say that again. But it must also be said that we’re just at the start of what may be a 30-year struggle. Beer won’t cool the fury of those who can’t accept the reality that America’s racial profile will no longer reflect their own. (Frank Rich, "Small Beer, Big Hangover," New York Times, August 1, 2009)
  


• But today's Palinoidal Republicans have lost most of the professionals, much of Wall Street and an increasing chunk of suburbia. What they can claim is the allegiance of the white South and the almost entirely white, non-urban parts of the Mountain West. Of the 40 Republican members of the Senate, fully half -- 20 -- come from the old Confederacy, the Civil War border states where slavery was legal or Oklahoma, which politically is an extension of Texas without Texas's racial minorities. Ten others come from the Mountain West. The rest of the nation -- that is, of course, most of the nation -- has become an ever-smaller share of Republican ranks.
  
  All parties are home to distinct subcultures with distinct beliefs. What's different about today's GOP is that increasingly, it is home to just one, and a whole sector of the media -- Fox News, talk radio -- makes its money by emphasizing this subculture's sense of separateness, grievance and alarm, and by creating its own set of "facts." Asked in late July whether they believed Barack Obama was born in the United States, 93 percent of Democrats and 83 percent of independents said yes, but just 42 percent of Republicans agreed. Behind those numbers, 93 percent, 90 percent and 87 percent of Northeasterners, Midwesterners and Westerners, respectively, said yes, but just 47 percent of Southerners said they believed the president was born in this country. Obama, the Republican base is saying, personifies an America that is increasingly alien to them. It's multiracial, as they are not. It puts Sonia Sotomayor, who sure doesn't come from their America, on the Supreme Court. Increasingly, the Republicans have descended into white identity politics. (Harold Meyerson, "Lincoln's Prophecy for the GOP," Washington Post, August 20, 2009)
  


• On the contrary, violence and the threat of violence have always been used by those who wanted to bypass democratic procedures and the rule of law. Lynching was the act of those who refused to let the legal system do its work. Guns were used on election days in the Deep South during and after Reconstruction to intimidate black voters and take control of state governments.
  
  Yes, I have raised the racial issue, and it is profoundly troubling that firearms should begin to appear with some frequency at a president's public events only now, when the president is black. Race is not the only thing at stake here, and I have no knowledge of the personal motivations of those carrying the weapons. But our country has a tortured history on these questions, and we need to be honest about it. Those with the guns should know what memories they are stirring.(E. J. Dionne, "Leave the Guns at Home," Washington Post, August 20, 2009)

Worth Reading: On the Drug War and Post-Racialism

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's Time to Legalize Drugs

Excerpts from Peter Moskos and Stanford "Neill" Franklin, The Washington Post, August 17, 2009:

. . .

When it makes sense to deal drugs in public, a neighborhood becomes home to drug violence. For a low-level drug dealer, working the street means more money and fewer economic risks. If police come, and they will, some young kid will be left holding the bag while the dealer walks around the block. But if the dealer sells inside, one raid, by either police or robbers, can put him out of business for good. Only those virtually immune from arrests (much less imprisonment) -- college students, the wealthy and those who never buy or sell from strangers -- can deal indoors.

. . .

Only after years of witnessing the ineffectiveness of drug policies -- and the disproportionate impact the drug war has on young black men -- have we and other police officers begun to question the system.

Cities and states license beer and tobacco sellers to control where, when and to whom drugs are sold. Ending Prohibition saved lives because it took gangsters out of the game. Regulated alcohol doesn't work perfectly, but it works well enough. Prescription drugs are regulated, and while there is a huge problem with abuse, at least a system of distribution involving doctors and pharmacists works without violence and high-volume incarceration. Regulating drugs would work similarly: not a cure-all, but a vast improvement on the status quo.

Why the Right is Winning Its War Against Obama

Excerpts from Earl Ofari Hutchinson, The Huffington Post, August 15, 2009:

Obama's worst mistake has been to misread the election results. Much is made that he got more white votes than John Kerry or Al Gore, revved up young whites, and totally exorcised race from the campaign. Obama's win supposedly was final proof that America had finally kicked the racial syndrome. This is the stuff of media talk and wishful thinking. Despite a GOP racked by sex and corruption scandals, an anemic presidential opponent, a laughingstock vice presidential candidate, a collapsed economy and an outgoing GOP president with a rating worse than Herbert Hoover's, McCain still crushed Obama by a twelve point spread among white voters.

The route was not just among old, Deep South unreconstructed or latent bigoted white male voters, but in virtually every voter demographic among whites, including a dead heat with Obama among a majority of younger white voters. This doesn't tell the whole story of the sharp racial divide Obama faces. A sizeable percentage of whites were disgusted enough with Bush's policies to stay home on Election Day, but not disgusted enough with him and his policies to vote for Obama. The Henry Louis Gate's affair and the right's town hall rabble rousing have made more whites wary of Obama's policies. Polls after the Gates outburst showed that a majority of whites condemned Obama for backing Gates and even more ominous expressed grave doubts about his policies. A painful reality is that the crushing majority of whites who oppose Obama or disavow his policies for racial, party, or ideological reasons or personal prejudices, are fast forming the backbone of the radical right's counter insurgency against him.

Health Care for All?

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
________________________________________________________________________

[re-post]

Blacks are more likely to be uninsured than nonblacks. In 2004, 19.7 percent of black Americans did not have health insurance, according to the Census Bureau. It was 15.7 percent for all Americans in 2004. For Americans generally, the percent without health insurance has been rising.

The growing number of uninsured is only one of several critical problems facing the American health care system. The New York Times highlighted another problem in its series of articles on diabetes in January of last year: the American health care system does far too little in terms of preventive care.

