Very unsatisfying article leaving readers with more questions than it answered. What actually causes the disparity in outcomes between black young men and black young women? As a now retired teacher in a select ( you had to test to get in) city school I noticed that upper class black families tended to send more girls to our high school than boys. It was just not cool for the boys to be seen by their peers as studious no matter what their economic background. It was an African American cultural/peer driven thing. In addition, black males at our school who tested in, often did not graduate because they lacked the discipline and study skills to achieve good grades. Black male students often struggled with authority figures and so their behavior also held them back. This could be reflective of lack of positive and consistent black male modeling in their lives. As such, pointing the finger at racism instead of cultural factors such as these does nothing to better the situation but only keeps young black males further and further off mark.
19
When you aggregate the income rank data displayed, it actually shows that in relation to parent income, white men earn a higher amount of income, and everyone else earns lower, roughly similar amounts of income. I would guess that much of that difference comes from the greater income people in the upper echelon of business earn, and is due largely to the continued prevalence of the good-old-boy network that greatly favors white businessmen.
What (apparently still) happens to black boys in schools is that they are treated differently, more harshly, and more severely than other groups of students, especially when they act up. This has been going on, and remarked upon, for a long time. It is racism in one of its rawest forms. School and law enforcement officers are both involved in this travesty, and we need for both of these groups of officials to eliminate their disparate, greatly harmful treatment of black boys.
5
The condition of young Black men is a national disaster and national disgrace, but this study is profoundly and intentionally misleading as to its causes. In the past 50 years, the values of instant gratification, materialism, and promiscuity that were associated with our lower classes have infiltrated and largely defined mass culture as a whole, particularly as reflected in music, and have had a disastrous effect most especially on young Black boys. Until that culture changes, until self-discipline, sacrifice, education and responsibility are returned to their rightful place, no real, lasting progress will be made. If we truly want to help Black boys, we will address the cultural factors that have such a pernicious effect on their lives.
15
What is the source of this wealth amongst blacks. If the source of the wealth is in the arts, entertainment or sports for most Blacks then is entirely possible that the sons of these families are trying to follow their fathers path into a riskier future, while their daughters are more likely to be more prudent and focus on a better education and are less likely to lose their wealth and/or privilege.
6
There is something very wrong with this article.
It is looking at income as as a determining factor on how the next generasationwill do as if there aren't significant differences between people who are rich.
I say there is.
A pro athlete for example might be very rich and gave there children all the things money can buy you but did nor encourage these children to do well in school.
A lawyer will more likely encourage there children to do well in college which will give them the skills that are needed to do well when they go out on their own.
So in addition to income level the study should have looked at education levels.
I believe if this was done you will find more people who were highly educated in the white community than in the black community.
.If I am am right than it isn't a result of discrimination that the next generation didn't reach the same levels of education even when they went to the same schools.
You can't blame the schools.
You should blame the parents because they did not give their sons the ability to do well on their own.
You might ask why this scenario did not hurt black women as much as it black males.
I think in a family where the sons are not encouraged to do well in school their daughters are encouraged to do well.
They are better qualified to do well when they are no longer being supported by their rich parents.
So in addition to income levels the study should have looked at educational levels.
5
Everyone has choices in America. One may choose poverty, or having grown up in it, to remain there. As I write, my coworker next to me who came up in the brutal Chicago Robert Taylor Homes projects earns more than I do. And is successful. Choices. Time to turn off the boo-hoo machine for people who made disastrous choices, like having too many babies when then couldn't afford to take care even of themselves. Personal responsibility must be inculcated as well as a strong notion of the social contract that binds everyone together. Without those elements, people live like animals and don't prosper, regardless of their other traits or circumstances.
7
Gaps persisted even when black and white boys grew up in families with the same income, similar family structures, similar education levels and even similar levels of accumulated wealth." - This study falls apart because of this false equivalence! Given the incidence and residue of slavery, Jim Crow and institutionalized racism, African Americans do not have equivalent wealth with White Americans. Given stolen land from Native Americans and stolen labor from Africans, White Americans have accumulated wealth that is 20 times that of African Americans. The idea that there are "comparable" White and Black families is false. We begin on unequal playing fields and the field becomes more unequal as individuals mature. Furthermore, the authors don't attempt to address the intersection of class, gender and race using the lens of Intersectionality. The assumption that class, race and gender operate alone is outdated because empirical research has proven that they don't. While this study may be "interesting", it's pretty useless!
2
"Extensive Data Shows Punishing
Reach of Racism for Black Boys"
The authors don't actually make any case to support the headline. Their article doesn't establish any causal relationship between racists's behavior and black boys failures. Neither do the authors offer any evidence that black boys strive to succeed academically but are thwarted by systematic race based impediments.
Humans succeed, are mediocre, or fail due to how they react to environmental opportunities or impediments. Part of that reaction must come from within. Praise is merited when such reaction includes problem solving and good will. Blame is merited when it does not. Not all human failings are ascribable to external factors like racism.
10
After I read the interesting introduction, I simply searched for "racism" and was not disappointed. A selection of liberals are eager to place the failures of the ultra-privileged at the feet of racism, with the implication that it is White people who somehow are to blame. Similarly, no praise or admiration for poorer White parents and kids who find a way out of poverty,
This thinking is lazy and unhelpful: even tedious. Will Jawando even concludes that White racism is behind these data because he "knew it was there and "felt it."
Why is the failure of wealthy black parents to educate their children properly not an equal candidate for the failure of black kids to remain rich? Or perhaps it is flawed parenting from poor black parents that dooms their kids to a cycle of poverty,
The study proves nothing about "racism" beyond exposing the prejudices of people who see White racism everywhere. Enough already.
11
The implication in this article is that white people are responsible for rich black men becoming poor. Many of the comments in the NYT Picks tab state this fairly directly.
While I wholeheartedly agree that racism is a corrosive fact in American society that has a lot of second and third-order effects, I also believe that articles such as this have contributed generally to our fracturing society and the rise of the repugnant Donald Trump. There are a lot of white, middle-class Americans who are sliding down the socio-economic ladder for a lot of reasons. The recurring messages that they are not only responsible for their own decline, but that of other Americans doesn't play well and Trump seized upon this feeling and exploited it.
8
"Mr. Jawando, who identifies as black, is now a married lawyer with three daughters." This describes the racial problem in the US in a nutshell.
Why does Mr. Jawando have to "identify" as anything other than a successful American? Racism has taken way too long to dissolve in America than it should have!
5
There is an obvious flaw in the methodology of this report-- and that flaw is... drumroll... IT DOESN'T BRING UP HOW DIFFERENT RACES AND GENDERS SPEND AND INVEST THEIR MONEY! How can an a serious economic study not bring up money management when the study is about family wealth over the course of a lifetime? When you hear about a rich person going broke-- isn't the first assumption that he/she made a bad decision at some point? This study doesn't even bring this up as a potential factor. Are we to assume that every culture/race/gender manages their wealth the exact same way? As a Jewish American, I know for a fact that my culture instills lessons about saving and investing at an early age while cautioning against spending recklessly. That's why Jews are so financially successful (and why they get the "Jews are cheap" stereotype). It's not because there is systemic favoritism towards Jews. Of course, the elephant in the room is that there have been negative stereotypes about black people spending money for decades. Hip Hop has contributed to this with the depictions of rappers making it rain in their Bentleys. OBVIOUSLY, those are just stereotypes and many successful black people don't buy 24K gold necklaces with their first big check. But this study-- by not even addressing money management-- only reinforces these stereotypes to prejudiced readers, who already assumed that rich black people will lose their fortunes.
7
It's not clear to me how this can be explained by discrimination. Racial discrimination does not take the inheritance away from rick black heirs. You have to personally, actively do really stupid things to sink from a rich boy to a poor loser adult. It's actually pretty hard to squander a huge advantage like that.
The fact that black girls are not affected only reinforces the suspicion that rich black boys are more likely to fail because of their own mistakes, like higher inclinination to violence and poor behavior in school, rooted in specific cultural patterns enforced by their peers. Like the accusation that you are 'acting white' if you are ambitious and hard-working in school and college.
So instead of only blaming racism instinctively - and without any evidence I can see - it might serve those downward-mobile black boys better to take a hard look at how their own culture is bringing them down.
8
All the commenters here so happy to complacently attribute economic outcomes to personal individual qualities like perseverance & motivation rather than entrenched institutionalized discrimination based on race & class.
Big shock. White people with internalized racist beliefs & practices do not willingly examine them. The people wielding (& benefiting from) institutional power would rather not examine the racist & classist ways they wield (& benefit from) that power. Comfortable middle class white people are not willing to look at the ways they are responsible for poor outcomes for Black people, & in particular Black men.
1
So many of the comments are focused on disputing that racism plays any role in the outcomes for black males. The article had plenty to say about things other than racism, from family structure, the differences between boys and girls in the effect of role models, etc. But it seems very important for a good percentage of the commenters to dispute just one aspect of the article. Pretending that racism doesn't exist is one of the biggest problems we have in this country. I've seen plenty of racism in my time, whether it was the white men who yelled the n-word at me while walked home from school, the comments I've heard about my Indian friends and occasionally anti-white bias. Racism is just a fact. What impact it has on a person's life may depend upon a variety of factors, but lets stop pretending it doesn't exist.
25
In our local High School, the black boys are way over represented among the most popular kids. They tend to be so popular, that not a few white boys seem to wish that they were black. Black boys tend to be viewed being good at sports, being cool, and being successful with the ladies. It almost as if the black boys are forced by peer pressure to model the sort of black male swagger often portrayed in movies and TV. The white kids see that as being really cool.
On the other hand, the black girls do not enjoy the extra attention and popularity. Given that, they tend to be more serious about their studies. Like the charts show, these black girls do as well as anyone as adults.
Black parents I know are at their wits end. They moved to a place so that their children could go to the best schools and be far removed from the crime, poverty, and despair often associated with poor black communities. It worked for their daughters. Not so much for their sons.
7
Why perseverate on the white / black discrepancy data when the most egregious research indicates that our Asian community (a minority) have the highest success rate?
5
"Large income gaps persist between men — but not women."
I'm sorry, but this is very misleading.
There _are_ large income gaps between average white women and average black women.
What Dr. Chetty's study actually found was that a white woman and a black woman whose parents earned the same amount of money are themselves likely to earn the same amount of money. But, of course, white parents on average earned more money in the past than black parents, so white daughters on average earn more than black daughters.
2
How will Trump use this study to his advantage?
Fascinating information and article. A couple of years ago I was speaking with a very privileged young black man in my company. He is the son of two very well off and successful medical doctors. This young man has also done well, graduated college and graduate school and has a good career.
He told me that about an experience when he drove from West Palm Beach into Palm Beach (across the bridge near our office) to go to dinner. He was immediately stopped by Palm Beach Police Department once into Palm Beach for a license plate issue (there was no issue) and they asked to search his car. He let them, he also told me that it was not the first time his car had been searched (a nicer car than my own by the way). His parents had taught him not to resist police even if their requests were illegal or unwarranted.
I was incredulous, all the times I've been stopped for traffic issues in my life and not one has any police officer asked to search my car. There was no reason to stop this young black man and there was no reason to search his car, the only reason it happened was his race.
I can't image how the universal suspicion following black boys and black men impacts their psyche.
2
I grew up in one of those Washington suburbs (Bethesda). There were few black students in my high school, but the few did well and fit in, for the most part. Because it was the 1970s, there wasn't any interracial dating, but everyone socialized together. There was no bullying, violence was utterly unacceptable, and the expectation was that people would go to college. The black students adhered to the norms that the white students adhered to. Perhaps black students need these community norms more than some white students do.
6
There was a study a few years back comparing black immigrants to America and how they perform in academia as compared to African-Americans. How they perform after college is also striking. Anyone have that reference? TIA
1
Would it be possible to make shareable gifs from these infographics?
The NYT changed the headline of this article on the second day to include the word "Racism" thus weakening the importance of the study. The original headline did not mention race, but rather referred to the core finding: that black boys with wealthy parents were more likely to end up poor than white boys with wealthy parents.
This is a complex study, decades in the making, with millions of subjects involved. The data is still there to be sifted through. This study should spark more questions and further research into the dynamics of class, wealth, education, upbringing, culture, and so on.
The is invaluable information.
I had to read the article several times to grasp the depth and scope of the findings.
Using the word 'racism' in the headline is lazy and not the fault of the researchers, or even writers perhaps, but most certainly the fault of the editors.
8
"Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys." Wow, that's quite an assumption when the article presents no evidence for the conclusion.
7
This might be a little technical but if you look carefully at the second figure in the article and if you transpose the “women’s” gap plot on the right onto the “males” gap plot on the left you will see that all women, both White and Black, share the same gap that Black Males have compared to White Males. Put another way, Black Males, Black Females and White Females all are equally disadvantaged compared White Males. What does this tell us: the “Black Male gap” isn’t just a Black Male gap. It appears that Black Women and White Women are also disadvantaged relative to White males ..hence it is not possible to attribute the Black male gap simply to the fact that there is a gap between Black Males and White Males. The gap problem is best described by the fact that Black Males have incomes that are comparable to Black and White Females. Another way to say this is that White males have higher incomes than everyone else!
1
Why is this surprising. The generation profiled was one of the first raised in the Cult of the Single Mother.
It isn't black boys and black men. It's boys and men, taught from the cradle that masculinity is toxic, to get in touch with their feminine side, to sit still and be quiet or get drugged into it. Black males are simply the canary in the coal mine. When men are not valued, societies fail.
4
Tithe animated statistics do not add anything to the article and they are distracting. Otherwise a valuable article.
1
I wonder what would happen if the govt ended the War on Drugs and changed the laws so that fewer young black men went to prison.
I'm married to an Ethiopian woman and my son identifies as black. One thing they've taught me is that if you are white, you have very little understanding of the affect of racism in America. Readers claiming that it is all about "pulling yourself up by the bootstraps" are likely either white or in denial (blacks can always earn points by denying the existence of racism).
Racism is a completely human behavior that is likely embedded in our very DNA- we are a violent, tribal species, and tribal identity is fundamental. We are also a highly visual species and look for differences. We bond with our own children partially based on visual similarity and tribal identity extends from there, undoubtedly in varying degrees from person to person.
