Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn (NYT)

[Up2Late]

(I blame the Prison Industrial Complex for this.)

Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn

By ERIK ECKHOLM
Published: March 20, 2006

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)....

(more at link below)

<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/national/20blackmen.html?ex=1300510800&en=d19e7818ebcbc179&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss>

[Selatius]

1. We never ended economic segregation in America, one of our great failures

MLK argued that in the end that programs such as Affirmative Action should not just apply to minorities but to everyone of this society's poor regardless of skin color, but he was cut down before he could continue the fight beyond the death of de jure segregation.

Now we're neglecting the inner-cities, and we're cutting funding for education. The only thing we're spending money on is guns and bombs.

[sweetheart]

2. reminders that its really just a prison state

the poor get the shaft and if your black its just worse,
driving home the reality of the prison-state we've become,
the underclass could care less, over the warden's use of force,
that's all the government really is is a prison guard's gun.
So we're back to mao, with the power based on the police and the guards,
aimed at our heads to keep us in our cells, cowered and stunned,
Cell block los angeles is lovely, if destroying life is in the cards,
why we should ever support this foul prison state, good question that one.

Its not about equality anymore,
or the people or justice, liberty hard won,
its about how one prefers to be raped by the war-hate fervor,
starting some race wars so republicans can have fun.
We are a prison, for one and for all, destroy,
citizen's are prisoners, police state filled with joy.

[ixion]

4. nice bit of prose there, sweetheart

and true, albeit tragic.

[bklyncowgirl]

3. Outsourcing manufacturing jobs has hurt this community too.

This country needs a broad based economy that provides decent paying jobs to people. We also need affordable training in trades for people who are struggling in school and have no plans to go to college.

We also desperately need to improve our inner city schools and face up to the cultural barriers to education that exist in the urban ghetto among young black men.

How do we do this? I haven't a clue.

[slor]

6. I was just going to say, that if we ramped up...

construction of renewable energy sources, we could put quite a few people to work. But I guess we are stuck with a oil boy president.

[Up2Late]

8. To reverse this problem, we ALL must Abandon most American cities...

...until they are made environmentally safe to live and raise children.

Note: It's not only a city problem, I was poisoned as a child, living in small town Indiana, by living too close to several EPA Super Fund sites.

All if those years we used Leaded Gasoline in this country, has left the lead levels in the soils and environment (where inner-city play and grow up) still have Toxic levels of Lead.

Why is is a problem, read this summery of a report done in May 2005 by Howard W. Mielke, who teaches at the College of Pharmacy at Xavier University of Louisiana, at the link below:

<http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/may05/feature_leadlegacy.html>

Lead’s Toxic Urban Legacy and Children’s Health

by Howard W. Mielke

In a 1980 report to the National Academy of Sciences, geochemist Clair C. Patterson wrote an astonishing sentence: “Sometime in the near future it probably will be shown that the older urban areas of the United States have been rendered more or less uninhabitable by the millions of tons of poisonous industrial lead residues that have accumulated in cities during the past century.”

That grim prediction is proving true, with lead poisoning now endemic in inner-city areas of major U.S. cities. In inner-city New Orleans, for example, a quarter of all children are excessively exposed to lead, according to recent studies....


Fourteen percent of all children in New Orleans and 25 percent of children in its inner-city areas are exposed to potentially dangerous levels of lead in the soil. The children either directly inhale the lead particles or are exposed from hand-to-mouth contact in play areas. Projects in New Orleans and elsewhere are trying to reduce and eliminate this risk. All images courtesy of Howard Mielke.

Also, make sure you check out this side bar article from the same article too:

Lead linked to violence

For several decades, the medical and scientific community has accepted that elevated levels of lead in blood can cause adverse health and developmental issues in children, such as anemia, hearing problems, lowered intelligence and slowed growth. Research over the past few years, however, has revealed another problem associated with lead: The soft metal may be one of the most significant causes of violent criminal behavior in young people.

In a 1996 study of 301 first- and second-grade children in Pittsburgh, Pa., Dr. Herbert Needleman, a pediatrician and expert on lead poisoning, found that those with the highest concentrations of lead in their bones showed more aggressive behavior, attention disorders and delinquency.

In another study in 2002, Needleman and colleagues followed the theory that elevated lead levels in children’s bones could indicate future criminal behavior by studying a control group of 194 arrested and adjudicated youths, aged 12 to 18, and 146 nondelinquent youths. The researchers found that the troubled teens had significantly higher bone-lead levels than nondelinquent teens. Besides the behavioral issues, none of these youths showed any symptoms of lead poisoning, Needleman says.

Extrapolating the data from these studies, between 18 to 38 percent of all delinquency in Allegheny County, Pa. (which includes Pittsburgh), could be due to lead, Needleman said at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, D.C., in February. The results are “striking,” he says.

(more at link below)
<http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/may05/feature_leadlegacy.html#sidebar1>

[anotherdrew]

9. don't worry, the pentagons "civilian inmate labor programs" willl fix that

there'll be plenty of work for everybody

[psychopomp]

5. Black men

are born with a target on their backs; in America we are born running. I have no doubt that we will make it through these times as men--meaning we will rise to the occasion.

[cantstandbush]

7. No matter how many "terrorists" we make or who fights us abroad

no matter how many illegal immigrants arrive and burden the system, no matter how much organized crime takes place and no matter who commits these crimes, America will always scorn black men. Envy on one hand and stoked up fear on the other will keep the status quo. But society pays dearly for this kind of treatment. The will to survive will turn many black men to criminal behaviors just to survive or support their families. It's a sad, sad story that will never go away because of the racism ingrained in this society.

[psychopomp]

11. True, that

Envy, fear and I would add, a wish to turn back the clock...

[Freddie Stubbs]

10. According to those charts

Hispanics have a lower unemployment that whites. Interesting.