Consider treatment for diabetes. Blacks are more likely than nonblacks to be diabetic. Diabetes is the fourth leading cause of death among blacks. The New York Times ("In the Treatment of Diabetes, Success Often Does Not Pay" by Ian Urbina, January 11, 2006) illustrated how dysfunctional the American health care system is. Effective diabetes treatment centers were closed down because they did not make money, and they did not make money because they provided good preventative medicine. Urbina writes:

[The diabetes treatment centers] were victims of the byzantine world of American health care, in which the real profit is made not by controlling chronic diseases like diabetes but by treating their many complications.

Insurers, for example, will often refuse to pay $150 for a diabetic to see a podiatrist, who can help prevent foot ailments associated with the disease. Nearly all of them, though, cover amputations, which typically cost more than $30,000.

Patients have trouble securing a reimbursement for a $75 visit to the nutritionist who counsels them on controlling their diabetes. Insurers do not balk, however, at paying $315 for a single session of dialysis, which treats one of the disease's serious complications.

The United States spends a greater proportion of its wealth on health care than any other county, but Americans have rather little to show for it. In international comparisons, American health care ranks highly for treating some specific diseases, but overall the American system tends to fall near or at the bottom of developed Western nations (see the World Health Organization's 2000 ranking).

Beyond the Public-Private Debate: An Examination of Quality, Access and Cost in the Health-Care Systems of Eight Countries (Vancouver, BC: Western Sky Communications, Ltd., 2001) by Cynthia Ramsay, a health economist, produced the following overall rankings after a detailed analysis of eight health care systems:

1. Singapore
2. United Kingdom
3. Switzerland
4. Germany
5. Australia
6. Canada
7. United States
8. South Africa

In December of 2005, the New York Times had another important article on the American health care system. Eduardo Porter (in "Health Care for All, Just a (Big) Step Away," December 18, 2005), explained that, from a purely economic standpoint, the U.S. could fairly easily shift to a universal health care system that would provide health insurance for everyone.

What Porter argued was that the federal government provides about $130 billion to businesses in tax breaks to encourage them to provide health insurance to their employees. If the federal government collected these taxes and added a little more revenue, it could provide health care for all. The 20 percent of blacks without health care would be much better off under this system.

Randolph K. Quaye (African Americans’ Health Care Practices, Perspectives, and Needs (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 2005), 50-51) comes to this conclusion after assessing the American health care system and the needs of black Americans:

Countries that have provided universal health care coverage for all their citizens have realized the massive health care cost savings associated with such a policy. As we in the United States struggle to contain health care costs, it is time to recognize that tax incentives for health care coverage only to big corporations will in the long run not be in the best interests of this country. As has been demonstrated, the loss of manufacturing jobs overseas and the high cost of prescription drugs in the face of a potentially bankrupt Medicaid and Medicare systems will in the end frustrate the aspirations of younger and older Americans. The time to act is now, and act we must.

Health care for all!



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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

Barbarism Posing as Justice

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.
________________________________________________________________________


Not only does the United States have the highest incarceration rate in the world, it is also the only country in the world that sentences juveniles to life in prison without parole. Because of this inhumane treatment of juveniles, the United States is in violation of international law.

A new report from the Sentencing Project, No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America documents the rise of life sentences in America. It also reveals the too common use of life sentences and life sentences without parole against juveniles.

Blacks are overrepresented among those receiving life sentences. Blacks make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population, but makeup 48.3 percent of individuals serving a life sentence and 56.4 percent of individuals serving a life sentence without parole. Among juveniles serving life sentences, 47.3 percent are black, and 56.1 percent of juveniles serving sentences for life without parole are black.

The Sentencing Project points out that many of the juveniles serving life sentences without parole are quite far from being "the worst of the worst." Nearly 6 in 10 of them were sentenced so harshly for their very first criminal offense. The authors note:

This fact runs contrary to the commonly-held assumption that individuals serving LWOP [life without parole] sentences are chronic, repeat offenders. In addition, in 26% of cases, the juvenile serving an LWOP sentence was not the primary assailant and, in many cases, was present but only minimally involved in the crime. However, because of state law, they were automatically given a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

In many cases, therefore, our society mindlessly and without any reasonable justification discards the civil life of juveniles and disproportionately juveniles who are black.

These findings are among a long list showing that tough-on-crime policies have produced an extremely illogical, inhumane and anti-black criminal justice system.




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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

Will the Crack Cocaine Disparity Ever End?

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.
________________________________________________________________________


Maybe we are finally nearing the end of the racially-biased crack-versus-powder-cocaine sentencing disparity. Last week, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security took the first step toward the elimination of the crack-versus-powder disparity. The committee passed the Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act which would equalize the penalties for crack and powder. The Senate is expected to take the complimentary step in the near future.

When crack cocaine arrived in America's cities in the 1980s chaos ensued. There was violence as drug gangs fought over drug-dealing territory. There were new drug addicts doing a host of crazy and destructive things.

The new drug and its negative effects produced a general hysteria that affected criminal justice policy. In 1986, a promising young black basketball star, Len Bias, died from a drug overdose. In response, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act which meted out extremely harsh punishment for crack possession. Anyone caught with 5 grams of crack--the equivalent of less than two packets of sugar--would be sentenced to five years in prison. In stark contrast, one has to be caught with 500 grams of powder cocaine to receive the same punishment.

The 100-to-1 disparity between crack and powder cocaine also produces a racial disparity in incarceration because blacks are much more likely to be caught in possession of crack than whites. Many thousands of blacks have received long prison sentences while they would have been treated much less harshly had they been in possession of powder cocaine. Of course, powder cocaine is what is used to make crack. Crack is 75 to 90 percent pure cocaine.