But we are also a loving and diverse species capable of overcoming impulses we deem faulty. We will overcome our racism only with the awareness of it's toxic existence in ourselves Accept, forgive and correct our own bad behaviors- that is what civilization should be about.
25
So, are this article and comments from those supporting its thesis any indication of what the Democrats intend to discuss/emphasize during the 2020 campaign? If they are, does anyone want to predict the outcome?
8
Question:
How do the numbers compare when controlled for life decisions such as choosing to attend a College or University, etc?
1
In reading this article, and then the comments section, I can't say as a black male that I am surprised to read coded language about: IQ, education, culture, children born out of wedlock, graduation rates, lack of fathers in the household etc. I am also not surprised that these comments are among the most agreed with on this particular subject either.
We do not like to talk about race and racism in our society-- it is an uncomfortable subject for some, is sometimes too easy to reach for in conversation of passion, but until it is thoroughly examined within and discussed it will remain the groundwork for all the aforementioned coded language above. The findings in this article to me are less about where we are currently and more about the policies and laws of racism, discrimination and redlining that have subsequently shaped our culture as Americans and how we view each other. The key concept there is how we view each other, because the real tragedy is how some of us do not actually take the time to get to know each other, our family histories, or our cultures. You cannot speak of cultures and families about which you know nothing, and blanket statements are neither apt nor acceptable when discussing human beings.
Data is helpful to a point, but ultimately does not deal with people on a fundamental, humane level. Everyone's story and family history is different. This is a complicated study that I could speak at length about but would need many, many more characters to do so.
4
What about the salient fact that black people and white people are getting married frequently? In my own family with trust fund baby cousins some of those very well-heeled people are--black. Stereotypes need to die because humans cross those lines constantly and will do so with increasing frequency in future.
7
"Extensive data" shows nothing when not given a proper multi-variate analysis, which would include controlling for the strongest statistical predictor of socioeconomic success: IQ. It is a stronger predictor than parents' income. This factor cannot be dismissed by hand-waving of "explain to me why these putative ability differences aren’t handicapping women,”--there are plenty of possibilities why this might be the case.
6
I'd be curious to know if, and if so, how much teen peer pressure and the teen "cool" factor plays in academic success (among all ethnic/cultural student groups) and if that is a factor, does it for some reason have a stronger negative impact among black teen boys? I grew up in a very homogenous, 70s Sweden, in a mixed lower-middle to upper-middle income area. The pressure to be cool -- which included not doing school work -- among the boys in jr. high school was so predominant, I'd say no more than 50% of the boys from my primary school class continued on to pre-college tracked high schools. (I'd say the only ones who did OK were the ones who managed to succeed without haveing to study -- or perhaps had to lie about studying to their friends.) This culture did not exist among the girls, and I'd estimate well over 90% of the girls continued on to pre-college tracked high-school. (In Sweden, students finish primary school at age 16 and high school is not mandatory. Students can choose between vocational high schools and college preparatory schools.) This trend included many of the boys who came from well to-do families with at least one college educated parent. I think this culture was many times local and varied significantly from one primary school to another. Nevertheless, it was a huge factor. What does it look like in the US?
14
"The pressure to be cool -- which included not doing school work -- among the boys in jr. high school was so predominant"
Thank you for this observation as it reflects similar comments made down thread regarding cases of experiences by African American young adolescent boys. The term is: "acting white", being a negative. The reasons for such a perspective are likely complex, and may include: I can't be white so why try. This belief system can be addressed and provide an avenue for social/cultural intervention; re: how to be yourself when you are trying to fit in with a group. Besides ones surrounding cultural milieu, parental awareness and guidance needs to be part of the solution. These are life altering choices.
8
Studies such as these of large demographics and multiple correlations on likely explanations appear to illuminate on the one hand, yet are of little use, especially to the man or woman trying to make choices daily about how to proceed in life. It seems they are written more for elite academic analysis than for the person on the street.
I am also wondering about the presumption of equality behind these analyses. Does being created equal mean that statistical equality should surface across the entire spectrum of human conditions?
3
The data doesn't necessarily support the view that the major factor for black boys growing up in wealth but unable to remain wealthy is primarily due to racism directed against black males. There are several indicators that suggest other factors. The cultural differences between 2nd and 3rd generation Asian Americans that result in greater wealth for the sons of immigrants than their own children. If one were to look deeper, one would find the same ratios among groups of African American men whose families immigrated from the Caribbean. Studies I have seen that sons from these families also excel white males in wealth and success. One would find similar differences amongst the sons of African Diaspora families. Thus, culture and communal factors play a far more critical role and this reflects the data we see here. Even in the white population, were one to look at the economic success of immigrant Jewish families in the USA in spite of fierce prejudice, one would note the type of cultural patterns and reinforcement of disciplines and virtues that result in wealth creation that is sustained over numerous generations. What one does note amongst those groups that do succeed against great odds is their recognition that they are responsible for their success. Simply scapegoating others won't get you very far in the long run and over many generations.
23
We need to also look at what schools these students are going to. More questions:
1. Do black boys in schools with a lot of peers who are black (or white, or Asian, or rich, or poor) do better, or worse? Or even better: how does having a black teacher affect black students?
2. Does private and public schooling affect outcomes for black boys against other demographics?
3. Are there regional differences? State vs state? Rural vs City vs Suburbs?
4. Does being a black boy in a private school in a city fare that much worse than a white boy going to the same school? How does this differ compared to public schools in the Deep South?
Also, this study labels those at the top 20% as "upper class". Is there that much of a racial gap in boys when you go to the SUPER rich (top 1% or 5%)? Since maybe the 82th percentile has more blacks than the 99th percentile, if so, more of the top 20% whites have more money and resources than the blacks since the black top 20% is actually poorer. Maybe the 99th percentile has a smaller racial gap.
4
While racism may be a part of the disparity here, the information shared is so selective that one can't be sure.
How about side-by-sides of:
- Single Parent Households
- High School Graduation Rates
- University Acceptance Rates
- University Graduation Rates
- Advanced Degree Rates
- Percentage of Married & Unmarried Who Have Children
- Percentage Employed
Without understanding all of the levers that drive personal wealth (basically: graduate high school, don't have children out of wedlock, get married, get a job = middle class), this article leaves us with little do other than try to mandate equal outcome. A. It's never that simple. B. It never works.
14
This study seems like a scam. Nowhere is there a definition of what "rich" or "upper middle class" is. Without definitions there is no hard data. Additionally, people of any race can be affluent during one part of their lives and broke in another. Personal financial standing is fluid in America. There are no lifetime guarantees for anyone.
8
Regarding the question of how to make prospects for black boys more equitable, the article points to two major obstacles: social perceptions and the need for more black, male fathers in the neighborhood. Does the data indicate which of these is the greater impediment for most black boys? If the answer is contained in the article, please point it out.
5
This is scary and discouraging. As a black male, who grew up in a low-income household, and is also a high-income earner, this makes me afraid to have kids. You grow up with belief that working hard to provide a financially stable life for your children is the key to success only to learn that it really doesn't matter.
3
Don't buy into the gloom and doom, Robbie. Something is missing from from this story, not sure what it is. You are a successful guy and surely would be a good father, and we need more of these. The past is not necessarily the future.
11
I read it differently, that it is committed, caring and involved fathers like you that can make all the difference.
4
On the contrary, if anything, this research remonstrates how important the presence of black fathers is, not just for their own children, but for their whole community. So just being a responsible black father would be an important social contribution.
3
This article dismissed how horribly our economy treats women.
In fact, the results for women were condescendingly treated as a positive, because there was no disparity along racial lines - they all made less than men, hooray!
11
There was a study about black students by a UC Berkeley professor in Shaker Heights in Ohio back in the late 90's as to why academic performance was below that of whites even thought the kids came from rich economic neighborhood.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/30/arts/why-are-black-students-lagging.html
''What amazed me is that these kids who come from homes of doctors and lawyers are not thinking like their parents; they don't know how their parents made it,'' Professor Ogbu said in an interview. ''They are looking at rappers in ghettos as their role models, they are looking at entertainers. The parents work two jobs, three jobs, to give their children everything, but they are not guiding their children.''
"For example, he said that middle-class black parents in general spent no more time on homework or tracking their children's schooling than poor white parents. And he said that while black students talked in detail about what efforts were needed to get an A and about their desire to achieve, too many nonetheless failed to put forth that effort."
16
A more recent article on why black students are under-performing in San Francisco schools.
https://calmatters.org/articles/san-francisco-states-worst-county-black-...
"The problem in San Francisco may be severe, but it’s not unique. Huge gaps between black kids’ scores and those of their white peers have existed in California for decades. And average reading test scores statewide show the problem persists, even as districts make progress narrowing the achievement gap between Latino and white students."
"Aries Bedgood is a junior at Raoul Wallenberg High School in the city’s Fillmore neighborhood, a diminishing hub for black culture. He cited yet another contributing influence: San Francisco’s under-performing black students sometimes ostracize and try to intimidate high-achievers. “If you try to excel in school, other kids will try to get you to back off and blend in,” said Bedgood, who is on track to graduate and plans to go to college. “The community reinforces that. It’s pretty sad.” "
11
Human beings are all the same. When there are huge disparities in achievement between racial groups I think we have to point to culture as the culprit. The overarching culture of each racial group plays a huge role in either nudging boys toward success or keeping them from it.
7
The incredibly shrill insistence of the top commenters that race can't be the answer -- in the face of streams of data that it is -- is hilarious, and speaks to why this is still a problem. It's hard to fix a problem people are comfortable pretending doesn't exist.
7
People aren’t contesting whether race is a factor. The question is how much does racism play a factor.
The headline would be more accurately written “Extensive Study Suggests Strong Connection Between Fatherhood Participation and Socioeconomic Mobility.”
One can reasonably explore and debate the ways racism plays into fatherhood participation, and that’d be a healthy conversation for all.
16
Carolyn: If race is the reason, how is it that African American females are performing and earning well?
4
The data can be interpreted anyway you want. I'm black and I interpret it as being mostly driven by the choices and cultural practices of blacks themselves. I base this on my own personal experiences and the experiences of others.
You seem to think racism is the cause. That's your interpretation and you're entitled to it but you don't get to tell us how we should interpret it. Especially when the remedy may negatively impact the rest of us.
2
The data analyzed in these studies can often lead to skewed results. For instance, when defining populations such as neighborhoods in urban areas like Chicago, recent demographics have been drastically changed through government-action as a result of it tearing down large housing projects and relocating the former residents to middle class areas (made possible through Section 8 housing subsidies). Robert Taylor and Cabrini Green are two such representative projects that specifically come to mind. The result has been a poisoning of the neighborhoods and gun violence not being so much attributable to random acts but rather to territorial disputes among displaced drug dealers. The point is that any study will be severely tainted by circumstances of the type described above which, to a certain extent, can be found nationwide. If you're studying how well black boys fare as compared with whites boys, then you're probably not noticing how the country as a whole is losing ground. For instance, if you're acknowledge that the 1 or 2 percent of the population is getting richer, then you're likely missing out on the fact that the other 99 or 98 percent are becoming more nearly alike and poorer! By the way, a less capable country, not interested in meritorious hiring or rising salaries has all sorts of ramifications-racism not the least. Here's a better study: Whatever happened to the World Bank and Why doesn't anyone mention the International Monetary Fund (IMF)?
1
First, what a remarkable study and with data SUPERBLY visualized. Well done, NYT.
But then, in your headline summary you choose to conclude that the discrepancy is (primarily? exclusively?) due to "punishing racism."
Isn't a key finding (THE key finding?) from the study that the presence of fathers in the community has a striking correlation with outcomes? Yes, there are factors that involve racism that cause this, but how do we know these are primary? Isn't being a committed father a matter of choice, a cultural value (or not), and hasn't it trended down markedly even when at least institutional racism (that is true institutionalized racism in the form of actual laws, Jim Crow, etc.) has actually measurably decreased?
13
Interesting but is it conclusive? A few years back I read a story of a women who won $10 million lottery. She blew most of the money on gifts and cash to her family members and exotic toys - i.e.) Cadillac SUV with a turntable installed (after market) so she could spin her favorite music whil driving. The long and short fthe story was that she eventually came about when she "lost" most of the $10 million winning to foolishness and expensive junk. She stored the Caddy in a garage - it needed expensive repairs. And she finally did the right thing by putting most of what she had left in the names of her kids, in trust, for their future education. Interestingly, she bought the Caddy SUV and didn't buy a home - which she could well have done.
The lottery winner was a native Canadian, born in Canada, and a person of color. There was no cotton grown in Canada and the Orginal Sin south of the border linked what is today Canada, as the end terminus of the "underground railway" that frican slaves used to escape the planatations to freedom in Canada.
I appreciate that one swallow doesn't mke a spring. The true story would not be statistically relevant. But it does intrique curious people looking for social patterns. It may be helpful to include in any study of the impact of past slavery on African Americans by also sampling a cohort group of Canadian of African American descent to test if there is a pattern that is supported within the cohorts.
2
While these findings intrigue me, I'd love to see what the percentages are after two generations from wealth. I grew up like many of my white friends, with parents who rose from Depression-Era poverty. Many of them were first-gen immigrants. Now we have reached the same status as our folks did, all middle to upper-middle class.
Yet the old "shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves" system seems to be working out. We held our own, but our kids are slipping a bit, some of it from wasting money they should be saving, some from stagnant wages and opportunities, and their kids?
Poorer than any of us. That does not bode well for this nation, if both white and nonwhites are losing socioeconomic status.
5
Over the last 30 years I have seen many different alayses of data on income mobility in the US. I have witnessed likewise much agonizing over how to tell the tales in the data: what about the story of Horacio Alger is still true? How has mobility changed? Is it a myth? Was it ever true for some groups, or others?
So this huge data set, presented in these amazing visualizations, is just stunning, and fascinating, and welcome. The last graphic in particular - I hope teachers and students everywhere are studying. Thank you NYT, authors, graphics folks and all.
