Comments on: Tapping the Economic Potential of African American Men

By: schmange

schmange — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:22:22 +0000

I have been thinking about the difference between African American men and women.

I don’t know if there’s any truth to this but maybe the difference is public assistance. Public assistance, be it housing, nutritional or social services, is overwhelmingly funneled to women with children. Perhaps, many black women have been able to leverage this support to pull themselves out of poverty the way many white immigrants did with the GI Bill.

On the other hand, black men are not so much subject to assistance as to imprisonment. It stands to argue that that is having the opposite effect.

By: Shaheen

Shaheen — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:06:02 +0000

That was really more of an opinion piece than a study, considering none of the data was original. However, the opinions were interesting.

Standard has a good point. I wonder why the author of the report never explained why he chose to focus soley on African American males and completely leave out females.

Although, if he had, I would guess that he would say that people don’t have the same biases against black females that they have against males. And, as Standard described, black females seem to be finding opportunities for education and financial success at a higher rate. But it would have made sense for the report to explain why that might be.

By: The Urbanophile » Blog Archive » Midwest Miscellany

The Urbanophile » Blog Archive » Midwest Miscellany — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:26:24 +0000

[...] Wire pointed us at a study by an organization I’d never heard of called Policy Bridge on African American men in Northeast Ohio. I haven’t read the entire thing in detail yet, but Rust Wire’s take looked interesting [...]

By: Standard

Standard — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 01:10:57 +0000

I wouldn’t say it’s black men that have the potential but black women. According to Department of Education statistics cited by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, black women earn 67% of all bachelor’s degrees awarded to blacks, as well as 71% of all master’s degrees and 65% of all doctoral degrees. The vast majority of African American households are headed by black women, not black men. Black women are also the vast majority of those supporting the black church both monetarily and through membership. My guess is that black women are coming up fast and they are a largely untapped source of community leadership for northeast Ohio.

By: John Morris

John Morris — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:38:47 +0000

I won’t make many freinds by saying this but “compensating them more fairly”, would often rationally mean dropping the minimum wage barrier.

“Fair” to any employer not getting taxpayer bailouts and relying on profits from sales means a person’s wage is in relation to their “output” as an employee. If one third of these kids dropped out of school and many others are poorly educated this will likely affect what they can do.

The earlier, issue of wider corruption in and the failure to provide safe streets and business districts also ultimately has to affect wages.Poor business climates high taxes and insecure property rights have to be paid for somehow.

The American dream of starting out smart but unskilled in “the mail room” has been cut off at the knees.

So instead of being “exploited” at starter jobs kids now have to go into 50-100,000 in college debt to get on the ground floor. Funny that is never described as exploitive?