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This information is posted for nonprofit educational purposes.Black Males Left Behind Editor: Ronald Mincy Despite the overall economic gains in the 1990s, many young black men continue to have the poorest life chances of anyone in our society. Joblessness and low earnings among these less-educated young adults are contributing to reductions in marriage, increases in nonmarital childbearing, and a host of other social problems. In Black Males Left Behind , Ronald Mincy has assembled a distinguished group of experts who examine how less-educated black men fared relative to other less-educated young people during the economic expansion of the 1990s and why. Chapters explore the roles of the macroeconomy, the deconcentration of blue-collar employment, criminal justice policy, and the employment aspirations of young less-educated black men and consider their implications for the design of employment services, welfare-to-work policies, workforce development policy, and child support enforcement. Two chapters comprehensively review policy opportunities to assist less-educated young black fathers and discuss how to overcome political resistance to initiatives serving less-educated black men. This book makes a compelling case for greater public attention to a serious domestic problem. Black Males Left Behind is available from the Urban Institute Press ($29.50). Order online at www.urban.org/pubs/blackmales/ or call toll-free 1-877-847-7377. Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn March 20, 2006 ¦ New York Times ¦ Erik Eckholm BALTIMORE — Black men in the United States face a far more dire situation than is portrayed by common employment and education statistics, a flurry of new scholarly studies warn, and it has worsened in recent years even as an economic boom and a welfare overhaul have brought gains to black women and other groups. Focusing more closely than ever on the life patterns of young black men, the new studies, by experts at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and other institutions, show that the huge pool of poorly educated black men are becoming ever more disconnected from the mainstream society, and to a far greater degree than comparable white or Hispanic men. Especially in the country's inner cities, the studies show, finishing high school is the exception, legal work is scarcer than ever and prison is almost routine, with incarceration rates climbing for blacks even as urban crime rates have declined. Although the problems afflicting poor black men have been known for decades, the new data paint a more extensive and sobering picture of the challenges they face. "There's something very different happening with young black men, and it's something we can no longer ignore," said Ronald B. Mincy, professor of social work at Columbia University and editor of "Black Males Left Behind" (Urban Institute Press, 2006). "Over the last two decades, the economy did great," Mr. Mincy said, "and low-skilled women, helped by public policy, latched onto it. But young black men were falling farther back." Many of the new studies go beyond the traditional approaches to looking at the plight of black men, especially when it comes to determining the scope of joblessness. For example, official unemployment rates can be misleading because they do not include those not seeking work or incarcerated. "If you look at the numbers, the 1990's was a bad decade for young black men, even though it had the best labor market in 30 years," said Harry J. Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University and co-author, with Peter Edelman and Paul Offner, of "Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men" (Urban Institute Press, 2006). In response to the worsening situation for young black men, a growing number of programs are placing as much importance on teaching life skills — like parenting, conflict resolution and character building — as they are on teaching job skills. These were among the recent findings: - The share of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly, with only a slight pause during the economic peak of the late 1990's. In 2000, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20's were jobless — that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72 percent, compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts. Even when high school graduates were included, half of black men in their 20's were jobless in 2004, up from 46 percent in 2000. - Incarceration rates climbed in the 1990's and reached historic highs in the past few years. In 1995, 16 percent of black men in their 20's who did not attend college were in jail or prison; by 2004, 21 percent were incarcerated. By their mid-30's, 6 in 10 black men who had dropped out of school had spent time in prison. -
In the inner cities, more than half of all black men do not finish high