Please remind everyone that of course there are many tales to tell in this data. There must be a great story on the relatively greater success of black as compared to white women, for example. And another on the inside story of that white male exceptionalism line - we have heard a lot abou the variation in it. Thank you for focusing on these hard truths about realities for black men and boys to start off. (I was reminded about the 30 year lawsuit was it in the NY iron workers union - how within the union, black members were so comprehensively shut out of work opportunities that the effects could be seen over decades in size of houses, education of children, etc.) Horrible, shameful, and worth a deep dive, not flip tweets about one or other element.
Maybe I missed it, but I did not see any questions about beliefs by people of the various groups. It would have been very interesting to see how belief in the value of educationcorrelated to income. Also of interest would have been questions about of boys beliefs about their futures translated into outcomes as men.
6
It's a surprising finding. Many of us believe that the problem is a lack of resources and support. We thought that "If we could remove people from the deep concentrated poverty and poor schools and move them into the suburbs with all the inherent advantages, all would be well." After this study, we need to go back to the drawing board and start again. Very troubling.
8
My boys (white) grew up in a middle class neighborhood with good schools. The school was racially diverse and they had many black friends. They started in pre-k and continues through high school. All the kids had the same education. During middle school and high school, they fed into larger schools that included poorer urban neighborhoods. In those two years, the black kids they grew up with started hanging out with and emulating the black kids from poorer neighborhoods. They went from speaking proper English, to the patois of urban rap. I picked my son up from high school at lunch one day and was amazed by the racial division in the cafeteria. Black boys who had the identical education as my sons, had suddenly unlearned the English language. When I asked my son about a boy who had been his close friend in grade school, he said 'Oh yeah, he's gone gangsta'. By 14 the transition was complete, the kids from the better off neighborhoods, felt compelled to be less white for fear of being taunted by their urban black friends. This article infers the same thing the NYT always does, it's white privilege that affects black boys. I don't think that is true, my kids and their black friends had identical educations, they just made different choices about who they would hang out with in high school and for some the allure of black urban culture seemed to win and thus delineate their future.
51
I can only hope that someone is doing serious research on this so we will be able to see the effect of social pressure and groupings on life choices and outcomes.
9
This has been looked into by researchers such as John Ogbu. What you are describing mirrors something I’ve seen and experienced personally (I’m black). Unfortunately due to political correctness it has been dismissed by academics and the media.
You see this phenomonen a lot in the DC suburbs in particular PG county. In the larger high school attendance zones, the affluent black kids will go to kids who are often on Section 8 and live in low rise apartments. Contrary to the belief of august academics it’s not the rich kids that set the social tone at these schools but the poor ones. The results speak for themselves.
18
Just what everyone suspected. Teenage boys have poor judgement and are easily influenced - if it looks cool and impresses girls, they'll do it no matter how stupid it is.
Did these black families have fathers? Why did they allow this? It's the adult men who have to tell teenage boys no, don't do that, you'll get in a lot of trouble.
6
Amazing statistic- fathers play a role in wealth and income disparity. Marriage is a valuable tool in providing and keeping wealth. Sadly we forget this- the headline should have been the importance of families.
21
Drug addiction and other addictions. Yes folks, drugs can and do happen to wealthy people. I would like to see what wrinkle to the study that correlation would do. The answer will never be known as it would be almost impossible to get good data.
My speculation is the connection of old(er) wealth to less offspring drug use versus higher offspring drug use rates with newer wealth...............coupled with the comparison of old money to new money by race; may be an explanation. Just sayin'.
For those of us that do not have the income percentiles memorized it would be good to give a link to that at least. From the article "in the 90th percentile — making around $140,000 a year — " Ok, what about all the other percentiles. Your point is still clear without defining the percentiles but it would still be nice to have access to it.
5
Almost at the end of the article, it says "The ladder charts so far have shown equal numbers of black and white boys." I think this is a key thing. For instance, the very first chart lacks important information on how hard it is to gather the same number of rich black families as rich white families. Occupation of the two groups may look different: most of the latter can be "usual" families like lawyers and IT engineers, but the former can be somewhat special like including many professional athletes and entertainers.
4
That graphic says it all. Congratulations to the artists/reporters who put that together and made it work.
3
There is no doubt that the racism black males experience in America is particularly insidious. The reason liberals tend to focus on economics and class is not that it's something more concrete than individual attitudes than can be addressed with policy. It's that if one says white people have unique advantage based upon their whiteness - that is something that is undeniably true - the first problem is that no one wants to admit they earned what they have just by the color of their skin - that strikes them as a form of prejudice. It goes against a notion of justice that we treat everyone as an individual. There will inevitably be a defensive reaction when you accuse people of "white male privilege", even if the reality is that it exists. That makes political solutions more problematic if you're alienating a large portion of the electorate.
Put simply, telling white people that their endemic racism is what's keeping black boys and men down may be truthful, but I don't see how that becomes effective politically.
3
It might be racism, but if so, why does it only impact black males? Why not hispanics or even black females?
I tend to believe that there are also strong cultural factors in play - most specifically the "gangster" archetype that causes so many adolescent teenagers to disengage completely from their education and subsequently ruins their lives.
To take a specific example, take the top black male rapper of today, Kendrick Lamar. Just go look up some of his lyrics - I can't actually put them in the comment because they'd probably the comment banned.
Then go to a high school and walk the halls. Notice headphones glued to each kid's ears. See what the black boys listen to. Compare that to the music listened to by any other race/gender (including black girls). Notice how much more interested they are in what's coming through those headphones than they are what the teachers are saying.
2
It is intellectually dishonest to point out unequal outcomes and conclude "racism" without explanation. Unequal outcomes is not alone evidence of racism. The important question is WHY, and this is a question this "article" spent no time trying to answer.
All this article does is alienate those who really care about solutions and provide examples of fake news to far right conservatives.
42
How can the problem be racism if boys fail at a greater rate than girls? Presumably it effects both equally.
22
Racism was one of the factors mentioned, but not the only one. The article also mentioned black marriage rates, the lack of role models for boys and other factors. But if racism is the one thing you want to pull out of the article and question its an interesting choice.
3
The chart with men on the left and women on the right was interesting. The caption on the male chart is "Black men consistently earn less than white men, regardless of whether they're raised poor or rich."
Yet the curve for black men was similar to that of both black and white women. A better caption for this one might be: "White men consistently earn more than everyone else, regardless of whether they're raised poor or rich."
And the same forces are probably in play: more opportunities, more favorable assumptions about ability and character, better-connectedness to those with jobs or advice to offer, and I would speculate a greater desire of those from whom advice/work is sought to be helpful. Those already in power look at young up-and-comers and say "He reminds me of me when I was young." It's harder to feel that if "he" is a "she," or he doesn't look like "me" at all.
16
The left keeps arguing that race doesn’t exist, then published articles that are explicitly racial in nature.
Under what circumstances is race real and not real?
14
The article contradicts itself. It clearly shows that blacks are much behind in fatherhood and marriage. And concludes that 'racism' explains everything.
45
There's some cognitive dissonance in these comments:
If Trump gets elected, it's racism in America.
If Obama can't get his agenda through, or get respect, it's racism
in America.
If the average Black person can't get ahead, it's never, never
racism in America.
4
Fathers have a very important role to play in the lives of children. Mothers have a very important role to play in the lives of children. Liberals and the media use every opportunity to advocate against the "traditional" family in favor of the "modern" family and are then "surprised" by the consequences. Why do immigrants from India and China (mostly from poor or middle class families) succeed. Two invested and supportive parents. Not rocket science.
33
Where is the research about school attendance, parental care, academic performance, social dynamics and grit? Where is the relevant data about recent immigrants such as Asians and Hispanics? Why do most pieces of research on racism seem so vague and only tell us what we already know?
20
You wrote, "As early as preschool, they are more likely to be disciplined in school. They are pulled over or detained and searched by police officers more often." This link is broken, so it can't be analyzed, but I have seen New York Times articles on disparate police searches, and this can't possibly be the reason so many black men fall behind. Is that what they're implying? Focusing on data from a sensationalized New York Times study on racial bias, Chicago police don't search blacks and whites 98-99.6% of all vehicles. When they showed Roland Fryer's data on use of force in stop-and-frisk NYC and elsewhere, you could see that blacks received force about 350% as often as whites, but when you controlled for type of interaction, the disparity percentage dropped to around 20% -- and even being more advantageous for black men than white men in getting shot in the same scenario!
Clearly the data shows BEHAVIOR matters more than RACIAL BIAS. But stories like this don't really explain that. Regardless, the data does give us pause as a nation.
Please provide more evidence if that's the supposition of what you're presenting.
15
I am having trouble with the data that black boys who grow up in wealthy families are much more likely to end up poor. How does this happen? They experience racism that their parents didn't? Something doesn't make sense.
18
I think the answer must lie in how the wealthy black families became wealthy. If they are in entertainment or sports, they may be incredibly wealthy but may or may not have much education, or much to pass on to a younger generation. It would seem obvious that money, alone, won't perpetuate wealth.
13
Ugh! The stereotypes. There are plenty of wealthy black families that are not associated with entertainment or sports. Why don't you try expanding your circle?
11
Wow. That was awful analysis. But great use of stereotypes!
It is now being recognized that peers have more influence on life choices than upbringing. If a young, well educated affluent black man finds himself incarcerated (apparently that happens to be around 2% of all men in jail) then he must look at his peer group to understand what got him into that situation. I would venture that these will almost always be young (18-25) immature youth.
8
May be black men are just different from others because of their DNA, which is the result of centuries of culture, behavior, and history in general. If you want to find effect of racism in America you have to compare sons of black immigrants with no history of slavery, and native-born sons of slaves.
Cause and effect in even an individual human life are very difficult to determine, let alone a large group of people.
3
I don't think culture influences DNA. DNA is physical, ie cells etc.
1
"Gaps persisted even when black and white boys grew up in families with the same income, similar family structures, similar education levels and even similar levels of accumulated wealth."
I preface my comment with that direct quote from the article. I tend to avoid the comment section of any article/video/blog that deals with race or racism solely due to the majority of comments that seem to always resort back to the established mean; black men are victims of their own victim hood.
The comments I've read so far in the readers pick confirm this basic bias. Somehow even when a black male and a white male, both the same age, same education, same degree, parents are both in their lives, parents of similar education and income/accrued wealth, etc. when a gap somehow still rears it's head, the first reaction is to blame the person, not the institution. Comments such as "did they attend school everyday?, do they have a willingness to delay short term pleasure?, criminal behavior?" don't move the conversation forward, instead they just help in finding blame to somehow put back on the black male. What every successful and educated black male faces in America is that little nagging voice, the one that whispers "If I don't show up ten minutes late, are they going to think I'm lazy? Do her parents know I'm black? Does this outfit make me look too black?"
The comments below seem to justify those thoughts.
9
The long-term difference between black boys and black girls may have a relatively simple reason. Marriage. It's well known that educated and well-off women will look for a husband above or equal to themselves in status. And it's equally well-known that men are more likely to marry women from a lower social or economic status, or not marry at all. Double the income, more than double opportunities for such things as a mortgage, travel abroad, or a graduate degree.
10
Reading the comments, one thing has become clear to me: If black boys perform badly, their attitude is to blame. If white boys perform badly, female teachers are to blame. A real Trumpian attitude to life.
6
This is very interesting work and demands some study and pondering. However, how about questioning the idea that staying wealthy should be the objective in the first place? How about becoming a fully realized individual and let the money follow afterward, if needed? Plenty of wealthy people are suffering with all manner of problems, including depression.
Certainly discrimination should be challenged and doors to opportunity opened wider for all. That would benefit not just Black men but the nation dn the world as whole.
3
While the topic and findings are troubling and though-provoking, the data visualizations in this piece are simply poetic. The first chart is as mesmerizing as it is illustrative, a dynamic visualization of the earnings potential of young black men "falling off the cliff' despite starting off life with wealth. Each chart is incredibly clear and forces you to confront its truth. Data viz is essentially about revelation, an unveiling of ideas in such a way that the viewer is able to make an instant connection and grasp something new. This is really an example of the power of communication in such a crisp way.
5
Though I am not black, I am troubled by the tendency to group all black people together. I notice that there is some data in this study reflecting differences between the children of immigrant and native-born Asian-Americans. Is there similar data on the children of black immigrants and native-born blacks--children/descendants of people who wanted to come here and children/descendants of people forced to come here? My guess is that native-born black children do far worse than the children of black immigrants-- that what we are seeing is as much a vestige of slavery as it is racism.
9
The data does show a substantial difference between immigrant black children, and the children of black immigrants. But I suspect this has a lot to do with American culture and the images of what it means to be a black man that are sadly embraced by popular culture, rather than rejected as the repulsive endorsement of negative behaviors that they are.
4
Sylvester Magee died in 1971. Mae Louise Walls Miller died in 2014. But even if you dont believe the accounts that small pockets of slavery existed in the South well into the 1960s, sharecropping officially ended in the 1950s. Segregation ended in 1964. Red-lining went on as late as the early 2000s.
1
Legalized slavery ended in 1865. But laws to circumvent the abolition of slavery were instituted and upheld for a century afterward. This is not ancient history. The effects of legalized slavery and its aftermath through Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement continue to the present day. There are people living in their 50's whose grandparents were the first generation to be born free in this country. It’s simply false to state the impacts of slavery are not felt by their children and grandchildren.
1
Did you need a study to show this? Look around. What is not in the study is how the parents themselves became upper middle class or wealthy, whatever that truly means. If senior corporate senior executive children not being in the same economic place as white kids from less affluence environments is shocking I don't know why it would. Most people get jobs thru people they know. The affluent know and socialize with the affluent But also, with people in work and their social circles. An entrepreneur's child who is Black would have a very different exposure level and circle of friends than a white corporate person earning the same amount. Go look at the makeup of most NFL or NBA teams executive offices online. Besides the players and a few coaches, most of the staff are caucasian and Blacks dominate those sports. Yet, they make up very few of the off court workers on the teams. People hire people the know and like. Also, people they view as themselves.
1
Not only is "upward mobility" a myth, but rather, for black men, "downward mobility" is the rule.
1
The data shows that upward mobility is not a myth. No need to exaggerate.