For more than a decade, we've known that there is a great deal of mythology around crack. Len Bias overdosed on powder cocaine, not crack. It is true that crack addicts are destructive, but so are other drug addicts. There is violence around crack, but that too is not unusual for illicit drugs. There was a great deal of gang violence during the Prohibition Era when alcohol was illegal. Today, as the Mexican drug gangs battle to control the Mexican-United States drug trade, we see a great deal of violence in Mexico and along the border.

The story about large numbers of severely damaged "crack babies" was also mythology. Of course, crack use by pregnant women is bad for babies, but it is about as harmful as tobacco consumption and less harmful than alcohol consumption. Tobacco and alcohol, however, are more commonly consumed by pregnant women than crack.

We've know all of this for many years, yet we still have the 100-to-1 disparity on the law books. What does it say about our society that we let thousands and thousands of blacks be punished so much more severely than whites for similar crimes. The good news is that it looks like, finally, our elected officials will do the right thing and treat crack and powder cocaine equally.


Worth Reading
Glenn Loury on Henry Louis Gates: "I find laughable, and sad, Professor Gates’s declaration that he now plans to make a documentary film about racial profiling. . . . Where has this eminent scholar of African-American affairs been these last 30 years, during which a historically unprecedented, politically popular, extraordinarily punitive and hugely racially disparate mobilization of resources for the policing, imprisonment and post-release supervision of those caught up in the criminal justice system has unfolded?"

Black Actor Jeffrey Wright Tasered for Wanting to be Served in a Louisiana Restaurant



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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

Does Anyone Read the Nation's Report Card?; Results from the New Haven Police Sergeant's Promotion Test

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
________________________________________________________________________

Does Anyone Read the Nation's Report Card?

The National Center for Education Statistics regularly conducts different versions of the National Assessment of the Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly referred to as the "nation's report card." The long-term trend and the main versions of these tests have shown improving test scores for black students in many years, yet I rarely hear any acknowledgment of black test-score increases in popular discussions. Of course, it is hard to claim that black students are "making excuses" for lower academic achievement and point out that their test scores are improving at the same time.

The National Center for Education Statistics released a report on black and white achievement gaps this month. The report begins, once again, by noting that black scores have improved:

In 2007, mathematics scores for both Black and White public school students in grades 4 and 8 nationwide, as measured by the main NAEP assessments of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), were higher than in any previous assessment, going back to 1990. This was also true for Black and White fourth-graders on the NAEP 2007 Reading Assessment. For grade 8, reading scores for both Black and White students were higher in 2007 than in the first reading assessment year, 1992, as well as the most recent previous assessment year, 2005.

One reason test-score gaps persist is because it is often the case that both black and white students' test scores increase at the same time.

It's important to be attentive to the black-white achievement gap, but the gap is only one achievement measure. It is not the full story. The report breaks down achievement by state for black and white students. In fourth-grade math, the gap is nearly twice as large in Massachusetts as in West Virginia. Does this mean that black students are doing better in West Virginia than in Massachusetts? The answer is no.

The average NAEP score for black students in Massachusetts is the highest of all the states (and tied with black students in New Jersey). The black-white NAEP math gap is smaller in West Virginia because white students in West Virginia have the lowest scores for whites, not because West Virginia black students have high scores. West Virginia black students actually score about average. The black-white gap is large in Massachusetts because whites in Massachusetts also have high scores relative to their group. Too many people fixate on the test-score gap without realizing that many different factors, including lower academic achievement for whites, can reduce the test-score gap. We need to look at the whole picture not just the test-score gap.

Results from the New Haven Police Sergeant's Promotion Test

New Haven recently conducted another civil service promotion test. The New Haven Independent reports, "The success rate was comparable among white males, white females, black males, and black females, according to city Corporation Counsel Victor Bolden." However, none of the 10 Hispanics who took the test passed it. After an expert assessed to test to make sure that there was no bias, the results were validated by the city. This validation review was not done for the firefighter test that led to Ricci v. DeStefano. [Read more the story from the New Haven Independent.]



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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

On Tests, Merit and Firefighting

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
________________________________________________________________________


I have a proposal. Let’s do away with long and costly presidential campaigns and the expensive and complicated voting process and just appoint as president the candidate with the highest SAT scores. The many people who supported the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Ricci v. DeStefano should agree with this change.

In Ricci, the Supreme Court decided that the City of New Haven, Connecticut, whose mayor is John DeStefano, had discriminated against white firefighters by not promoting them based on the results of a test. The City of New Haven argued that it refused to promote anyone because of flaws in the test. The flaws, the City’s attorneys argued, led to low rates of eligibility for promotion among black and Hispanic firefighters. Since no one was promoted, the City maintained that there was no discrimination. Also, since the test was biased against blacks and Hispanics, New Haven claimed that it would have been sued for racial discrimination if it had promoted firefighters based on the test. Five of the Supreme Court Justices, the majority, were not convinced by the City’s arguments.

Supporters of the Supreme Court’s Ricci decision argue that firefighting is a serious job where lives are on the line, and it is necessary to select the absolute best person for the job. Being president of the United States is also a very serious job. The president is commander-in-chief of the military so the president also clearly makes life and death decisions. Since the presidency is so important, why don’t we have a standardized test where we can objectively see which candidate is most qualified? I propose the SAT.

