Black Men Lag Behind in America | Voice of America - English
Economic growth during the past four decades has brought gains to most Americans, including ethnic minorities. But African American men have lagged behind. Black men, some 17 million of them, make up about six percent of the U.S. population. Unemployment and incarceration rates historically have been high for this population group.
Professor Bell notes that about three-quarters of black male high school dropouts in the United States are unemployed, compared to about one-third of their white counterparts. So, he says, many cannot support a family. And some analysts say that a loss of the traditional bread-winner role has turned many black men to violence. In addition to victimizing one another, many African American men are abusive to women in their communities. Studies show that African American women suffer more abuse and are more likely to be killed by men than women in other racial groups. Many analysts argue that discrimination has not caused the rise in violence within the African American community. They say it does not explain why black men, especially young men, have fallen behind in recent years. Since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, desegregation and affirmative action for minorities have offered African Americans political and economic opportunities. Alvin Poussaint, a professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School in Boston and author of several books on African American issues, links the problems to education. "We are now facing a dropout rate among black males from high school of over 50 percent in many cities around the country," says Poussaint." And when they lack a high school education, they are more likely to end up jobless. So you have a situation where the jobless rate for black males is very high. And associated with that has been an increase in the number of black men who are in prison. With the unemployment, many look for alternative ways for making money. And unfortunately that leads to a lot of anti-social and even criminal behavior." Professor Poussaint says racial integration has never really taken hold in American public schools because after the racial upheaval in major American cities, many whites moved to the suburbs. Professor Poussaint says this has led to voluntary segregation in many public school districts, which means that black children in poor communities often receive inadequate educations.