2
I refer to studies that show upward mobility in general has hugely declined. Upward mobility is a myth for at least 50% of Americans, if it has not gotten worse in the meantime... https://phys.org/news/2016-12-today-children-tough-prospects-parents.html
1
Actually, the expansive upward mobility in America is not as great as people think - US ranks pretty low on that scale.
1
How are these for possible explanations of the white-black male discrepancy and the non discrepancy between females.
1) Black males tend to have a much higher violent crime rate than whites -- 7x the murder rate --- and homicide is one of the leading causes of death for black males, not true for whites. So, you should take crime rates into account.
2) The lure of the streets: Black males are much more likely to join gangs than Black females. Think that might make a difference?
3) College graduation rates; We know Black women graduate from college at a higher rate than black men. Could that have an impact.
4) Maybe corporations are more willing to hire Black females than Black males -- other things being equal. Obviously, the corporations get to count for their affirmative action, diversity, whatever goals both a female and a black. And maybe black females are more willing to go into administrative positions than black males.
5) Maybe black women feel a great responsibility to take care of their children these days and therefore are more likely to keep working -- even if the male has abandoned them.
Jumping to the headline that this outcome is due to racism (as well as much of the content) is ridiculous. Racism may be an issue, but there's no data here that shows that. The best the writers could do was anecdotes. And since most life outcomes are due to multiple causes, if racism played a part -- how much of the income gap does it account for?
32
Interesting this is attributed to racism when the same isn't true for women, sounds more like sexism, but that doesn't fit the narrative. Maybe you should look at why this happens instead of just taking the easy way out and blaming "racism". My guess is this is likely due to the so called "opioid epidemic" and I recommend reading the article "In praise of ADHD" people want to slow down others instead of speeding themselves up or admitting they aren't up to par.
11
Not sure what to make of this with regards to children of upper income parents (as opposed to other income categories).
1. I think it had already been well-established that the income distribution for African Americans is lower than for whites. I wonder if the income quintiles in the top graphics had been relative to the African American income distribution, the percentages would not have been more similiar to whites.
2. Somewhat related to point 1, African Americans are said to be less likely to be married. Not sure how this pattern compares to whites as a function of income. It would have been interesting to break-out the children by marital status of the children.
3. The graph for the incarceration rate seems to reflect mainly that the propensity for blacks to be incarcerated is higher. It would have been interesting if this had been adjusted in the article by showing the ratio.
4. What causes some areas to have higher marriage rates for blacks than other area (independent of income)? I am wonder if the Bronx, and the Washington D.C. suburbs have a larger black immigrant community.
4
No matter how much America tries nothing really changes.
2
Plenty changes.
This mindset - "nothing works" has the implied "so, lets give up". But it does work. Nothing is perfect, but vast improvement has happened. Do this same study 2 decades ago, and the results would be far worse. Another generation back, immensely worse.
Perfection is the enemy of the good. And too often it's just an excuse to give up.
5
So nothing changes even though the u.s. had a black president? How odd.
5
I wish the study accounted for people who are descendants of enslaved people (African-Americans). "Not all skin folk is kin folk." African-Americans have a very, very different experience than recent immigrants. For example, comparing Mr. Jawando to African-Americans boys distorts the already dismal picture. The legacy of slavery is heavy (cycle of poverty, racism, inequality in education, housing, and employment, missing fathers through mass incarceration, the"black tax", disenfranchisement, etc). Mr. Jawando's family came to this country without this legacy. We must start parsing the data to show the huge disparities that still exist to identify specific remedies for African-Americans.
10
I did academic research on black integration/school busing in the 1960's, and am happy to see that "big data" analytic techniques are now offering new insights into economic mobility of various racial/ethnic groups.
I have not had time to read the extensive material generated by this huge project, but I was struck by this statement from the study's website: "We conclude that reducing the black-white income gap will require efforts whose impacts cross neighborhood and class lines and increase upward mobility specifically for black men."
Given that black men, and the black boys who will become the black men, seem to be the main sub-group with limited/downward mobility, and that huge data sets often obscure individual and sub-group differences, I would like to see a more narrowly focused and in-depth examination of factors that might affect the upward mobility of black men/boys, e.g., family structure, father-absence, cognitive ability, economic status, even genetic/hormonal differences. Often such differences are best illuminated not only by number-crunching but by complementary psychological, sociological and anthropological examination and analysis of individuals. For example, in the 1960s studies at several top universities showed consistent cognitive differences among racial and ethnic groups, an unpopular finding that led to disbanding the projects. However, the way to ameliorate any such differences would be objectively to identify them and apply remedial measures.
5
If the difference is cognitive, then the distribution for women should be similar to men.
It's not.
This is the result of slavery and the demonization of black men resulting from it. For four hundred years, people of African descent have been characterized as subhuman, a division which helped prevent poor and indentured whites from making common cause with poor and enslaved blacks.
We should face up to the fact that our society has trained itself to be fearful when encountering black man for no other reason that it helps exacerbate economic division among working people. We have to get past our racism. Until we do, America will be a broken society, unable to realize its full potential.
2
That doesn't answer the question of how black men who start out life in the top two percentiles slide down the ladder. Did their parents not experience any racism? How did they make it up? How did their children fall down?
13
Boys drop out of school more than girls, are kicked out of school more, go to jail more, are forced to take Ritalin more, commit suicide 4 times as much as girls, and go on to get only 40% of college degrees.
These numbers are even worse for black boys.
Our boys--black boys in particular-- need help...the kind of help we rightly gave and continue to give girls when they were behind in education.
Instead, feminist writers like Hanna Rosin (The End of Men) claim that these issues are not problems to be solved, but female triumphs to be celebrated.
12
You realize the article is about RICH boys, right? Are they also dropouts?
4
The statistics and data are eye-opening. The closest and simplest analogy one could create out of the statistics and data with regards to an American's economic prospects is the game of snakes and ladders. In the case of the white males and black females, all snakes and ladders are present in their economic path. In the case of the black males, all ladders have been replaced by snakes. This is the pernicious impact of institutionalized and systematic racism.
2
Close scrutiny of the data shows that so much of liberalism is insincere or sterile or at least ineffective
One of the maps showed how poor black boys tended to do, in adulthood, by region of the country. The map showed that black boys were most able to climb the economic liberal if they lived in Western States (And I don't mean the West Coast) that go solidly republican.
I carefully looked at New York and its surroudning areas, where I come from. New York of course is one of bluest regions of the country. Apparently the future for black boys, in this region, is as dismal as the future is for black boys from Alabama and South Carolina
Why do poor black boys from conservative western states do better than black boys from the most liberal precincts of the nation, and will Pelosi et al ever get around to asking this question.
I also commend this article for obliquely criticizing feminism, which propogates the delusion that boys are always favored by society and that all our attention must be toward young girls.
There are so many important motifs in this article that I can't begin to mention them all. I will close by noting that the article revealed that blacks who are situated in rich white neighborhoods don't magically soar economically. This tends to prove that conservative critics of school bussing and scatter site housing were correct. Putting fatherless blacks in the midst of rich white families that have Fathers can be painful.
23
Interesting points all.
3
The blacks in Western states are probably pretty isolated. Growing up in a place like Montana or Wyoming would force a teenage boy to be more integrated into mainstream culture, with a wide variety of interests and friends.
1
Why do poor black boys from conservative western states do better than black boys from the most liberal precincts of the nation?? There are more opportunities to join gangs where there are larger concentrations of Blacks in large cities.
1
For a scientific study the article is lacking rigor.
For example a critical criteria would be the number of siblings.
Many studies have shown that your place in birth order has a very significant impact. First borns and only children have significantly higher levels of accomplishment as a general rule.
I have observed that black families tend to be much larger on average than white families. It stands to reason if a family can't give as much attention to a child as a smaller family, than the child will be at a disadvantage.
Take the issue of black women and white women's level of success.
Black women in general can rely far less on black men for support than white women can rely on white men. Therefore if they have relatively the same level of career success as white women who have less of a need for success, than in fact they are underperforming white women de facto. Undermining a main point of the article.
For a scientific analysis this is yet once again biased sociological presentation, twisting stats to satisfy a conclusion they already reached. Namely that white society is at fault.
8
SO it is white men at the top, black men at the bottom, and black and white women together exactly on the level in-between. It would be interesting to have a comparative study with Europe, where there was no Jim Crow period. Especially France maybe, where most black people are Africans, without a past of slavery.
Minority men usually bear the brunt. They are perceived as threatening, while minority women are not. That may play a role. At the same time, Muslim girls in school in Europe outperform their brothers, but so do girls in general, and they still earn less than men. What a complex issue.
8
Nothing in this research provides evidence that racism-- whether institutional or overt-- is the cause for this disparity. Yet, that conclusion is in the title of this article. Yes, the stereotype of the criminal black male certainly exists, but it's a rather large assumption (based on nothing but the opinions of individuals with academic incentives to say so) to assign that stereotype as the sole reason for the data. As others have asked: why are we not allowed to consider alternative explanations? Indeed, the very fact that black women diverge from black men should have at least prompted discussion of even a single explanation that does not have its basis in institutional racism. I have a feeling that if the research showed opposite - that black women had a disparity, and not the men - the article would discuss the punishing effects of the stereotypical black woman.
In an era when half the country is crying foul over fake and slanted news, reputable news organizations like the Times should be additionally careful about its biases.
36
The central point of the research is that black boys from well-to-do families end up disproportionately poor. In the absence of evidence The Times and most of the commentators attribute it all to racism -- and thereby obscure and stigmatize the search for possible answers.
We are so tired of any situation involving black failure being tied to white, or systemic, racism. Using the same logic, it would appear that white folks have an unending supply of goodwill for those of Asiatic background, as we disproportionately endow them with stellar grades, good citizenship, doctorates, and financial success.
36
Having taught in minority schools in NYC twenty years, with three masters degrees in education (undoubted the cause of my downfall, even though what I learned was substantiated every day in the classroom - yes, racism still exists) and having read the Times for decades, I have noticed three topics on which the NY Times readers, as evidenced by their postings, suddenly flock sharply rightward: education, immigration, and race. No matter how much research is published, it is almost overwhelmingly responded to as flawed, inasmuch as it does not support prejudices that are integral to our ideology (yes, every people has a story it tells itself about how the world works) but has little basis in reality, namely, that each individual is a free being who can pull himself up by his bootstraps, that all failings are individual. The outcry is always the same: flawed research by academic liberals, reportage by liberal journalists, the usual know nothings. So it is no wonder that the problems of racism and scapegoating are endemic to our national makeup, are a foundation of the stories we tell ourselves about how the world (in our case, the U.S.) works. I don't see a light at the end of this tunnel. Knowledge, in this case sociology, will not save us.
8
"So it is no wonder that the problems of racism and scapegoating are endemic to our national makeup..."
Hi Jarrell - there is a nice phrase for this: "shooting the messenger." Also, "eyes wide shut". And lest we forget, "kick something in the long grass."
5
This study ignores the fact that whites and asians have much higher HS graduation rates than blacks, and higher college completion rates as well. Perhaps this is the biggest factor in driving blacks incomes lower later in life?
13
Boys go on to get only 40% of college degrees, black boys even less.
Where are the headlines, the cries to fix the problem?
7
I would like to know more about the black boys who are sons of millionaires who ended up poor. Were they the sons of millionaire pro athletes? Men who may well have had children by multiple women since they were in HS? Men who have had very little influence on their sons? Or where they sons of doctors and lawyers and other professionals - men who worked hard and got a great education and have achieved a great deal?
I would think that the sons of these two groups would be VERY different. The first, grew up in a single parent household; the 2nd had two parents involved in their lives. Girls who grew up with wealth had mothers who had achieved much and probably fathers who did the same. Very different set of circumstances.
19
What I have seen from an anecdotal perspective, but across many settings and a number of professions, is that young Black boys and less educated Black men face enormous obstacles in school, on the streets, in the justice system, even in churches. Educated Black Americans, however, are able to access advantages tied to race. It is this discrepancy that is often confused in people's minds. There is simply no question that Black youth, particularly males, face pervasive racism that makes success much more difficult. There is also no question, however, that educated Black adults are often favored with regards to opportunities in higher education and upper middle class employment. A Black applicant for college president will get the job over white applicants when all qualifications are equal. Everyone has seen this occur. The problem is that many whites will look at that Black person preferentially getting that job and insist that Black Americans are ALWAYS favored across the life span and across economic strata. That's the error that contributes to the lack of concern for those Black youth who are facing untold disadvantages tied to their race. The visible instances in which being Black results in an advantage (and there are such instances) are not representative of the enormous disadvantages faced by young Black Americans who have not yet "made it".
11
*Advantages tied to behavior more than race.
2
What factor(s) are affecting the mobility of all these men? What is the specific catalyst (or series of catalysts) influencing the economic rise and fall of each male in these studies? Did a man have access to a network for employment or not? Was a man able to get financing/loan or not? Was race a limiting factor when a man is promoted at his a place of employment or not? Did a man become incarcerated for years or not? The answer most commonly used to dismiss this situation is "poor black men are poor because of a limited ability to think their way out of bad situations", hence the often discussed low intelligence / cognitive ability response. As the only explanation offered, it serves to assume there is no solution to this inequality since the problem is inherent in the men who suffer these economic issues. However consider this, if the effects of broad-spectrum/institutional racism acts as a distortion/perception filter how can one trapped in the center of it think their way out when the options they are presented with are weighed in the direction of low to no trajectory? This is not "a who is the smarter one" issue. There are many mediocre/talentless people in highly paid, prestigious jobs and a multitude of dedicated/talented people in low paid, underappreciated jobs. This is a who gets an opportunity issue and who doesn't.
2
Could there be other factors, such as cultural values, career choices, behavioral issues? The divergence between racial groups, including Asian-Americans, Latinos, Whites, Blacks, Indian/South Asian Americans, etc. have more causes beyond racism, surely?
20
How is the NYT allowed to reveal such racial based data while the law school at the University of Pennsylvania censors professor who published similar findings?
21
"This study makes it possible to look in greater detail at interrelated disparities that researchers have long studied around income, marriage rates and incarceration."
As a retired child protective services worker & supervisor, was disappointed to see no data on corporal punishment, particularly excessive corporal punishment that leaves marks & other injury.