One thing Ricci-decision fans should note is that the SAT may be biased against Republican candidates. Barack Obama, a Democrat, excelled at Harvard Law School, and taught at the University of Chicago Law School. These achievements suggest to me that he probably has high SAT scores. John McCain, Obama’s Republican rival for the presidency, graduated 894th out of 899 from the Naval Academy. In contrast, Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, also attended the Naval Academy and graduated 59th out of 820. If I had to guess, I would assume that Carter would have better SAT scores than McCain. To my knowledge, the Republican darlings, Sarah Palin and Ronald Reagan did not have distinguished academic careers, but Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa college honor society. Again, my best guess is that Clinton would beat Palin and Reagan in SAT scores. It looks like the SAT selection method would mean fewer Republican presidents going forward.

Is it fair to use a method of selecting the president that might be biased against one political party? Is it fair to use a promotion test that is biased against one or more racial group? I find both of these biases worrisome, but the actual civil rights law, as I understand it (I’m not a lawyer), is that biases of this sort or “disparate impact” is allowable if (1) the selection method relates to skills that are absolutely necessary for the job in question, and (2) if there is no equally good alternative that would produce a more democratic, inclusive or racially diverse result.

It should be obvious that among the many problems with using the SAT to select the president, the SAT does not measure the required job skills of being president. It is not a presidential test. What about the New Haven promotion exam? Does it measure the required skills for being a captain or lieutenant in the New Haven fire department? I would argue that in at least one important way it does not.

All parties in the Ricci case agree that to have a leadership position in the fire department requires leadership skills. While a test of the sort administered in New Haven, might be adequate for assessing firefighting knowledge, it is not likely to be good for assessing leadership skills.

There are two types of leadership skills needed. One is the ability to get along well with, motivate and direct other firefighters. The second is the ability to make good scientific and tactical decisions in a real fire or emergency situation. It is one thing to know the correct answer in a sedate testing situation; it is another thing to be able to think clearly and act decisively in an emergency. Neither of these abilities can be measured with an artificial test. Only real-life interactions can make clear who has and does not have these abilities. I am not aware of any attempt to assess these leadership abilities by the City of New Haven. So, in my view, the New Haven test does not determine who can best do the job.

Aside from leadership skills, how good was the test at assessing the scientific and technical knowledge that can be measured with an exam? I do not know, but the Supreme Court documents suggest that small changes would have made the test fairer to blacks and Hispanics. In other words, it appears that there was an equally good alternative assessment that would have produced a more racially inclusive result. The result would have been equally good because the changes would have left most of the test questions exactly the same.

Some of the minority firefighters claimed that they had difficultly obtaining the test-preparation materials because of cost and because materials were temporarily out-of-stock. This problem can be rectified by making all of the study books available for free to all candidates at the same time. All candidates would then have an equal amount of time to prepare for the test. “Banding”—treating scores such as, for example, 93.5, 93.7 and 93.9 all as 94 and all of the same “rank”--“would have made four black and one Hispanic candidates eligible for then-open lieutenant and captain positions,” according to the majority opinion of the Court. This small change would have led to a much more racially inclusive result. Because no New Haven firefighters were allowed to check the appropriateness of the test for New Haven specifically, there may have been a few questions that were bad for a New Haven test. Procedures should be established for one or more New Haven fire department officials or proxies, if necessary, to make sure that all of the questions are appropriate for New Haven. Implementing these small changes—none of which require major changes to the test—would likely have made more black and Hispanic firefighters eligible for promotion.

An additional change that could have been made was to change the relative importance placed on the written and oral parts of the test. According to the dissenting Justices and a firefighter from Bridgeport, Connecticut, changing the weight of the written portion from 60 percent to 30 percent would produce a less racially disparate result without having any negative effects on public safety. The dissenting Justices reported that the average city assigned a 30 percent weight to the written portion of the test in 1996 (the most recent data available). According to the firefighter from Bridgeport, that city’s fire department became more racially inclusive once it placed more weight on the oral part of the exam. The firefighter also claimed that the oral portion of the exam deals more with real-life scenarios. It is possible that changing the weights assigned to the written and oral parts of the exam would not only produce a smaller racial disparity, it might also improve the overall quality of the assessment.

The larger point here is that standardized tests have to be critically examined. Because a test is being used does not mean that the test provides a fair assessment of required skills. If we were to begin using the SAT to select the president, I would argue that it is not fair and not an assessment of required job skills. In Ricci, also, it seems that there were changes that could have been made to make the test better and fairer.

References
Supreme Court Opinions [PDF]
Brief for Petitioner Frank Ricci et al. [PDF]
Brief for Respondent John DeStefano et al. [PDF]



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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

Black Americans face an especially tough job market

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.
________________________________________________________________________


by Andrea Orr

As the entire country struggles with the highest unemployment rate in a generation, black Americans are especially hard pressed to find jobs. Overall unemployment in May reached 9.4%, but within that number there were some stark differences by race. White unemployment in May stood at 8.6%, while the black unemployment rate was a staggering 14.9%.

And it is not only during a recession that blacks struggle to find work. During a June 19 panel hosted by the Center for American Progress to discuss this persistent problem, Algernon Austin — EPI’s director of Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy — noted that black male unemployment was at “recessionary” levels even back when the overall economy had been strong. In 2006, for example, unemployment was 3.9% among white men and 9.7% among black men. Even the historically deep recession the country now faces has not produced overall unemployment levels equal to what black men have faced for years.

[Read full story.]

Who is the Most "Hated"?

The New York Times columnist Charles Blow has recently included FBI hate crime statistics in his opinion pieces. These columns have caused me to re-think these statistics and what they can tell us about racial relations.

