The Plight of Black Men in America

[vivafidel]

The Plight of Black Men in America

In Education/Family
• Only 41% of Black men graduate from high school in the United States.
• Only 35% of Black men who attended NCAA Division I schools in 1996 graduated after 6 years compared with 46% for Latino men and 59% for White men.
• 69% of Black children cannot read at grade level in the 4th grade, compared with 29% among White children.
• 32% of all suspended students are Black. Black students (mostly Black males) are twice as likely as Whites to be suspended or expelled.
• 67% of Black children are born out of wedlock.

In Employment/Economics
• At comparable educational levels, Black men make 67% of what White men make.
• White males with a high-school diploma are just as likely to have a job and tend to earn just as much as Black males with college degrees.
• Blacks make up only 3.2% of lawyers, 3% of doctors, and less than 1% of architects in America. Many of these are Black women.
• 53% of Black men aged 25-34 are either unemployed or earn too little to lift a family of four from poverty.
• Light-skinned Blacks have a 50% better chance of getting a job than dark-skinned Blacks.
• While constituting roughly 12% of the total population, Black America represents nearly 30% of America's poor.
• 45% of Black children live below the poverty line, compared with 16% of White children.
• The net worth of a Black family in America is $6,100 versus $67,000 for a White family.
• In New York City in 2003 only 51.8% of Black men ages 16 to 64 were employed vs. 75.7% for White men and 65.7% for Latino men.

In Incarceration/Crime:
• In 2001, the chances of going to prison were highest among Black males (32.2%) and Hispanic males (17.2%) and lowest among White males (5.9%).
• Blacks account for only 12% of the U.S. population, but 44 % of all prisoners in the United States are Black.
• Blacks, who comprise only 12% of the population and account for about 13% of drug users, constitute 35% of all arrests for drug possession, 55% of all convictions on those charges, and 74% of all those sentenced to prison for possession.
• In at least fifteen states, Black men were sent to prison on drug charges at rates ranging from twenty to fifty-seven times those of White men.
• One in three Black men between the ages of 20 and 29 is under correctional supervision or control.
• In 1986, before mandatory minimums for crack offenses became effective, the average federal drug offense sentence for Blacks was 11% higher than for Whites. Four years later following the implementation of harsher drug sentencing laws, the average federal drug offense sentence was 49% higher for Blacks.
• The Black male homicide rate is seven times the White male rate.
• A young Black male in America is more likely to die from gunfire than was any soldier in Vietnam.
• The Justice Department estimates that one out of every 21 Black men can expect to be murdered, a death rate double that of U. S. soldiers in World War II.
• 1.46 million Black men out of a total voting population of 10.4 million have lost their right to vote due to felony convictions.

These statistics were compiled from various sources by The Black Star Project