In 2012 ( I checked), there was an op-ed piece in WaPo by a black woman who was appalled by the NAACP's poo-pooing of black preacher Rev. Creflo Dollar getting into trouble with the law after he beat his daughter. The writer let the cat of the bag that the NAACP propagated the belief that black parents had to control their sons with corporal punishment, if necessary, to insure their behavior in white society. Anecdotally, I had heard black co-workers say the same thing, but had no idea it was institutionally sanctioned by the NAACP and black church until I read the op-ed.
It sure seemed like the majority of the reports we received on physical abuse were on black families. Sometimes black co-workers & school social workers simply didn't have much of a problem with down to elementary school age black children being beaten to the point of leaving marks.
I would bet being raised in a violent home has some serious impact on how some kids turn out, just like when they're neglected & sexually abused, and it is pervasive.
4
In seeking answers, it helps to consider cause and effect. You’re from South Carolina. Where do you think the historic precedence for “whipping” your child came from? It didn’t originate in the Black Community. It’s not, as you allude, an intrinsic part of the African culture. The historical roots are more complicated than that. Ironically, corporal punishment is often justified in Black families to protect their children from the inherent dangers of white society. Racial trauma has a lot of adverse impacts on our society.
2
If racism is the answer, why doesn't that apply to Black girls and women?
11
Because than they would have to acknowledge that prejudice against males occurs as well, and that it is both black race and male sex that lead to these disadvantages. However, that would go against a prevailing narrative.
6
What is 'rich'?
5
In 2005, household AGI over $91K. In 2015, household AGI over $112K. About 23 million households.
So what is stopping black males from investing in each other to build wealth? Other minority males do. A simple thing like owning a bodega/corner store goes farther than not.
6
Obviously, David Grunsky can't think clearly. If you have a male-female difference -- like here -- that neither proves nor disproves what the cause is. To jump from saying that these results prove it can't be an issue of cognitive ability -- to it has to be something in the environment -- well why doesn't that something in the environment also affect women? It simply doesn't make the case either way.
And I'm certain that if women showed the same difference as men, instead saying that proves that there is a cognitive ability difference, the researchers would then hit the -- it's racism pure and simple -- meme even harder.
If racism is the cause, or something in the environment, how did the parents of Blacks get into the upper echelons of earnings then? What %s are we talking about at each income level? Do the researchers have the sources of parental income as well as for their offspring?
I'd say this raises a lot of questions, but doesn't seem to answer many.
13
Somehow I don't find it very meaningful to counterpoise individual anecdotal success (those who are certain that with the right family environment any child can succeed) against the importance of statistical systemic obstacles to black males' success. We ALL believe in the strength and character of good families. Yet we should ALL oppose bone and marrow the institutional racism that consigns many good but weaker children and families unjustly and unfairly to failure. Yes families must take responsibility. And yes, society must work tirelessly to make sure that when young black man makes his move, a cop or an employer or a bank officer does not throw it all away with racist actions. BOTH are important people! I am tired of the Johnny One Sided approach of many commenters.
5
This Article's title - "Extensive data shows punishing reach of racism for black boys" - is a falsehood. The article proves nothing of the sort. It presents raw data on the economic situation of black males but nowhere demonstrates the causes of that situation. But in today's America to dare to think that any other factors may possibly be in play is, of course, deemed racist.
42
This absurd race-baiting attitude by those on the far left is a good reason a man such as Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office....because so many people detest it and are fed up with the politicians who spew it out.
20
The title of the article misrepresents the research while stigmatizing alternate explanations.
For an excellent explanation of the disparity noted in the article, take some time to read "The Bell Curve."
9
The same drivel I recall Noble Laureate William Shockley espousing... using racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by the genetic inferiority..." When Mr. Shockley was asked why his son didn't have the same superior intellect -- Mr. Shockley blamed his wife, saying she was a high school drop out.
3
Get out of your bubble, and look around the world. The truth can sometimes be painful, but it is nevertheless the truth.
There are all kinds of indicators. If you're able to overcome the fear instilled in you by leftist ideologues, you'll begin to see everything crystal.clearly.
2
Get out of your bubble and stop using tired words like left vs right because they are meaningless. If you wanna go here...
Please explain why any white men are poor in US nation?
Broken families have a tremendous cost. Perhaps government assistance should reward two-parent households over those headed by a single parent (mother). The data show two parents benefit the children, especially black boys.
11
So, it doesn't matter so much for non-black children? I simply don't believe that.
1
The article and data support traditional family is the key no matter what race you are !
1
Racism???
Did you read the study? Or maybe you don't understand what "racism" means. It means prejudice against people of a particular race on account of their race.
But the experience of black girls and women prove it's not racism. That is, unless black women should be doing BETTER than comparable white women but have been held back by bias. That seems unlikely because black women seem to do as well comparable white women even though their test scores are on average lower.
Tell me it is some weird race-sex interaction that hasn't been figured out yet. But a lot of us are fatigued by the Times's insistence on blaming every ill under the sun on racism.
44
It's because their definition of racism applies only to white people. In their minds, blacks and other "people of color" cannot be racist. I know...I can't figure it out either.
13
Two of the possible responses of youth to mistreatment by authority figures (police, teachers) are: to become tough, resentful, and basically what the authority figures seem to think is their essence; or to go out of their way to disprove that expectation by acting extra well-behaved and study extra hard. It appears that too many young Blacks have been taking the first route while so many Asians (who police may be prejudiced against too) take the second route. The enormous amount of talk about racism -- mainly re Blacks, but spoken by identity-group-oriented liberals as well as influential Blacks -- contribute to this wrong choice of path.
1
There may be other explanations for the disparity for the financial stability of black women over that of black men. The black family is a matriarchy, that is, women hold the power in the family. Children growing up in such power relationship would identify with the powerful. In Latino, Asian and White families the power relationship is paternal; that is, the "man" of the family. Power relationships within families is currently an important issue as society is sorting out legacy expectations. Mostly, the work involves coming to better power sharing arrangements between partners. In the case of African American families, addressing the current matriarchal hierarchy by moving towards a power sharing relationship would help young black boys become successful men.
3
It's a matriarchy because the fathers are abandoning their kids and not contributing to the household. And because the mothers are having sex with men who are not committed to them nor to being a father - no matter what they claim when trying to get a girl to go with them.
The 'matriarchy' isn't imposed, it's there because of choices by the fathers.
12
"The 'matriarchy' isn't imposed, it's there because of choices by the fathers."
In a historic context, the father was a field hand or other form of laborer who could be purchased without his family under the institution of slavery. Matriarchy, either as in traditional African relationships or by necessity under slavery, women became not only the keeper of children, as the children usually stayed with the mother if she were sold, the women kept the finances to care for the children. After the Civil War, freed slaves became sharecroppers as their agricultural roots and were subjected to Jim Crow laws. The family unit was bound together for lack of economic mobility. Not until WW II, when large number of white men went off to war were Southern African American men recruited North to work in the industrial war engine. After WW II, the men sent off to war came back to take up their old jobs and unions excluded blacks from job protection. Families who had come North put down roots in the North. The matriarchal black society was maintained. In the 1960's, the Great Society welfare expansion allow women and their children to live independently of the fathers, and, in part, to be eligible for welfare, women had to live independently from the children's fathers. Today, 75% of African American children live in matriarchal families who have power of the purse. Economics and tradition are powerful forces keeping power relationships within black families unchanged.
2
There's no law nor system creating a matriarchy - each couple makes their own choices. And the economics you mention - it's that the mother stays home and raises the kids and has the job - so yes, she has the purse - where the father is not involved.
1
Two of the possible responses of youth to mistreatment by authority figures (police, teachers) are: to become tough;, resentful, and basically what the authority figures seem to think is their essence; or to go out of their way to disprove that expectation by acting extra well-behaved and study extra hard. It appears that too many young Blacks have taken the first route while so many Asians (who police may be prejudiced against too) take the second route. The enormous amount of talk about racism (mainly re Blacks, but spoken by identity-group-oriented liberal whites as well as influential Blacks) contributes to the wrong choice of path. Of course this isn't the whole story but it is something to some extent within our power to affect.
2
Considering how I've been conditioned to think about anything regarding race lately, I couldn't even read this without feeling racist so I had to stop halfway through.
6
Women are different from men. In all societies, women are primary caretakers of children and the frail. Women of all races are close to the same. If that is true, it would explain why white women and black women fare similarly in American society: they are more likely to be poor if they lack a partner and more likely to be better off financially if they have a partner to share the burdens of life.
In a hunter-gatherer society, men who are strong, fearless, aggressive and have a tendency toward tribalism in a small tribe would likely be better providers and they and their offspring would be more likely to survive.
As communities grew larger, men who evolved to be able to cooperate would be better able to farm and engage in trade with "foreigners" and engage in complex endeavors requiring division of labor and specialized skills.
A male accountant or lawyer or coder would be hard pressed to live in a hunter gatherer society because his skills would give him no competitive advantage.
No one finds it difficult to accept that black athletes are overrepresented in professional sports or that black people are more likely to have sickle cell anemia, which with one gene protects against malaria. What if there are genetic differences in the subtle personality characteristics that differ between white and Asian men and black men. What if there are inherent characteristics that lead to higher aggressiveness that present a competitive disadvantage to black men?
4
"What if there are genetic differences in the subtle personality characteristics..."
The risk factors for male aggression are well known: blood levels of testosterone, expression of certain variants of monoamino oxidase (which controls the brain levels of dopamine) and early exposure to violence. All these clearly correlate with race.
2
Regarding the graph titled "Large income gaps persist between men — but not women". This data says something different to me. Look at the three lines for black men, black women and white women. They are almost identical, and all three end at the same place.
It's not that black men have a problem, it's that black men, black women and white women all have a disadvantage compared to white men, no matter where they start out.
6
Or maybe they have a large advantage, in that they can do well by letting white men take care of them - via a set of societal norms and a government that re-allocates white male wealth to them?
Consider my case. My white wife doesn't make very much, but she does what she loves and that's all that matters. I'm happy to cover her. My wealth is hers.
Now, personally, I could care less about anyone else. But I don't need to. Uncle Sam is there to point a gun at me, and haul me off to jail unless I fork over 30% of my salary and 40% of my bonus, which is then used to feed, house, educate, and generally take care of people who can't seem to take care of themselves.
It's like a Necker cube; look at these data through an anti-white male frame, and it looks like we have some massive advantage. But look at the data through a wealthy white male's point of view, and it looks like we're probably carrying a lot of people.
6
It seems to me that the information here, and correct me if I am wrong, goes back to Fatherless youths. Children out of wedlock live with their mother, meaning that the young ladies always have someone to look up to. The young men, however, do not have any clear role model, or disciplinarian 9 times out of ten.
The study mentioned that White children who grew up poor more often than not, had a father figure available. As a result, they performed much better as a group. Additionally, Hispanics tend to follow the 'White' yield curve. so I do not think you can dismiss the data a blanket 'racism'. I would also like to see how Indian-Americans compare. I believe I am right in saying they have the highest percentage change to earn a MD.
8
Choosing to become a mother or father while young and without marriage. Or, even living together. Often, totally absent fathers without any mentoring, caring man around.
Yes, it must be racism.
BTW, white and black women don't fare the same. Your graph shows quite succinctly that black women do BETTER. But I guess that doesn't fit the narrative.
Years ago I did consulting for a Nigerian immigrant in the mortgage business. Years later, I worked with many African immigrants in health care. The former apparently never got the message about racism holding him back. In the latter, I asked a young Ethiopian woman, as she was studying, please note, if she ever felt discriminated against because of her race. She snorted, and with a look of incredulity, said, "Never. I have so much opportunity here."
Compare those men and women to our native blacks who almost all think they are victims of racism. (And sometimes they are, but seldom of the kind that outweighs attitudes and life style CHOICES.)
Young males need older males. The latter make example and set boundaries and (hopefully) tell the young male what it means to be a man, by word and/or example. This has been found true with elephants when juvenile males don't have bull elephant guidance. They become, in human terms, juvenile delinquents.
Fix the family. Almost end of story.
30
Read carefully what the article says about outcomes for the children of Asian immigrants.
Families need jobs. I am sure you are aware that the discrimination includes the screening of resumes. Qualified candidates with ‘Black’ names are not interviewed while candidates with ‘white’ sounding names and the exact qualifications are interviewed. Blacks are arrested but whites committing the same crimes are arrested less.
What is depressingly adroit about your response is that it denies that we have institutionalized racism. Sad
2
It's interesting to see that the breakdown for black boys who grow up rich is almost exactly statistically equal between all five quintiles. In a way, it is what we should be striving for with all children of all racial backgrounds - ideally, all children in all income groups should be equally likely to end up in each quintile.
I wonder what percentage of the African American group became 'well off' because they were in Sports, Entertainment or were Affirmative Action beneficiaries, these are fields where culture and education and thrift are not passed and even possibly discouraged since the parents often became successful without them
7
You don’t get into professional sports without being skilled, disciplined and a team player. It is one of the few meritocracies we have. You can get into an Ivy League college and not be very intellectually skilled but not into the NBA
Some White sectors of the population have been benefiting from affirmative action for the past four hundred years. Now that capitalism keeps grinding up human beings many are no longer privileged and some turn to drugs and suicide.
1
@Jama - Sorry, everybody who gets into an Ivy League college nowadays is off-the-charts brilliant. Competitive is what they are.
As I rode the subway, observing a young black man wearing a do-rag across from me, I wondered how dress, behavior and other issues cannot have a lot to do with the challenges facing young black men. If you take your behavioral cues from rappers, there are going to be issues. Just saying.
38
Here is the secret :
Buy things that go up in value, that's it. Don't buy flash, don't buy expensive cars and don't invest in things you have no idea about. Everything else is just filler.
6
"The disparities that remain also can’t be explained by differences in cognitive ability, an argument made by people who cite racial gaps in test scores that appear for both black boys and girls. If such inherent differences existed by race, “you’ve got to explain to me why these putative ability differences aren’t handicapping women,” said David Grusky, a Stanford sociologist who has reviewed the research."