Although I consider hate crimes to be a very serious issue and I have even briefly studied white supremacist organizations (the spawning ground for a number of the people who commit racially-motivated hate crimes), I have been reluctant to discuss hate crimes. Hate crimes tend to reinforce the view that the issue of racial discrimination is about just a few crazy, bad apples. In 2007, there were less than 5,000 hate crime victims against all racial groups by the FBI racial categorization and likely a smaller number of offenders. In comparison, possibly ten times that number of blacks only were victims subtle and not-so-subtle biases in our criminal justice system. Maybe hundreds of thousands of blacks faced discrimination in the workplace--much of which they were probably not aware of, and millions of black children went to separate and unequal schools. The impersonal, bureaucratic institutional discrimination in the society greatly dwarfs the few-bad-apple hate crimes.

There are other problems with the FBI hate crime statistics. They likely significantly undercount the number of hate crimes. Many people may not report being a victim of a hate crime. Police officers for a variety of reasons may intentionally mis-categorize a hate crime as some other type of crime. Some police agencies simply do not report hate crimes. (For more on these points see "Understanding Hate Crimes" by the Prejudice Institute.)

On the other hand, even hate crimes are sociological phenomena. A hate crime is a crime against a socially-recognized group motivated by a culturally-shared narrative about a group. The narrative may not be believed by a majority or even a large number, but it is none-the-less shared. So, hate crimes may provide a type of a hate index of the society.

In different societies, racial hate crimes are likely disproportionately directed to different groups based on the specific history of racial relations of that country. Hate crimes also would depend on specific criminological factors. Some countries would likely have factors that lead to more or less hate crimes, and also more or less hate crimes against specific groups. It is not clear what conclusions can be drawn from relative rates of hate crimes, but it is worth pondering.

With these thoughts in mind, I decided to take a preliminary look at the hate crime statistics of 2007 to see who is "hated"--in the hate-crime sense--in America. The simple number of hate crimes by racial group does not tell us much since different groups make up different shares of the population. What is interesting is the percent of racially-motivated hate crimes relative to the share of the population. If a group were to make up 10 percent of the population and were victims of 10 percent of the racial hate crimes then there is nothing unusual there. If a group were 10 percent of the population but victims of 90 percent of the hate crimes then the group is a particularly "hated" group.

Before I go into my findings, I have to address the question of which groups count as a racial group. I have written at length about this issue in my book Achieving Blackness. The official Census racial categories do not get at the way people think about race. Just as in many cases people are not economically rational, people's racial categories are not consistent, discrete and logical scientific categories no matter how much scholars of racial relations wish that they were. It is clear to me that Jews, Muslims and Hispanics are sometimes thought of as racial groups by people in general and, importantly, by people committing hate crimes against them. This may not be the case in every hate crime, but I'll nonetheless include these groups as racialized groups. Since the Census Bureau does not follow this scheme, individuals will be double-counted. An individual can be a black, Hispanic Muslim and be counted in all three categories, for example. My racialized groups are whites, blacks, Asians and Pacific Islanders, American Indians and Alaska Natives, mixed-race people, Jews, Muslims and Hispanics.

For simplicity, the figure below shows findings only for whites, blacks, Jews and Muslims. Although in absolute number, there were more anti-black hate crime incidents in 2007 than incidents against other racialized groups, blacks were not the most "hated" group. Relative to their share in the population, Jews were nearly eight times (7.94) more likely to be the target of a hate crime. Jews make up only 2.2 percent of the U.S. population but 17.5 percent of the racialized hate crimes were targeted at Jews.

Source: Author's analysis of FBI data.

Blacks and Muslims had the misfortune to come in second and third respectively. Relative to their share of the population, blacks were almost four times as likely to be targets of racialized hate crimes; Muslims were 3.5 times as likely. Of all the groups examined, whites were greatly under-represented among racialized hate crime targets.



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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

The Racial Mismatch

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.
________________________________________________________________________


Many people argue that the jobs crisis facing black men stems from their lower educational attainment. There is a great need to improve the educational attainment of blacks generally, but educational improvements alone won't solve the crisis. The figure above shows the 2006 unemployment rates for non-Hispanic black and white males in Chicago. In Chicago, at every educational level, whites are more likely to be employed than blacks. If blacks had the exact same educational-attainment profile as whites, blacks would still be more likely to be unemployed. It is particularly surprising that the disparity is so large for high school dropouts. One high-school dropout should be as good or bad as the next.

If one does the same analysis for other major cities, one ends up with similar results. This analysis challenges the education-as-THE-solution perspective, and it also challenges the spatial-mismatch hypothesis. This hypothesis states that blacks have a harder time finding work because many of the jobs have moved out of heavily-black cities and to the predominantly-white suburbs.

But what the figure (and similar ones for other cities) shows is that in the same city proportionately more whites are finding work when blacks are not. Again, white high-school dropouts are having much greater success at finding work than black high-school dropouts.

The findings of this relatively simple analysis are corroborated by the paper "Spatial Mismatch or Racial Mismatch?" by Judith Hellerstein, David Neumark, and Melissa McInerney (NBER Working Paper 13161). These researchers find that only black job density in black neighborhoods predicts black male employment rates, not the overall job density for all racial groups. In other words, black men could live right next door to employers, but if those employers do not hire black men then the employer might as well be on Mars as far as black men are concerned. This finding of the overall job density not mattering for black men is what one would find if black men were facing anti-black discrimination in the labor market.

Returning once again, to the issue of high-school dropouts or the "less-educated," Hellerstein et al. state, "less-educated blacks do live in areas where there are many jobs held by less-educated whites." In fact, they find that the average black male high-school dropout lives in a neighborhood where four non-black male high-school dropouts are working for every resident who is a black male high-school dropout (Table 3). Also, the average employment rate for these black male high-school dropouts is under 50 percent. The authors observe, "This suggests that the problem may not be a lack of jobs at appropriate skill levels where blacks live, but a lack of jobs that are available to blacks" (16). If discrimination is a major factor in black men's unemployment rate, education alone will not fix it.

