Huffington Post
A FEW years ago, the sociologists Becky Pettit and Bryan Sykes tried to quantify a worrisome phenomenon: the growing proportion of black men imprisoned by age 20. Focusing on those born between 1975 and 1979 who later dropped out of high school, they noticed an anomaly. “Our initial efforts,” Dr. Pettit recalls, “implied that more young, black, low-skill men had been to prison than were alive.”
It took her no time to resolve the inconsistency: corrections officials count actual prisoners, a captive audience; sociologists and census-takers typically undercount prisoners and former inmates living on the edge of society.
The real problem, as Dr. Pettit sees it, is that imprisoned black men aren’t figured into statistics about the standing of African-Americans. The consequence, she says, is an overstatement of black progress in education, employment, wages and voting participation.
Dr. Pettit, of the University of Washington, has now presented her research in “Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress,” published by the Russell Sage Foundation. Among her conclusions:
Among male high school dropouts born between 1975 and 1979, 68 percent of blacks (compared with 28 percent of whites) had been imprisoned at some point by 2009, and 37 percent of blacks (compared with 12 percent of whites) were incarcerated that year.
It took her no time to resolve the inconsistency: corrections officials count actual prisoners, a captive audience; sociologists and census-takers typically undercount prisoners and former inmates living on the edge of society.
The real problem, as Dr. Pettit sees it, is that imprisoned black men aren’t figured into statistics about the standing of African-Americans. The consequence, she says, is an overstatement of black progress in education, employment, wages and voting participation.
Dr. Pettit, of the University of Washington, has now presented her research in “Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress,” published by the Russell Sage Foundation. Among her conclusions:
Among male high school dropouts born between 1975 and 1979, 68 percent of blacks (compared with 28 percent of whites) had been imprisoned at some point by 2009, and 37 percent of blacks (compared with 12 percent of whites) were incarcerated that year.
By the time they turn 18, one in four black children will have experienced the imprisonment of a parent.
More young black dropouts are in prison or jail than have paying jobs. Black men are more likely to go to prison than to graduate with a four-year college degree or complete military service.
Black dropouts are more likely to spend at least a year in prison than to get married.
“Among low-skill black men, spending time in prison has become a normative life event, furthering their segregation from mainstream society,” Dr. Pettit writes.
If inmates were counted, she estimates, the black high school dropout rate would soar to 19 percent and the share of dropouts who are employed would plunge to 26 percent — far more dire than the statistics usually cited. The celebrated voter turnout among young blacks in the 2008 election would drop to roughly 20 percent, about where it was in 1980.
Blacks account for nearly half of the more than 2.3 million Americans in prison or jail. Failure to include them in measures of black progress, she argues, is akin to leaving states out of national counts. Former inmates, too, tend to be undercounted because they are typically poor, mobile and living precariously.
“We collect data to evaluate public policy and allocate resources,” Dr. Pettit says. “One could argue that we already provide social service to inmates, but leaving them out of the data distorts measures of progress.”
Heather Mac Donald, of the conservative Manhattan Institute, said Dr. Pettit’s premise was plausible but cautioned that because the prison population is usually in flux, the effect of not counting prisoners at any given moment might not be statistically very large.
According to federal data, 3.1 percent of black men were in state or federal prison at the end of 2010, compared with 0.5 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 1.3 percent of Hispanics. Among black men 30 to 34, 7.3 percent were serving a sentence of more than a year. (A total of 748,000 adults were in local jails, 1.5 million were in state or federal prisons, 840,000 were on parole and 4 million were under supervised probation.)
Orlando Patterson, a Harvard sociologist, said Dr. Pettit “deserves credit for specifying in sharp demographic detail the extent of the problem of incarceration, which is an American national scandal, and some of its consequences.”
While “black progress is not a myth,” he said, “the simple, tragic truth is that a large number of young black men do engage in violent acts and other forms of criminal behavior.”
“Over 80 percent of black children have been abandoned emotionally and, usually, economically by their fathers,” he continued. “It is not the case that black children are deprived of paternal emotional and economic support because their fathers are in prison; rather, their fathers are in prison in good part because their own fathers had abandoned them emotionally and economically.”
The nuances can be debated, but Dr. Pettit stands by her premise: “Decades of penal expansion coupled with the concentration of incarceration among men, blacks and those with low levels of education have generated a statistical portrait that overstates the educational and economic progress and political engagement of African-Americans.”
More young black dropouts are in prison or jail than have paying jobs. Black men are more likely to go to prison than to graduate with a four-year college degree or complete military service.