I see many ways in which this could explained. Men are much more likely to be risk-takers and have poorer future-time perspective. Environmental impacts - like lead poisoning - affects boys (and blacks) at a much higher rate , further contributing to difficulties with future-time perspective. Studies also show that men are distributed differently on IQ tests - many more are at the bottom (and the top), compared to women, who tend to have less distribution at the extremes. Lastly, criminal association would obviously be linked to a loss of wealth, and it cannot be denied that there is a serious criminal issue associated with black males (1 in every 15 is incarcerated). This is what happens when 6% of the population makes up upwards of 50% of the murders in our nation. For instance, in Syracuse, NY (a 56% white city), all 21 murders in 2017 had both black victims and black suspects. http://www.syracuse.com/crime/index.ssf/2018/01/remember_homicide_victim...
It's a multifaceted issue, but to say that it cannot be explained is wrong.
6
There is also genetic data that indicates that women get "average" of DNA from, but men only get cognitive ability from their mother. This means that men tend more to be on either end of the bell curve, women in the middle.
1
Are there any objective tests for degree of impulse control? I find that people who get into trouble, particularly financial and legal trouble, have low levels of this.
The idea that achievement tests dis-favor black was tossed out there and never explored. Why?
This article seems to presume a racial discrimination cause of these observations.
In my experience as an educator at multiple levels for 30 years, the four things that tell me whether someone will succeed or fail are:
1. Intelligence - overwhelmingly the most important
2. Self-control (impulse control, not saddling themselves with early pregnancies, dropping out of school, getting into stupid debt, etc)
3. Drive to better themselves
4. Support - family, neighbors, mentor, teachers, whatever.
These students create their own breaks.
15
The graphics in this article are outstanding. Well done, NYT!
3
Great analysis and just another example of the excellence in reporting from the NYT.
The unfortunate take away to me as a black man is that even when I overcome all of life's obstacles and racism and "make it" in America, my sons are under constant threat of tumbling back down the social mobility ladder.
4
Intact families is the issues. Daniel Patrick Moynihan called it 50 years ago. All the rest is excuse making and a dishonest avoidance of the real problem.
15
As the white mother of an African American boy this article is so disheartening.
American society views black men differently than all others. I have long known this, as a person who cares deeply about talking about, identifying, and reducing racism in our country, but seeing this borne out so starkly in this data is so depressing. Even rich black boys are unlikely to be rich as adults? That is insane.
American society views black men (and boys) as criminals. There is no way to deny this. And it has a dramatic impact on their life prospects.
The mystery to me is how black men manage to keep their cool amidst of all of this racism and hatred. We have got to do better.
4
I currently teach in an urban public school.
I have questions.
-Did anyone compare the educational background of both races of parents?
-Did the study determine if the black parents were the first high-income generation in their families?
-Did the study differentiate black boys whose parents were born in Africa from black boys whose grandparents were born in the US? I see a huge difference in the behavior and academic achievement of black boys whose parents were born in Africa.
Racism is not the cause. Asians, Hispanics, and Africans all generally outperform African-American boys. All of those groups are non-white.
13
These statistics may be influenced by the underlying trend that women now approach 60% of those attending college. Law school and Medical school are near 50% or more. The glass ceiling impacting women will likely be gone in the next 30 years. But my amateur posit on the "black boy" situation is that an undereducated "white boy" has an advantage in life because of how he looks, as compared to his black counterpoint......i.e. racism in employment, law enforcement and government is alive and well......
1
Racism in employment, government, and law enforcement is illegal, actually. There is probably much more age discrimination in employment than there is racial discrimination. And, if there is so much racial discrimination in employment, how is it that so many African American women seem to be employed and advancing to high levels professionally?
4
Studies like this are not new. Their conclusions are not new. And no matter how much whites want to blame the victim, the problem isn't going away.
The racial wealth gap and the mistreatment of blacks, in this case specifically black men, do not change with family structure, educational attainment, income, savings or spending choices.
There is actual DATA on this stuff. People should take the time to familiarize themselves with the data rather than try to dismiss it with foolish aphorisms arising from guilty consciences.
http://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/Asset%20Value%20of...
1
"A more likely possibility, the authors suggest, is that test scores don’t accurately measure the abilities of black children in the first place."
But do they measure the ability of other children?
“[Y]ou’ve got to explain to me why these putative ability differences aren’t handicapping women." Black families are headed by a single mother more often than white families. Perhaps that affects the amount of hours worked by white women and black women. I bet the family income, which the graph doesn't show, tells more of the story.
It's almost as if this article shows a regression to the mean.
2
Very cool graphic.
1
Data for boys seem to correlate precisely with the presence of a father in the home (or substantial interaction with a father).
But I guess admitting that the problem is this simple, would imply that all the fancy research and graphs are superfluous.
8
This article and research is so spot on. That video of James Blake innocently standing before the hotel burns in my mind. There he is standing and suddenly a plainclothes policeman jumps him, knocks him done, forces his arms back and cuffs his hands. The total incident was so frightening. James Blake a tennis super star, a Harvard Grad was seen as only a Black guy. That is a haunting video. Because his identity was revealed very early, he got apologies from the Mayor and the Police Commissioner. But what if he was just a black guy standing there and gives in to instinctive response? The end of the story would be totally different.
3
I wonder how many of those black children were first-generation Americans/children of immigrants. The study highlighted Mr. Jawando, and how he was able to break the racial income barrier, however, he is the son of Nigerian immigrant. I've read multiple studies on how many first-generation black Americans are comparable to many of their white American counterparts financially/economically/academically. Google "Nigerian-american education," "Nigerian-american" income and take a look at some of the findings. Also take a look at other African nations as well. It would be interesting to see this same study with first/second-generation black Americans and black-americans who have been in the US for at least the past 150 years. It would be interesting because both groups essentially have to deal with the same constructs of racism, however, it would be intriguing to see to what extent the legacy of systematic racism has on a black immigrant and their american children compared to a non-immigrant black-american and their children.
4
This past year I have volunteered in a library "after school" program for third and fourth graders (mostly ages 8-10). 99% of the children are black. Due to some glitch that nobody can explain... the local school district -- reasonably middle class, not poor -- is 70% BOYS.
So most of the children in the after school program are black boys. I've gotten to know them reasonably well over a year and it has given me some interesting insights into their behavior and their problems.
Among other things: they are very active, and frustrated by the lack of exercise, gym, recess etc. By the time they come to our program, they are wired up like you would not believe. They are literally bouncing off the walls with frustrated energy. It makes controlling the group incredibly difficult.
The boys fight amongst themselves, and one interesting thing is how they simply do NOT respond to authority. All the librarians & volunteers are WOMEN -- some black, some white, old & young -- it doesn't matter. You can shout and the boys will ignore you and keep fighting. (We are not permitted to touch them or do any discipline at all.)
They cannot keep still nor concentrate on the simplest task. That makes teaching ANYTHING very difficult. Most cannot read at anything close to grade level and some appear to be functionally illiterate. (They are all American kids, no foreigners and no illegals.) They speak in slang, love to watch rap videos on their (expensive!) smartphones. Home work, no.
23
Reading the most popular comments I reached the conclusion that newspapers are not the best place for presenting results of serious research papers. Fortunately, reading the comments not chosen by readers I reach the opposite conclusion: that quite a bit of people understood perfectly the results of the research!
4
Studies like this just make it easier for people to sit back and play the victim card. No matter what race you are, life for most of us is a HARD SLOG. The point is you need to have survival skills. Those come from your family and community.
11
There is no excuse for tolerating lack of discipline and obnoxious behavior, since these lead to bad environments. I should think that concept precedes issues of race. That this principle is not served helps explain why so many teachers are disgusted these days.
5
Weird that the top impulse when studies like these are published is to always decry that there is some other factor at work than racism. There probably are additional factors. The top comment, with no evidence, suggests that behavior and cultural beliefs are a bigger driver, and in an insulting way. Likely these have an impact, but clearly racism is a factor as well, and the reflexive dismissal that racism is such a huge factor is bewildering and damaging.
1
Weird that when studies like these are published, the only possible explanation offered is racism. If you have unequal outcomes reflected in racial demographics, racism must be the cause. Anyone suggests otherwise has to be a racist.
Yes racism exists. It always has and unfortunately to some extent it always probably will. However, using it as an excuse to explain every possible gap in society is just irresponsible.
So are we supposed to believe that these results are only driven by racism? What about the choices people make and how those choices are influenced by role models and culture? How does personal responsibility enter into this conversation? If you want a seat at the table of opportunity start by looking at yourself first.
15
This article makes me sad because the data is devastating. We've simply got to find a way to love our black boys more and and make them feel wanted and, also, make sure their education is good, too. They need both things. We need to start sooner rather than later. This country needs to fire all cylinders.
1
Black males need to start investing in each other. In more ways than one.
4
You’ll find that the people at the top of society can be every bit as much insular and exclusionary as those at the bottom of society—it can seem almost incestuous—and the demand for deference at the top seems little different from the quest for respect at the bottom.
2
Focus on those that stayed rich or became rich regardless of color. I bet they have qualities worth emulating.
2
I grew up middle class; now live in a wealthy town. Having come up the ranks, I find his new world fascinating.
One aspect I have noticed is that black men---much like homosexual men, or Indian or Asian men---are not often invited into the "network". That network exists for millions of reasons but one its chief functions is reinforcing the sorts of behaviors that allow you to retain wealth. I know because I have observed this first hand--things like which financial planner, or who to talk to about x, y or z, etc is information loosely passed on man to man in these social settings.
By contrast, women tend to network all the time regardless of race.
This is an observation and not at all anything I can either quantify or proof. But I had this thought recently while going out with a group in our town. I watched the lone Asian man struggle to be included. The gap was cultural and not all a function of racism but there it was anyway. I imagine this is probably true of those other subgroups i mentioned above.
1
One more thought:
I understand that this article is about "men" but I still think it glosses over the sex disparity (for whites) that's shown in the "Large income gaps persist between men- but not women" figure. If we compare black men and black women by how they're raised, we see they come out pretty much the same--there's no disparity by sex. Black men and women raised by parents in the 90th percentile fall into the 65th percentile when they're adults.
However, if we look at whites, we see a much bigger difference between men and women. White men who are raised by parents who fall under the 90th percentile for income are at the 75th percentile when they're adults while white women are only at the 65th percentile. Why is there such a big disparity by sex among whites? This difference is as big (pretty much identical) as what's observed between white men and black men. What this figure really shows is that only white men have a disproportionate advantage--regardless of whether they're raised poor or rich. This should not be a story about white men vs black men but rather white men vs everyone else in society.
2
"“One of the most popular liberal post-racial ideas is the idea that the fundamental problem is class and not race, and clearly this study explodes that idea,” said Ibram Kendi, a professor and director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University."
Really? I can't think of a country that avoids discussing class more than the United States. Making everything racial rather than exploring class is a neoliberal capitalist's dream.
13
I don't understand why the authors make an automatic assumption that because black men are doing worse than various other groups it must be mostly due to something that other groups, particularly whites, are doing to them, such as racism. Isn't it equally plausible that it's due to internal causes such as cultural forces within the black community. Automatically making these sorts of assumptions without evidence ends up hurting both the black community, and the American community as a whole.
11
Many of the questions I asked myself when I first started reading the article were answered by the end. The authors parsed the data in so many ways to control many different scenarios previously thought to be THE ANSWER. Let's not ignore this data, let these stories die like we have ignored and let die the many black boys behind the number. I hope this speaks for real change in how we engage and view black boys and the opportunities we make or don't make available for them.
3
If you apply an economic lens to these data, it almost looks like there's a massive amount of substitution going on here, where white males might actually be substituting in for black males, as bizarre as this sounds.
In other words, as white and Asian males do well, and as the welfare state intermediates and reallocates our earnings to single mothers, many of whom are black, what incentive is there for black males to support anyone but themselves? If I were a black male - granted, a particularly selfish one - it might even be weirdly logical to avoid work, blow my money, and not be too concerned about supporting a family. And does it really require that much hard work and money to support a single male? But does one even have to be particularly selfish to pull this off? If most of my media and culture, and even white elites, are telling me that society is stacked against me and structurally racist, why not believe this and act the part, even if I happen to be born into a stable and well off family?
I think this makes much more sense than racism, because how else does one explain parity between white men and Asian men, and black, white, and Latinx women?
I do think racism plays a role, but it's likely a response; white men see how much of our paychecks go to finance this system with all of its perverse and initiative destroying disincentives, and we grow resentful and vote for Trump. Our wives, who we also support and who lose, follow suit.
7
And yet, our collective outrage and focus is on women and their supposed "mistreatment" and "difficult road"
1
Thank you for this. One note: it's the Anti Racism Research and Policy Center at American University.
This extensive and important article focuses on two variables, income of parents and that of their children, as a proxy for "success" And then the lower income of "Black boys" is attributed to that most partisan and amorphous cause "Racism."
The Executive Summary linked in the article includes "racism" of one of several causes, as follows:
------
Initiatives whose impacts cross neighborhood and class lines and increase upward mobility specifically for black men hold the greatest promise of narrowing the black white gap. There are many promising examples of such efforts: mentoring programs for black boys, efforts to reduce racial bias among whites, interventions to reduce discrimination in criminal justice, and efforts to facilitate greater interaction across racial groups
-------
Headlines must simplify, but they need not fuel loaded partisan buzz words that only scratch the complexity of the underlying study.
3
In fact, if one looks at the charts and compares all four groups, the thing that pops out is the relative overachievement of white males. Black males do just about the same as white females and black females. If there were instead a gap favoring black males over black females, we'd probably be getting lectured about the sexism of it.
Maybe, horrible though it be to consider, white males have a particular disposition toward high achievement.
3
Interesting. I would argue that class is not really an issue if rich white and blacks are not seeing the same outcome. Social factors are far more important. I don't know many rich blacks or whites who have significant close social (not working) relationships with each other. This creates a lack of social networks for black boys which translates into different outcomes. Women are much less reliant on these.
Most wealth is created by who you know, not what you know and in a country that has written into its Constitution freedom of association rich black kids and rich white kids (poor ones too) choose not to associate with one another regardless of class, political leanings or family background.
We need to be very careful about distinguishing between INCOME and WEALTH. They are not the same. INCOME is a function of how much money you have coming on a regularized basis (eg. monthly, annually, etc.). WEALTH is a function of the assets you have stored up. This can take the form of cash, investments (stocks, bonds, etc.), a home, a business, etc.