Hellerstein et al. conduct an interesting simulation. They estimate the effect on black male employment rates of black male high-school dropouts moving from an average black neighborhood to an average white neighborhood. This is the proposed solution to the black male jobs crisis that emerges from the spatial mismatch hypothesis. By their calculations, the average employment rate for black male high-school dropouts is 46 percent. (The average for white male high-school dropouts is 69 percent.) The move to an average white neighborhood is estimated to increase the black male high-school dropout employment rate to 48 percent--2 percentage points--not much change.

In 1967, the black unemployment rate was about twice the white unemployment rate. In 2009, the black unemployment rate is about twice the white unemployment rate. As long as we pretend that this stubborn fact has nothing to do with anti-black discrimination, nothing will change.


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

The Black AIDS Crisis is Not Over

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
________________________________________________________________________


In 2007, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports, nearly 200,000 blacks were living with AIDS. This number is the highest for the major racial and ethnic groups although blacks make up only 12 percent of the U.S. population. After an apparent declining number of new HIV/AIDS cases, new HIV/AIDS cases among blacks increased 17 percent from 2005 to 2007. Blacks still have an astronomically high rate of infection (see figure below).
Source: Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009.

Although blacks are generally aware of the epidemic, they still have misconceptions about the basic facts of the disease. (See the section on African Americans in Impressions of HIV/AIDS in America.)

Review the basics. Do you know the answers to these questions?

• How is HIV passed from one person to another?


• Can I get HIV from casual contact (shaking hands, hugging, using a toilet, drinking from the same glass, or the sneezing and coughing of an infected person)?


• Can I get HIV from mosquitoes?


• What can be done to prevent HIV transmission?

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

Hard Economic Times Ahead

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.
________________________________________________________________________


Even before the current Great Recession, the economic state of black America was not good. Blacks made significant economic progress during the strong economy of the 1990s, but the “jobless recovery” after the 2001 recession put black economic progress in reverse [PDF]. Black incomes declined and black poverty rose from 2000 to 2007.

Now things have gone from bad to worse. We have been in a recession for 17 months and have seen historic job losses. Not surprisingly, blacks have been overrepresented among those losing jobs. The black unemployment rate in May was 14.9 percent, the highest for the major racial groups. For black men, nearly one-in-five is unemployed, up from about one-in-ten two years ago. One-in-ten unemployed is very bad, one-in-five is a disaster.

As bad as these black unemployment numbers are, in a “normal” recession they would be even higher. The black unemployment rate is usually at least twice the white rate, but during this recession it has been a little less than twice the white rate. In May, it was “only” 1.7 times the white rate.

It seems that blacks are, ironically, benefiting some from anti-black racial discrimination. Yes, that’s right—benefiting from anti-black discrimination. During the housing boom many construction jobs were created. Now, during the housing bust, construction has seen massive job losses. Historically, blacks have been underrepresented in the construction industry, likely due to anti-black discrimination. Relatively few blacks were able to ride the construction-job rollercoaster up and now relatively few are riding it down with the construction-job losses.

It is important to understand that blacks have had significant job losses in construction. Even for the relatively small number of blacks in construction, it appears that they are more likely than whites to lose their jobs. Had blacks been better represented in construction, their construction-job losses would likely have been greater.

Even if, relative to whites, the recession is less bad than “normal,” overall this recession is much worse than “normal.” The signs are that the Great Recession will set blacks back substantially in income and wealth. Already, the inflation-adjusted black median weekly wage is down $23 from the first quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2009. None of the other major racial groups have seen weekly wage declines over this period. In fact, they have all seen wage growth during this period.
The Federal Reserve reports that blacks are also alone in showing a loss of wealth from 2004 to 2007. During this period, the net worth of white households increased 10 percent, but the net worth of blacks declined by 24 percent. It is likely that the decline in the black homeownership rate from 2004 to 2007 is driving this finding.
In 2007, the impact of the foreclosure crisis was only beginning to be felt. The AARP Policy Institute estimates that the black foreclosure rate is about three times that of the white rate [PDF]. This higher black foreclosure rate will likely mean that the black-white wealth gap will continue to increase because of the proportionally greater loss of homes among blacks.

Fewer jobs, declining wages, and less wealth all spell increases in black poverty and economic hardship. Unfortunately, it will probably take at least four years before blacks recover from the economic impact of the Great Recession. We should not be surprised if it takes even longer.

More jobs, fewer foreclosures and greater investments in black communities will lessen the economic pain blacks will experience and quicken the black economic recovery. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) is one organization that appears to be focused on helping the communities that are hardest hit by the Great Recession. On June 11th, NCRC is planning a national day of action for Jobs and Homes Now! More needs to be done, but this action seems like a good start.



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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

The Blindness of Color Blindness

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
________________________________________________________________________

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.
--U.S. Supreme Court nominee, judge Sonia Sotomayor

Let me begin by saying that I disagree with the statement above. For example, it is possible for black person to have seen the poverty and discrimination experienced by blacks in the Jim Crow South and still become a “Clarence Thomas.” The best example of this is, of course, Clarence Thomas. The sad fact is that it is not uncommon to find people of color who are callous or exploitative to other people of color. There is no guarantee that a Latina woman Supreme Court judge would not be another “Clarence Thomas.”

Having said that, the attack on Sotomayor for making the above statement is ridiculous and outrageous. It is terrible that her long career is being reduced to one poorly-chosen sentence.