school. Plight of Black Men March 29, 2006 ¦ The NewsHour on PBS ¦ Ray Suarez Many of the disturbing images of Hurricane Katrina's victims forced Americans to confront this reality: Racial inequalities in the U.S. remain very large, particularly for African-Americans. A new report from the National Urban League concludes that many black Americans are struggling to live as well as white Americans. The report found that, despite a more robust economy, the overall well-being of many black American families has stagnated for three years straight. Researchers found African-Americans did only three-quarters as well as whites, when they measured income, health, education, civil justice, and civic engagement. The Urban League's report comes on the heels of a series of academic studies showing the nation's 5 million young black men in particular lag behind other groups. For example, even as the nation's unemployment rate remains low, joblessness for black men between the ages of 20 and 39 has grown; 72 percent of black male high-school dropouts were unemployed in 2004, compared to just 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts. A growing number of African-American men are serving time, too. In 2004, 21 percent of African-American men in their 20s who didn't attend college were in prison, up from 16 percent in 1995. --- continued --- The full transcript is available at no charge online: www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/economy/jan-june06/blackmen_3-29.html Promoting marriage is a wise investment April 11, 2006 ¦ The Baltimore Sun ¦ Ronald B. Mincy and Hillard Pouncy In recent months, Congress made a five-year, $750 million investment in stronger marriages and better parenting by adding healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood programs to its policy arsenal. Legislators and policymakers are betting that efforts to aid children can be enhanced if they help both women and men support and care for their children. And in doing so, they have opened a door through which the federal government can address some of the issues facing a disturbingly large and disaffected population: the millions of young men who are out of school, out of work and simply out of luck of earning a better future for themselves and their families. Compared with the billions of dollars Congress has spent almost exclusively helping women and children through welfare reform, this is a small bet. If it has a fraction of the success enjoyed by the 1996 welfare overhaul, the money will have been well spent. The lesson of the booming 1990s is that it took the economy, welfare reform and such work incentives as the earned income tax credit to bring about unprecedented reductions in the welfare rolls and child poverty. Once the economy and policy reinforced each other, labor economists were proved right and the most disadvantaged made the biggest improvements. From the previous peak in 1989, employment rates among less-educated black women were 10 percentage points higher in 2000 and achieved parity with their white counterparts. Two economists with the Urban Institute, Harry Holzer and Paul Offner, isolated long-term unemployment trends from other factors such as age, education and local unemployment rates and determined what did not happen in the 1990s. The boats of less-educated black men - and men like them - did not rise with the strong economic tide; rather, they were left behind as others sailed on. From 1979 to 2000, employment rates of young, less-educated black men fell by 16 percentage points while those of comparable young black women rose by 1 percentage point. Employment among young, less-educated white men fell by 8 points, while that of comparable women increased by 2 points. Less-educated Hispanic women were the only female group with falling employment rates (by 4 points); rates also fell among Hispanic men. Their decline was only 3 percentage points. The connection between the men left behind during economic booms and a marriage-minded government policy? In the case of young, less-educated black men, at least, only 13.5 percent were married at the end of the period but 50 percent or more were fathers.Marriage and fatherhood programs will affect them (and others) in five areas: * Family formation: Cohabiting couples are more likely to dissolve their relationships than married couples. Thus, children born to cohabiting mothers and fathers are still likely to spend much of their childhood in single-mother families, where their chances of being poor are five times those of children in married families. If spending on healthy marriage helps reverse these trends, it will have been a small bet with large payoffs. * Marriage promotion: Some programs will try to teach young marriage-minded people how to choose their partners wisely. Others will teach married couples how to sustain their relationships in tough times. Still others will galvanize communities in support of marriage. * Employment: In the short term, benefits may be most apparent in employment gains for the men left behind in the 1990s. Congress approved spending money for employment services to improve fathers' economic situations in addition to promoting responsible parenting and strengthening relationships. * Child support: In the long term, fatherhood programs address what happens when couples do not make it to the altar but have children anyway. In one study, black and white children were equally likely to have dads served with child support orders, but these orders were less likely to be paid for black children. A glimmer of good news for black children, however, was that those who lived without their fathers were more likely to see them in the past month than were white or Hispanic children and more likely to have received informal cash support. * Responsible fatherhood: These relatively new programs are most deeply entrenched in the black community and are often the only family service organizations reaching out to men and women. --- continued --- Visit The Baltimore Sun for the rest of the article: www.baltimoresun.com Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun Marriage Is for White People March 26, 2006 ¦ The Washington Post ¦ Joy Jones I grew up in a time when two-parent families were still the norm, in both black and white America. Then, as an adult, I saw