In the Memphis sanitation workers strike where Dr. King was killed 40 years ago this year, a worker came up with a picket sign that read I Am a Man. It caught on and became the watchword for the Memphis strike and for other strikes of low-wage workers across the country in years to follow. At rallies, workers would chant and add in their own touches: “I am a man … I am somebody …. I am a hungry man….. I am somebody ….. I am a black man …. I am somebody.” And what does it mean to be a black man after four decades of marching and striking and chanting? For many, it STILL means you are less likely than a white man to be able to get a good education and a decent job, and more likely to do time in prison than on a college or university campus.
Last November, Barack Obama said to a fundraising audience in Harlem: I don’t want to wake up four years from now and discover that we still have more young men in prisons than in college. The Washington Post, among others, took him to task for stretching the truth, observing that while there are maybe 710,000 young black men in college, there are only 276,000 black men aged 18-34 in prison. In other words, if Obama had not used the word young, he might have made a totally accurate statement. But what got lost in the exchange was the fact that there are too few black men in college and too many black men in prison.
The confusion originated with a 2003 study by the Justice Policy Institute in Washington. D.C. www.justicepolicy.org which found that “there are more black men in prison (791,000) than in colleges and universities (603,032).” In “The Funding of Higher Education and Corrections and Its Impact on African-American Men,” the JPI concluded that the nation’s colleges and universities have “lost budget battles to the prison system.” And the study went on to say that the percentage of black men in prison is now five times the rate it was 20 years ago.
Another study, this one released by the Justice Department in 2002 www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0881455.html said that about 10.4 percent of the black male population in the United States aged 25-49 is incarcerated, most of them for no-violent convictions, as compared to 2.4 percent of Hispanic males and 1.2 percent of white males in the same age group.
And a report by the Community Service Society in New York www.cssny.org/pubs/special/2004 said black men 18 to 65 are seven times more likely than white men to have a prison record, and opined that felony convictions are an “unaccounted for factor” in the high unemployment rate among black men age16-65. In New York City in 2003, for instance, only 51.8 percent of black men aged 16-64 were employed. When you add in that, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, more than 50 percent of all black men who are employed are working in “low-paying” jobs, you get an idea of the depth of the disparity …. and the despair.
The Post itself interviewed Craig Watkins of the University of Texas for its ground breaking 2006 series titled “Being a Black Man,” and he said, “When you look at American popular culture, the percentage of African American men graduating from college has nearly quadrupled since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and yet more African American men earn their high school equivalency diplomas in prison each year than graduate from college.”
While Barack Obama may been off the mark in his exact phrasing, the question he raised should pierce our individual and collective consciences: why are we so willing to spend so much money on our prison industrial system, and so little on education?
Last November, Barack Obama said to a fundraising audience in Harlem: I don’t want to wake up four years from now and discover that we still have more young men in prisons than in college. The Washington Post, among others, took him to task for stretching the truth, observing that while there are maybe 710,000 young black men in college, there are only 276,000 black men aged 18-34 in prison. In other words, if Obama had not used the word young, he might have made a totally accurate statement. But what got lost in the exchange was the fact that there are too few black men in college and too many black men in prison.
The confusion originated with a 2003 study by the Justice Policy Institute in Washington. D.C. www.justicepolicy.org which found that “there are more black men in prison (791,000) than in colleges and universities (603,032).” In “The Funding of Higher Education and Corrections and Its Impact on African-American Men,” the JPI concluded that the nation’s colleges and universities have “lost budget battles to the prison system.” And the study went on to say that the percentage of black men in prison is now five times the rate it was 20 years ago.
Another study, this one released by the Justice Department in 2002 www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0881455.html said that about 10.4 percent of the black male population in the United States aged 25-49 is incarcerated, most of them for no-violent convictions, as compared to 2.4 percent of Hispanic males and 1.2 percent of white males in the same age group.
And a report by the Community Service Society in New York www.cssny.org/pubs/special/2004 said black men 18 to 65 are seven times more likely than white men to have a prison record, and opined that felony convictions are an “unaccounted for factor” in the high unemployment rate among black men age16-65. In New York City in 2003, for instance, only 51.8 percent of black men aged 16-64 were employed. When you add in that, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, more than 50 percent of all black men who are employed are working in “low-paying” jobs, you get an idea of the depth of the disparity …. and the despair.
The Post itself interviewed Craig Watkins of the University of Texas for its ground breaking 2006 series titled “Being a Black Man,” and he said, “When you look at American popular culture, the percentage of African American men graduating from college has nearly quadrupled since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and yet more African American men earn their high school equivalency diplomas in prison each year than graduate from college.”
While Barack Obama may been off the mark in his exact phrasing, the question he raised should pierce our individual and collective consciences: why are we so willing to spend so much money on our prison industrial system, and so little on education?