This is important because people make different decisions based upon current income versus stored up wealth. Bankrate published a recent survey in 2018 that found 39% of Americans could not cover a $1,000 setback from their savings. Further, recent studies that look at the correlation between WEALTH and INCOME in the US find that there is a relatively low correlation (about 26%). See: https://dqydj.com/correlation-of-income-and-net-worth-america-2016/
So, based upon this study there appears to be a clear difference in outcomes based upon INCOME. The fact that there are differences -- and that they appear to be gendered -- is very troubling. I'm not sure about the explanations in this article (testing, really??). It would be really helpful to know whether there is a difference by WEALTH. In his 2000 book Being Black, Living in the Red, Princeton sociologist Dalton Conley demonstrated this point very clearly. When controlling for WEALTH (not INCOME) he found that the black-white achievement gap in school disappeared.
Living in NYC for many years, I have found young black immigrants often better educated and nicer and more gracious in their interactions than the ones born here, who are often rude, entitled, intimidating and aggressive, not only with whites but also among them, black on black. (i've witnessed catfights between black women in Harlem in the middle of the street or in stores). The black immigrants notice this too and bring it up in conversation, praising the European style education they received in the African countries they come from.
19
The most troublesome characteristic is the persistence of outcomes for African American children with similar education levels. Such evidence suggests that other social constructs are correlated to wealth gaps or the data are not adequetly measuring the more granular categories of educational attainments. It's also unfortunate but predictable that white supremacists will make much of the studies and it won't be dfficult to know how they will interpret them.
This analysis is seriously flawed.
African-Americans are roughly 12% of the total population; And, because of historical racism and oppression, they are also statistically less wealthy than the population at large.
A scientific random sampling of wealthy male children would have tracked a group of roughly 9,000 "whites" and 1,000 "blacks". Instead, this study subjectively selected a group of 5,000 wealthy "black" male children and 5,000 wealthy "white" male children.
Therefore, African-Americans are grossly over-sampled in this study. Combine that over-sampling with the fact that 90% of all Americans are not rich, and it would be expected that the over-sampled group would have more members reverting to the baseline division of wealth of the total population.
2
I am confused by the headline of this article.
This study concluded that black boys suffer discrimination but that this discrimination does not affect black girls. That is not racism. That is sexism.
We need to follow where the data leads us. It might be uncomfortable to conclude that boys are the victims of sexism and that girls are benefiting from it. But if that is what is going on, then that is what we need to deal with. Real life doesn't always fit in neatly with our theories and preconceptions.
7
I have experienced an interesting phenomena first hand and I believe it is unique to more affluent black males. Whereas, more affluent, and even less affluent Asian males (and similarly for many other ethnic groups) will gladly assimilate into the culture of success, that is studying hard, valuing knowledge, foregoing social time for academics, among other things, black males of all class strata will attempt to hold onto the classic defining roles of black masculinity which is very often at odds with the mainstream culture of success. You can see this in many black males resistance to being too sensitive or talkative or argumentative, holding back and not being seen as too effeminate or nerdy, desperate to be accepted by their less affluent or assimilated friends, trying to straddle both worlds, and at all costs not to be seen as weak or unmanly. This trait does not foster debate and learning and competitive success in the classroom or boardroom or trading floor. On the contrary it fosters passivity and the assumption that someone is not smart or motivated even if they are. Of course black women are not burdened by this stigma so they succeed in far greater numbers. I wonder if a study could be done of gay black males as well for similar disparities.
8
Racial discrimination alone would not explain these results.
Neither race nor gender would explain these results.
Simple basic scientific method would call for observation of a population of individuals in the study, evaluation, a hypothesis based on those observations, development of a theory, creation of a new experiment to prove or disprove the theory.
My suspicion is what you would find is culture. The cultural norms being taught to young Black men by popular cultural leaders, the media, and music is not conducive to success. Honestly, I not surprised about the statistics on Black men, I'm surprised about how well White, Hispanic, and Asian men are doing. I would expect that all young men would be doing worse.
8
Stop making excuses for failures in the black community. It is annoying and old, and no one is listening anymore other that fringe liberals and academics who are woefully out of touch with the American working class of all races.
I don't care if you are a rich white man or a rich black man. You grow up, you do what you have to do to survive in America's post-2008 recession society, and stop with the liberal excuses. Everyone knows that racism is part of American culture. It is how people behave and how laws and so forth are put out that changes things.
Stop with the excuses---white, black, etc. You hire people fairly, not on the basis of race. Treat people fairly--but do not hire people strictly based on race.
5
Interesting note at the bottom of the article: "Data does not include unauthorized immigrants." In my experience they are the ones who rise the highest, one generation at a time. Parents work in the fields. Children go to college and become teachers. Grandchildren get graduate degrees and become lawyers or doctors ... or a new kind of politicians who don't rest on the privileges of their ancestors.
4
This article addresses the "what", namely, the incidence of poverty. However, this article and the study do a poor job of addressing the "why". And the "why" is critical. However, until we can overcome racial biases and "political correctness" biases, the real "why" may be hard to come by. Too often we look for only one factor to explain the "why", when the reality is that there may be several factors that explain the "why." But we readily dismiss the factors that do not comport with our own biases and world view, and accept the factors that do.
8
This article suggests, among other things, that having an environment of nurturing adult men in a community will empower male children. In particular, such an environment would bolster the chances of those who face a future that’s skewed against their interests. Of course, it’s very important to continue to address that systemic skewing. But just regarding the one aforementioned causality, how can such an environment be encouraged? I did a quick bit of searching and found solutions focused on changing home life (https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/four_steps_to_father_frien... and community life (https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&q=police+as+adult+role+mod....
2
The data in the second figure showing an income gap between black and white men but no such gap in women doesn't entirely support the authors' conclusions. The curves for black men, black women, and white women all appear essentially the same. The one outlier is white men. It appears to me that white men are given an advantage in our society that women and black men don't receive. Is that the same thing as black men being disadvantaged? Couldn't we also conclude that all women are disadvantaged? Or alternatively it's not a disadvantage per se - it is just that white men, not surprisingly, have a big advantage. It's an important distinction because the potential solutions are likely to be different if it's really an issue of an 'old boys network' rather than anything to do with parental marriage rates.
10
This date proves what any person with open eyes has seen for decades upon decades - the prejudice against the black man has been a deplorable sin in this country. How do you win in system where you are feared solely on the color of your skin and culturally labeled the bad guy?
I am happy to see men of color on television and in the media as news journalist, talk show host and commentators of sporting events - and to be honest they look better than everyone else.
2
The article claims racism is to blame for the lack of success of black boys but not girls, which makes no sense. Then it correlates the lack of success with the absence of fathers but shows no analysis why this might be the case for the blacks.
Surely that priority should be to bring the fathers back to the fold. Without that, affirmative action is pointless. As shown by this article.
17
Some real research regarding how rich black boys end up poor would require some investigation into spending habits. Those millions do not disappear by themselves.
13
It's far too simplistic to singularly blame racism for the different income patterns between White and Black men.
If it's all (or mostly) about racism, then let's hold extensive long-term studies to compare the income patterns between White and Asian men, as well as similar studies for same between Asian and Black men.
18
Amongst the racisms we practice, none is as deep seated, institutionally embedded and harsh as the racism we practice against African Americans.
Our anti Chinese, anti Pakistani and anti Korean racism is not pretty, but it pales by comparison when set against the myriad ways we are racist about Black People.
I am the product of White Privilege, and I can see racism very clearly.
American racism has different shades and different intensities.
1
Overwhelmingly, Black women have family responsibilities, while Black men do not. So Black men have no motivation to labor at hard, low-paid jobs. Black unmarried births are now at 72% (2011), up from 67% in 1990 and 24% in 1965.
No longer essential - millions of unmarried Black men need not work to feed, clothe or shelter their families. They need never face their hungry child or suffer tender emotions. They need not be deterred by a prison term, nor fear the drug lifestyle - nor cling to a job. These men are irresponsible because they have no responsibilities.
Each unmarried woman's first pregnancy creates an invisible man - a man with nothing to lose. In most Black communities, these men impose an outlaw culture, teaching boys coming of age (even boys from high-income families) that irresponsibility and crime are viable ways of life.
The other day, Jimmy Durante met an old friend.
Jimmy says, "Sam, who ya workin' for now?"
Sam says, "Same bunch. Wife 'n kids.""
Our sad experience demonstrates how dangerous for society and for normal life is the man who has nothing to lose."
(From the Shatalin Plan - to convert the Soviet economy to free enterprise in 500 days.)
35
The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose. - James Baldwin
2
This is very insightful - I've seen this at work with other young men making the choices for their life, both black and white - and I think you're on to something. If so - then while the black men are responsible for their choices - black women accepting a layabout as a viable date have a role in the problem. I've seen that one in person too - so often I've seen highly motivated, well educated black women accept behavior from their boyfriends (both black and white) that is rarely accepted by other women.
4
What you write makes sense. Even young men who are already into crime and vandalism in my country usually stop when they get a family.
2
Racism by definition punishes anyone who looks/acts different from the norm, so the presumption that racists specifically target black boys while embracing black girls, Hispanic and Asian boys/girls doesn't pass the common sense test. Given the outcomes for all of these groups closely parallels that of rich white boys and girls, such narrowly targeted racism falls on its face as a causal factor. Why would you deliberately ignore direct correlations of fatherless homes, gangsta culture, and the beat-down of high-achieving adolescent black boys by their contemporaries? What agenda is so compelling that the truth must be ignored?
27
Was wondering the same
Any study of racism negative impact regarding black boys must begin with defining race.
There is only one multicolored biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit modern human race species that originated in Africa 300,000 years ago. What we call race aka color is an evolutionary fit isolated human population pigmented response to differing levels of solar radiation at altitudes and latitudes primarily related to Vitamin D production and protecting genes from damaging mutations.
What we call race aka color is a malign white supremacist socioeconomic political historical American myth meant to legally and morally justify humanity person denying black African enslavement and equality defying black African Jim Crow. Being black African was defined as having one-drop aka 1/32nd of black blood. While this socioeconomic political description has no biological science basis it has been deleterious to blacks for centuries. Caste and class are inextricably intertwined by color.
While neither sociology nor economics nor politics are sciences. There are way too many variables and unknowns to fashion the double-blind controls that provide predictable repeatable results. But they do have academic value and interests within their limited disciplinary focus.
See 'The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America' by Joseph L. Graves
3
The headline is absurd. The punishing reach of racism evidently skips over black women, Latinos and Asians. Journalists and academics that blame every gap on racism are both unimaginiative and frankly dishonest.
I'm black and the child of poor African immigrants. Every one of us kids graduated college but more to the point I see the downward mobility of black boys first hand in the DC suburbs. Many of them come from great homes but don't do well at school. Still their parents reward them with the latest sneakers and gadgets. Then high school to an end and they barely get 800 on the SAT and sport a 2.3 GPA. Kind of hard to get into a top school like your father with that profile.
I suppose it's easier to blame white racism and more politically acceptable than taking are hard look at the culture many of these kids are growing up under.
117
Where does "racism" come into this? Society is "racist" against black males but not females?
I can think of two variables I would consider. First, where did the wealthier black fathers make their money? If from sports, they might not be as well educated and able to help their sons as a white father with similar income. Secondly, the culture that popularizes rap and its sentiments is never far away. This music is violent, coarse, misogynistic to an extent that is almost inconceivable.
22
"Often become poor" or "are more likely to become poor[?]"
There is a difference, NYT.
8
I would like to know how the graphs were made. Were they custom-made with HTML5/Javascript, or were they made in a program first? If it was a program, which one? It would be great if academic journals accommodated animated graphs like this since it's a really nice/intuitive way to visualize movement over time.
Racial discrimination, individual and structural, is key. Fear of black males is socialized in many whites from early childhood.
There is, however, another important factor that I do not see mentioned in this research. Due to decades (centuries actually) of discrimination, wealth - not income - is far more disparate between racial/ethnic groups. Inherited wealth makes a huge difference during the course of one's lifetime. I, for instance, came from a middle class white family. When my parents died, they owned a home and had a few stocks. Not a fortune, but enough so that my brother and I were able to pay off our own mortgages, thus being about to use money that had been used for mortgage payments to funding our children's higher education.
2
Linda:
You say that fear of black males is socialized in many whites from early childhood. But it's not just whites. Jesse Jackson once said: “There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved. and feel relieved.”
11
That was the entire basis of this research - to look at the black kids who DID have wealthy parents who could help them out as yours did. To validate if this factor you mention explains the difference.
3
In order to accumulate money, you have to live below your income. While I have know a few black families who were very cheap and saved a lot of money, this is not typical. Many blacks who become moderately successful want to live well, particularly if they grew up in poverty.
All of the racial implications aside I found it amazing how closely so many parameters tracked family income. Marriage rate, incarceration chances, future income for men,women, black and white are smooth curves directly correlated with family of origin income.
1
I saw this play out first hand. My parents lived in an upper class, swim and tennis community outside a large city in the new South, the kind with a large black middle class.
As the years passed, our bedroom community shifted to becoming more diverse. Our black neighbors clearly had money, and were definitely professionals. But their children - especially the boys - were another matter. Break-ins increased and the schools became less safe, without any signs of poverty. The local police started posting a car at the pool, which until then had been a pretty boring place, as it was turned into a late night, loud music party zone where yes, violence did break out, with a shooting at one point. It was almost like the kids were aggressively trying to prove that they weren't upper middle class with these antics.
My parents gave up. They had moved South from a highly segregated northern city, and had sworn that they wouldn't repeat their parents' mistake and commit white flight. They were going to stay put. But here they were, apparently faced with the same dilemma their liberal parents had been faced with, to stay principled or to stay safe. Ultimately, they moved in-town to a gentrified, mostly white neighborhood. Their old neighborhood in the burbs crashed. The downturn of '08 saw many of these large homes go into foreclosure, which was hard to believe.
I only have my experience, but the data here supports what I saw. It was sad and frustrating.