divorce become more commonplace, then almost a rite of passage. Today it would appear that many -- particularly in the black community -- have dispensed with marriage altogether. But as a black woman, I have witnessed the outrage of girlfriends when the ex failed to show up for his weekend with the kids, and I've seen the disappointment of children who missed having a dad around. Having enjoyed a close relationship with my own father, I made a conscious decision that I wanted a husband, not a live-in boyfriend and not a "baby's daddy," when it came my time to mate and marry. My time never came. For years, I wondered why not. And then some 12-year-olds enlightened me. "Marriage is for white people." That's what one of my students told me some years back when I taught a career exploration class for sixth-graders at an elementary school in Southeast Washington. I was pleasantly surprised when the boys in the class stated that being a good father was a very important goal to them, more meaningful than making money or having a fancy title. "That's wonderful!" I told my class. "I think I'll invite some couples in to talk about being married and rearing children." "Oh, no," objected one student. "We're not interested in the part about marriage. Only about how to be good fathers." And that's when the other boy chimed in, speaking as if the words left a nasty taste in his mouth: "Marriage is for white people." He's right. At least statistically. The marriage rate for African Americans has been dropping since the 1960s, and today, we have the lowest marriage rate of any racial group in the United States. In 2001, according to the U.S. Census, 43.3 percent of black men and 41.9 percent of black women in America had never been married, in contrast to 27.4 percent and 20.7 percent respectively for whites. African American women are the least likely in our society to marry. In the period between 1970 and 2001, the overall marriage rate in the United States declined by 17 percent; but for blacks, it fell by 34 percent. Such statistics have caused Howard University relationship therapist Audrey Chapman to point out that African Americans are the most uncoupled people in the country. How have we gotten here? What has shifted in African American customs, in our community, in our consciousness, that has made marriage seem unnecessary or unattainable? Although slavery was an atrocious social system, men and women back then nonetheless often succeeded in establishing working families. In his account of slave life and culture, "Roll, Jordan, Roll," historian Eugene D. Genovese wrote: "A slave in Georgia prevailed on his master to sell him to Jamaica so that he could find his wife, despite warnings that his chances of finding her on so large an island were remote. . . . Another slave in Virginia chopped his left hand off with a hatchet to prevent being sold away from his son." I was stunned to learn that a black child was more likely to grow up living with both parents during slavery days than he or she is today, according to sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin. Traditional notions of family, especially the extended family network, endure. But working mothers, unmarried couples living together, out-of-wedlock births, birth control, divorce and remarriage have transformed the social landscape. And no one seems to feel this more than African American women. One told me that with today's changing mores, it's hard to know "what normal looks like" when it comes to courtship, marriage and parenthood. Sex, love and childbearing have become a la carte choices rather than a package deal that comes with marriage. Moreover, in an era of brothers on the "down low," the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and the decline of the stable blue-collar jobs that black men used to hold, linking one's fate to a man makes marriage a risky business for a black woman. "A woman who takes that step is bold and brave," one young single mother told me. "Women don't want to marry because they don't want to lose their freedom." Among African Americans, the desire for marriage seems to have a different trajectory for women and men. My observation is that black women in their twenties and early thirties want to marry and commit at a time when black men their age are more likely to enjoy playing the field. As the woman realizes that a good marriage may not be as possible or sustainable as she would like, her focus turns to having a baby, or possibly improving her job status, perhaps by returning to school or investing more energy in her career. As men mature, and begin to recognize the benefits of having a roost and roots (and to feel the consequences of their risky bachelor behavior), they are more willing to marry and settle down. By this time, however, many of their female peers are satisfied with the lives they have constructed and are less likely to settle for marriage to a man who doesn't bring much to the table. Indeed, he may bring too much to the table: children and their mothers from previous relationships, limited earning power, and the fallout from years of drug use, poor health care, sexual promiscuity. In other words, for the circumspect black woman, marriage may not be a business deal that offers sufficient return on investment. --- continued --- Visit The Washington Post for the rest of the article: www.washingtonpost.com Copyright © 2006, The Washington Post Joy Jones, joythink@aol.com, a Washington writer, is the author of "Between Black Women: Listening With the Third Ear" (African American Images ).
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