Ironically, the criticism of the Sotomayor sentence tends to make the sentence seem more valid than it is. The critics, unfortunately, most prominently white males, clearly don’t get it, when probably majorities among groups of color do.

Scott Simon on NPR’s Weekend Editon (May 30th) raised the question of whether a white man could say that a white man would be a better judge than a Latina woman and not be considered a racist. The logic behind this question has been the starting point of the criticism of Sotomayor. And this logic ignores all the sociological and historical facts. It assumes that we live in a world where white men and Latina women have equal opportunities for success and have always had it.

Christopher Metzler reports, “There have been 110 Supreme Court Justices, and of those only four have been other than White men.” There has never been a Latina Supreme Court Justice.

More generally, in 2007, the unemployment rate for Hispanic women was 1.5 times the rate for white men. Also that year, the median income for white men with a bachelor’s degree and no higher degree was $67,000. For Hispanic women with a bachelor’s degree it was $41,000. The white poverty rate was 8.2 percent in 2007; it was 21.5 percent for Hispanics that same year. These disparities did not just appear in 2007. They have been among the persistent racial disparities in American society.

Against the history where there has never been a Latina on the Supreme Court and where Hispanics generally experience discrimination and disadvantages, it should be understandable that an individual like Sotomayor might push strongly for greater inclusion of Latinas.

It is this current and historical advantage for white males and disadvantage for Latinas that make the similar statements by a white male and a Latina very different. A white male who claims that white men make better Supreme Court judges than Latinas when the Court has never had a Latina is arguing for the continued exclusion and marginalization of Latinas. A Latina making a similar sounding argument is making an argument to promote inclusion and opportunity. Only the colorblind fail to see this.



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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

The NAACP Debate

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.
________________________________________________________________________

[In recent years, the belief that blacks are suffering from an epidemic of bad values and the rise of post-racialism has caused people to question the point and purpose of the NAACP and the need for black civil rights activism generally. People making these arguments, of course, haven't read Getting It Wrong to learn that there are only false racial stereotypes behind the cultural claims, and they are also ignorant of the ample evidence of persistent institutional racial discrimination like the fact that America's schools are still separate and unequal. Below is the recent debate in the Washington Post.]

Why We Should Get Rid of the NAACP

By Jonetta Rose Barras
Sunday, April 19, 2009

Watching the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's annual Image Awards in February, I found myself asking the question I always ask: Why, in an age of integration, do blacks still need our own Oscar-like program to honor "the outstanding achievements and performances of people of color in the arts"? Come to think of it, why do we even need the NAACP?

The organization is as anachronistic as colored-only water fountains and white-only bathrooms. Its racial focus perpetuates the evils it claims it wants to eradicate, and its audiovisual rendering of America as "them vs. us" abets the nation's balkanization.
Complete statement.

Why an NAACP? Because Racial Inequality Remains

Monday, April 27, 2009
By Julian Bond and Benjamin Todd Jealous

We look forward to when we can agree with why we should get rid of the NAACP ["Ten Things We Should Toss," Outlook, April 19], but unfortunately that day has not come.

The unemployment rate for blacks remains twice that for whites. Yet studies reveal that there is no variable -- neither education, test scores nor experience -- that provides a scientific rationale. In two studies, white employers preferred white males with criminal backgrounds to equally qualified African American men without them. Take any indicator, and a portrait of racial inequality is painted.
Complete letter.

Why We Still Need the NAACP

Friday, May 22, 2009
By Charles J. Ogletree Jr.

In her April 19 contribution to the Outlook feature "10 Things We Should Toss," Jonetta Barras asked: "Why do we even need the NAACP?" Let me count the ways.

Despite her claim that we are "in an age of integration," most African Americans live in segregated communities. The average black child attends a school that is racially segregated and where more than half the students are poor. Blacks make up 13 percent of our nation's population but 40 percent of the prison population, in part because of gross disparities between sentencing for crack and powder cocaine possession.

In 2001, the average black male worker earned 72 cents to every dollar earned by a white male. African Americans have a lower life expectancy than whites, are more likely to be uninsured and are less likely to be treated aggressively for illnesses. Although the Voting Rights Act is now more than 40 years old, public officials still shamelessly attempt to suppress the African American vote during every election cycle.
Complete letter.



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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

NY State Health Care System Failing 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
________________________________________________________________________


A detailed analysis of state-provided data has found racial disparities in health care among the three million New Yorkers in the state’s public insurance programs. According to the analysis, which was released by the Community Service Society, blacks experienced health outcomes that were significantly worse statistically in 10 out of 12 measures that the State Department of Health uses in quality assurance, including dental visits, asthma management, mammography and almost all diabetes indicators.
[Read more.]

Employment for College Grads Improves, But Not for Blacks

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.
________________________________________________________________________


College graduates from all racial groups experienced a decline in their unemployment rate from March to April--except for blacks. In March, blacks with a bachelor's or higher degree were already suffering significantly more from unemployment than other groups. In April, the unemployment rate for college-educated blacks increased while the rate for all other groups decreased.

For whites with bachelor's degrees, the April unemployment rate was 3.6 percent, down 0.2 percentage points from March. For Hispanics, the April rate was 4.5 percent, down 0.5 percentage points from March. For Asian Americans, it was 4.2 percent in April, down 0.8 percentage points from March.

The April unemployment rate for black college graduates was 7.5 percent, up 0.3 percentage points from March. The data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that the black college-grad unemployment rate is trending upward while for all other groups it appears to be trending downward.

The unemployment rate data for the college-educated is not adjusted for seasonal fluctuations. Because of this problem, it is more accurate to make comparisons of the same month from different years. It's useful to compare April 2007--before the recession began--with April 2009.