Black dropouts are more likely to spend at least a year in prison than to get married.
“Among low-skill black men, spending time in prison has become a normative life event, furthering their segregation from mainstream society,” Dr. Pettit writes.
If inmates were counted, she estimates, the black high school dropout rate would soar to 19 percent and the share of dropouts who are employed would plunge to 26 percent — far more dire than the statistics usually cited. The celebrated voter turnout among young blacks in the 2008 election would drop to roughly 20 percent, about where it was in 1980.
Blacks account for nearly half of the more than 2.3 million Americans in prison or jail. Failure to include them in measures of black progress, she argues, is akin to leaving states out of national counts. Former inmates, too, tend to be undercounted because they are typically poor, mobile and living precariously.
“We collect data to evaluate public policy and allocate resources,” Dr. Pettit says. “One could argue that we already provide social service to inmates, but leaving them out of the data distorts measures of progress.”
Heather Mac Donald, of the conservative Manhattan Institute, said Dr. Pettit’s premise was plausible but cautioned that because the prison population is usually in flux, the effect of not counting prisoners at any given moment might not be statistically very large.
According to federal data, 3.1 percent of black men were in state or federal prison at the end of 2010, compared with 0.5 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 1.3 percent of Hispanics. Among black men 30 to 34, 7.3 percent were serving a sentence of more than a year. (A total of 748,000 adults were in local jails, 1.5 million were in state or federal prisons, 840,000 were on parole and 4 million were under supervised probation.)
Orlando Patterson, a Harvard sociologist, said Dr. Pettit “deserves credit for specifying in sharp demographic detail the extent of the problem of incarceration, which is an American national scandal, and some of its consequences.”
While “black progress is not a myth,” he said, “the simple, tragic truth is that a large number of young black men do engage in violent acts and other forms of criminal behavior.”
“Over 80 percent of black children have been abandoned emotionally and, usually, economically by their fathers,” he continued. “It is not the case that black children are deprived of paternal emotional and economic support because their fathers are in prison; rather, their fathers are in prison in good part because their own fathers had abandoned them emotionally and economically.”
The nuances can be debated, but Dr. Pettit stands by her premise: “Decades of penal expansion coupled with the concentration of incarceration among men, blacks and those with low levels of education have generated a statistical portrait that overstates the educational and economic progress and political engagement of African-Americans.”
LOCK DOWN AND PUT AWAY
Welcome to another web edition
of THINKING OUT LOUD, and I'm
your host, E. L. Pleasant. Thinking Out Loud, they spend more time in and out
of court than attending church and struggling to pay fines than they ever will
put in a collection basket. One mans dream
is always another mans nightmare. Martin
Luther King Jr. wanted us to live together before we learned to live and do for
ourselves and everyone can see this, yet they want to credit him for a man of
peace and his vision that landed him in jail for marching peacefully, while
Malcolm is looked up on as a man with far too many bad ideals, from having our
own, doing for ourselves, coming together and not having to depend or look to
the white man for anything but respect.
Like everything else, they tell us who our hero’s are and pick our
leaders, which is why we have neither today.
It is hard preaching to the deaf and blind for their minds are closed
once the ears go. This is one of the
main reason(s) why we can’t come together as a race because we can’t
communicate effectively enough to remove the build-up of wax and cataract that
society has placed there to keep us from advancing beyond their set
agenda. Think about it, they don’t want
us around, and they don’t want us to separate.
It would be like the north and south all over and to claim what is
rightfully ours from birth would pull/divide this nation to choosing sides once
again. Therefore the less we talk about
the problem there is no problem. Malcolm
X said, “If you not ready to die for freedom, then take the word out of your
vocabulary,” because it is no use to you.
The numbers speaks for it self, but will you? For THINKING OUT LOUD, I’m E. L. PLEASANT
STORY BY:
E.
L. PLEASANT
STORY
EDITOR
BRANDON
DE’LEONCE
MUSIC
BY:
BONONIASOUND
SHINERECORDS
ISTOCK
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PRODUTION
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JOHN
WESLEY
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COPYRIGHT
© 2012
E’SDROP
PUBLISHING
COUNTRY OF FIRST PUBLICATION UNITED
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SPECIAL THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING CONTRIBUTORS:
The Bing Corporation
Black Voices
Huffington Post
Yahoo
You Tube
Istockphoto
Bononiasound
Shinerecords
Malcolmxfiles.blogspot.com
TMZ
NBC
ET On-Line
The New York Times
AP
Colby Tanner
DR. Becky Pettit
Bryan Sykes
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