The increase in the college-educated unemployment rate for whites from March 2007 to March 2009 was 2.2 percentage points. The increase from April 2007 to April 2009 was 2.0 percentage points. This month-to-month analysis also suggests improving conditions for whites--a decline from 2.2 percentage points to 2.0 percentage points.

The comparable analysis for college-educated blacks is distressing. The March 2007 to March 2009 increase was 4.5 percentage points. The April 2007 to April 2009 increase was 5.4 percentage points. Again, we see worsening conditions for college-educated blacks, an increase from 4.5 percentage points to 5.4 percentage points.

Much additional research is necessary to identify exactly why college-educated blacks are being pummeled so badly by the Great Recession. One idea that can be dismissed is the idea that black college grads are choosing the wrong majors. This hypothesis was raised when I first pointed out the worse conditions for college-educated blacks.

A quick look at the data on fields of study for bachelor's degrees by race from the Digest of Education Statistics shows that blacks and whites are very similar in terms of college majors. In 1993, the first on-line year for the Digest, the most popular black major was business. A quarter of all black bachelor's degrees awarded was in this field. The most popular major for whites was also business with a 22 percent of all white bachelor's degrees in this field.

In 2006, the year of the most recent data from the Digest, it was still the case that business was the most popular black field of study, and it was also still the case that a quarter of all black bachelor's degrees was in business. Business was also still the most popular white major with a fifth of all white bachelor's degrees awarded in this field.

Some people incorrectly assume that black college students flood Black Studies Departments. In 1993, only 1 percent of black bachelor's degrees was in "area, ethnic and cultural studies" (the Digest's category). In 2006, still only 1 percent of black bachelor's degrees was in "area, ethnic, cultural and gender studies." In contrast, for both blacks and whites about a fifth of all degrees in 1993 and 2006 were in science, technology, engineering and math fields.

While nonblack college graduates have been experiencing an improving employment situation in recent months, the situation continues to worsen for black college graduates. It is not clear specifically why this is occurring, but it does illustrate the fact that even in the age of Obama blacks still have a more difficult time finding work than other groups.



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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

NCLB is Not Working

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 long-term trend version of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the best measure of how black students are doing academically over time. The results from last year's NAEP exams were released Wednesday, and they provide more evidence that the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is not working.

The good news from the most recent long-term NAEP is that black students made slight increases in their 2008 average scores relative to the prior assessment in 2004. None of the recent increases were significant, however. The increases are still worth nothing because there have been periods where there have been declines in black scores. In other words, the results could have been much worse.

In contrast to the most recent results, from 1999 to 2004, younger black students made big gains in their NAEP scores. The long-term trend NAEP is given to 9 year olds, 13 year olds and 17 year olds. The black-white gap for 9 year olds in math was 28 points in 1999. From 1999 to 2004, in math, black 9 year olds increased their average score 13 points--nearly half the size of the black-white gap. Black 13 year olds increased their math score 11 points, but black 17 year olds only increased their score 2 points.

Proponents of NCLB, which started in 2002, claimed that the big gains from 1999 to 2004 were evidence that the Act was working. Research by the Civil Rights Project showed that the increase in test scores were likely due to factors other than NCLB. The fact that the gains in test scores have stalled from 2004 to 2008 while NCLB has continued supports the Civil Rights Project argument. NCLB isn't working.

Although black students made big gains from 1999 to 2004, this improvement did little to change the overall black-white test score gap because white students made roughly equivalent test score gains. Reducing the test-score gap is important, but we should also celebrate the black 1999-2004 test-score increases even if they did not substantially reduce the gaps.

Still, what can be done to eliminate the black-white test-score gap?

The scholarly evidence continues to mount that economic disparities cause educational disparities. It seems unlikely that we will be able to eliminate the test-score gap while economic inequality between blacks and whites remains so great. The black-white income and wealth gaps are large. In 2007, for every dollar of income the average white household had, the average black household only had 62 cents. For every dollar of assets the average white household held, the average black household only held 10 cents.

Researchers have found that more than half of the achievement gap can be attributed to economic and educational differences between black and white parents. Other factors relating to the differences in the educational opportunities provided to black and white children account for much of the remaining gap.

The NAEP gains from 1999 to 2004 may be an example of the importance of economic factors. The early childhood years are especially important for future educational achievement. From 1995 to 2000, blacks increased their employment rate, experienced income gains, and had dramatically declining rates of poverty. The children whose early childhood years were during this period of increasing economic prosperity showed the biggest gains in the long-term NAEP. The black 9 year olds who had the largest test-score gains in 2004 were born in 1995, just as the economic good times began.

In the late 1990s, blacks were not the only ones experiencing economic good times. Whites also benefitted from a strong economy, and the white children born in 1995 also showed large test-score gains. The matching white increase in test-scores is the reason why the black student test-score gains did not lead to significant reductions in the test-score gap.

We need to increase job opportunities in poor black communities and see that black workers earn equivalent salaries to comparable white workers. A new Urban Institute study finds that in the low-wage labor market, black workers earn 12 percent less than similar white workers. Until we address the black-white income and wealth gaps, I have little hope that we will be able to reduce the black-white test-score gap.


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

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]



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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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

Getting Behind the Black-White Achievement Gap

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
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More than half a century after the Brown decision, the majority of black students still attend racially segregated and inferior schools. By a variety of measures, but perhaps most importantly in terms of teacher quality, the larger the percentage of black students in the school the lower the overall quality of teachers. Teacher quality matters for academic achievement. Below are some short takes on some other factors that lead to lower academic achievement among blacks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

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