72
What you saw is what I've seen play out in the DC suburbs which have areas of black affluence. Many of the kids especially the boys can't keep up academically and as they get older run the risk of getting into negative behaviors.
5
I grew up in a lily-white suburb of Connecticut where once the boys became teens they broke into cars and homes, bought alcohol illegally, threw keg parties with loud music, drove drunk, drag- raced and occasionally forced themselves on teen girls. That's pretty much what all teen boys do, only if you're white you never pay a price for it.
1
There's no doubt there's racism, but that may not be the only reason black boys don't succeed at the same rate as other races. Is there additional pressure in their community to give back that doesn't exist in white communities? You seem to be jumping to conclusions and trying to fit your study to a narrative. It's OK to have a thesis, but yours remains unproven.
The real question is, now that we know there are obstacles for black kids what do we do to change that?
a) Tell them to give up because white and Asian people are blocking them
b) Tell them there are obstacles but Italians, Irish, Asians and other groups have succeeded in spite of these obstacles
c) Tell them nothing but let them conclude on their own that they and only they have the power to lift themselves out of their predicament
d) Suggest two parent households lead to much more success for kids
e) Remove barriers that still exist
f) stop making excuses
5
Or, equally likely, is there less tendency to give back in black communities to give back, which results in middle class black communities being hollowed out because the prosperous children leave their home towns behind?
2
Is the right conclusion of the study that “One of the most popular liberal post-racial ideas is the idea that the fundamental problem is class and not race, and clearly this study explodes that idea”? The study does show the devastating impact of race, regardless of class. But the study also shows the devastating effect of class, regardless of race.
For example, look at the graphic on rates of incarceration: It shows very clearly that at all levels of income, blacks are incarcerated at a much higher rate than whites. But it shows equally clearly that for both races, poor people are incarcerated at a much higher rate than richer people. Expressed in percentage terms, the difference by race is smaller for poorer people than for richer people, though still, of course, huge.
Just what is so hard about saying that there are multiple forms of oppression (think "intersectionality")? Race is extremely important and, as the Black Lives Matter activists have insisted, gets ignored by simply lumping everyone, regardless of race (e.g., "all lives matter.). But class also gets ignored.
3
One of the thoughts I had when reading this is more should be done to look at the definition of "grew up rich". (I'm a social scientist interested in income inequality). Did the white boys who grew up rich come from white parents who also grew up rich? How many generations back does it go? Do these white parents avail of inheritance taxes and laws, financial management skills to manage estates etc? It seems unlikely that black boys upon their 25th birthday inherit a trust fund that takes cares of their needs throughout their life can be considered to be poor. It also seems unlikely that we have more than 2 or 3 generations (by which I mean a critical mass) of black millionaires, white millionaires have clearly been around since before slavery. If it is clear that the financial and estate management skills are not being passed on, or perhaps the black community are even facing discrimination availing of inheritance systems etc., then that is where the problem is. Unless I am mistaken, being born into a "rich" family should mean understanding how to pass that wealth to the next generation - it does not mean getting a middle class job in the service sector and having to fight off racism and challenge perceptions etc., more like take a job in finance, the arts or philanthropy is more appropriate? Am I wrong here?
Be that as it may, while I am part black, I could not be less interested in the rich, I am far more concerned with the poor.
2
These are quintiles of income involving huge numbers of households. The top quintile, which is what the study called 'rich', had a household income over $91K in 2005 and a household income over $112K today. This is not 'rich' as it is commonly understood, this is the 'rich' of a macroeconomic policy wonk.
About 10 years ago, I worked with a black woman who was a low-level operations manager at the bank, and her husband was a prison guard at Rikers Island. Their household income was around $175K. I used to tease her, telling her how rich she was, being in the top 5% of all US households. Everybody knew that was not really rich if you lived in NYC.
My stats class taught me, above all else: what do these numbers mean for you, me, us?
The answer for this article is... quite frankly, not a lot that hasn't already been known and said many times before. There is nothing in this article that I have not heard before: there is clear evidence of societal-wide income disparity between black males and white males, etc. etc. etc. This was being discussed in the 90's while I was in elementary school for Pete's sake!
So I can take very little of positive substance away from yet another study.
Which stops me dead in my tracks, in horror. Perhaps what is to be taken away is an cold, hard, brutal, negative truth... That despite the best efforts of our government to promote civil rights... That despite the best efforts of those of us who approach all the children of our neighborhood, no matter their race, with an "it takes a village" attitude... That despite study after theory after hypothesis after study on racial disparity and change...
That our efforts at equality are just not working.
Is that the case? Are we caught in a stalemate? Are we doomed by the inertia of our societal norms and history to have every day be "once more into the breach!" ... as we struggle to do what right, yet fail constantly due to decade old sins of the fathers?
Have we made any, statistically valid progress? Or are the Mr. Obama's of our country only brilliant outliers?
1
Social and financial structure is set up to ensure White males don't fail. Even poor White males will get better service than a poor Black male. Just a fact.
That said, let's keep an eye on the kids of rich black Celebs like Will Smith, Jayz and Kanye. So far the kids are spoiled, and Willow and Jaden smith don't have any talent and seem unmotivated. Michael Jackson's darling, will be okay since she will eventually get all of his wealth to share with her brother. But she appears to be modeling, which seems to be the same narrative with all Celeb's millennial children. No talent, but parents are rich enough to get them modeling gigs.
4
This is false. Both of Will and Jada's children are successful recording artists who have accrued millions of dollars from music and movie sales. Their son Jaden started bottled water company which uses bottles with 100% recycled materials, and has "a 74% reduction in carbon emissions compared to a standard plastic bottle." As far as Michael Jackson's children, I do not know enough about them to comment.
1
A fact? Can you provide some evidence of this "fact"
More evidence that minority preferences and set-asides are not effective. It is past time to get rid of them.
13
As soon I saw the headline I knew the tenor of what most comments would be.
if there is a widespread, far-reaching problem amongst white America, whatever the class may be, it's due to outside forces, like automation or immigration, not culture or inherent deficiencies.
When there is a widespread, far-reaching problem amongst black America, it's rarely outside forces and even more rarely because of institutional or societal racism or bigotry - it's due to something internal like culture, or inherent deficiencies.
Most people in the western world believe in white supremacy, either implicitly or explicitly. It's a basic underlying assumption.
Far too many people worldwide, either implicitly or explicitly, believe in black inferiority.
This is an exhausting world we live in.
4
You seem to have an underlying assumption as well - that any data that conflicts what you think should be true is a problem on the part of white supremacy. Data is data - you look at it with an eye to understanding, not debunking.
This data shows some interesting information - that parental income isn't the cause, that the problems of black men don't extend to black women, which does imply some racism cause that is related to racism particularly directed at black men. And yes, it also shows those few pockets of hope, and what the statistical differences (higher than average presence of fathers in their children's lives) are between those places and others.
5
Interesting study and well-written article. This article clearly flies in the face of assertions by the conservatives that the income and other disparities have nothing to do with race but with socioeconomics. While it is partly true, a bigger factor, according to this study, is in fact race. Racism in the US is concretely and thoroughly institutionalized. This should be a wake up call for all Americans - but as usual, we will go with doing nothing.
1
The article is great, it gives data and answers to questions we have asked, and it should be respected as such. We should be mature as readers to know this article does not cover the whole pie, just a piece, and for that I won't criticize the information or deflect the problem it intends to unveil.
We have a systematic oppression problem that can not be understood by data that displays rich vs poor, beginnings and endings. It was not the articles purpose to do so, at least what I gathered from reading the tone of the author. It was to give us a 15,000 ft view into financial journeys of rich blacks and poor blacks, and vise versa. If you want to get a more in depth insight of how people are led to their financial or ultimate outcomes you have to do more research. I suggest "The New Jim Crow" for systemic oppression information.
If you want a good parallel of how black people end up in their predicament vs white people, just look at how the policing of marijuana vs opioid or drunk driving. There is a difference in system for these parties, so motivation, drive, perseverance, tenacity, are not determining factors of someones success in America. No data will comfort you if you don't accept that their is a problem in the system.
4
These results provide another reason why the father of every child should be identified (via DNA; easy and cheap in nearly every instance) and required to contribute, at least financially, to the upbringing of the child.
5
To identify the effects of racism, researchers need to categorize people by race. Identifying people as 'black' or 'white' is, however, the very root of racism. To believe a race better than another, one must first accept the notion of race.
Biological reality is that humans are of a single race - a human race. There is no 'black' or 'white' or 'asian' race outside of the cultural constructs in our minds. Once we understand that there is no 'race' in reality, we see each other as fellows.
So what if we all carry genetic elements of the appearance of our biological parents? It means nothing real, as is plain by the need to resort to asking people if the 'identify as' being in one race or another.
We should teach children not to identify as being of any race, but to recognize people in this world may identify them and treat them differently based upon their prejudices around a biologically meaningless social construct.
At the same time, we should teach that we all have an ethnicity.
An ethnicity is a group who identify based on similarities such as ancestry, language, society, culture or nation. Ethnicity is usually an inherited status based on the society in which one lives. Membership of an ethnic group tends to be defined by a shared cultural heritage, ancestry, origin myth, history, homeland, language or dialect, symbolic systems such as religion, mythology and ritual, cuisine, dressing style, art, and physical appearance.
Me? I'm American.
4
Unwise behavior often leads to downward mobility.
17
I couldn't find the study's definition of "income" in the Times piece and I couldn't find it in the abridged original. Could anyone who read the original study in detail please tell us what the study meant when it used the term "income" (assuming they defined the term, which they surely did)? Did it include earned and "unearned" income or was it referring only to earned income or did it in fact include something else?
These studies typically use the Adjusted Gross Income reported on the 1040 for each household.
Here are the household income quintiles from 2005, which would be within the period of the study:
Bottom: under $19,178
2nd: under $36,000
3rd: under $57,660
4th: under $91,705
Top: over $91,705
In 2015, the latest year for which IRS statistic are available:
Bottom: under $22,800
2nd: under $43,511
3rd: under $72,000
4th: under $112,260
Top: over $112,260
There are about 23 million households in each quintile. Obvious, the top quintile has enormous variations, but it is probably safe to say that many of the black households studied were in the bottom part of this quintile.
Thank you. If they were, in fact, using household income, that would relatively inflate the income reported on joint returns with 2 income earners vs individual filers (whether the filers were, in fact, single household earners or married individual earners filing separately or unmarried earners living together). In other words, the household income disparity is partially a result of the fact that there are relatively less black households filing joint returns. This, of course, assumes that they are in fact using the household AGI.
Willing to bet that many of the commenters extolling "personal responsibility," "hard work," "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps," and "gangsta culture" (all of which are taken from the comments) are white...
Bet you are right.
Since white men are the most successful in our society, you would think people would listen to their advice - "You want to have a good job and a nice house? Well, this is how I did it...."
1
This data shows that success is not shaped merely by access to family resources. So what does? Is it culture or racism or other variables? Most commenters below are listing myriad aspects of culture or mindset, but let's think about a number of root causes:
1) Corporate media messages that glamorize street criminal values and de-value traditional success.
2) The 'crabs in a bucket" phenomenon paired with internalized oppression that that can erode self-confidence.
3) Differences in cultural capital among black families, vestiges of past trauma that fractures trust in institutions.
4) Big one: The stigma against traditional African American English as a dialect or creole variety with its distinct grammar and richness. This paired with the abandonment of grammar instruction across the board.
3
In my opinion, your findings are what you were looking for... this report is too generalized and flawed... so what else is new? Ugh...
6
I would like more breakdown about how the rich families based their wealth. I think there are a couple of obvious buckets: Generation wealth, professionalism, and individually exceptionalism (e.g. sports, entertainment). I suspect the rich black community might have a high proportion of exceptional individuals and fewer generationally wealthy. And I suspect the generationally wealthy are more successful at keeping their kids rich than exceptional individuals, whose children have a low probability of equally their parents' exceptionalism.
1
This article re-confirms the fact that in the 468 years since the first slaves arrived, there have been only a few decades when African-Americans have had limited opportunities for entering mainstream U.S. economic & social life. During these years, some have used a type of avoidance & denial behavior called “intentional ignorance”, i.e.,what’s inconvenient to know.
In“The Half Has Never Been Told”, historian E.E. Baptist rejects intentional ignorance by documenting how the highly efficient American plantation system allowed productivity to increase fast thanks to the gun, bullwhip, & practice of brutal torture. Business success using black slaves meant great wealth for the white plantation aristocracy, British & American northern manufacturing, & was the foundation for today’s commerce, financial institutions & corporatization by the 1%.
2018 appalling statistics of African-American life should be confronted with full acknowledgement of our shameful past, such as myths about black cultural inferiority & manufactured amnesia about how U.S. wealth and privilege was created by the centuries of torture & degradation of African Americans.
The best solutions are education & true coming together to solve long standing problems. Civil rights, labor, women’s & voter’s rights all are important answers and although very incomplete, still have achieved a lot. U.S.racism is far from eradicated, yet is less than it was not. A long hard road still remains for all of us.
4
I predict if you did this study in the next 20 years, the results would be about the same for black and white men, thanks to the opiod epidemic. Let's face it, black men are the canary in the coal mine. It's not race or culture or any other factor. It's hopelessness, which can afflict even the well off, when viewing the injustices of our society.
1
The data is interesting and as others have noted, demonstrates a remarkable, surprisingly actually, level of social mobility in today's America.
However, the data in no way, shape or form supports the insinuation that racism plays a part in the financial under-performance of black boys later in life. The data presented illustrate outcomes, not causal relationships.
It seems that the authors of this article, who are not listed as authors of the study, found the report to be an opportunity to inject their own views, unsupported by any of the data presented, as conclusions.
5
I taught at a high school years ago with an even amount of blacks and whites. It seemed to me young black males faced enormous social pressure to conform to a "model" of urban blackness learned from TV, music, etc.; e.g., to not behave "white". Coaching boys in sports, I could clearly see some of them sought to emulate that "model' though it had nothing to do with them. Such included not appearing to excel at academia. I cannot help but believe such contributes to the problem cited in this article.
18
This is so interesting, especially given all the talk of intersectionality these days.
But the study seems to have a blind spot in that it quickly eliminated so called inherent differences as an explanatory factor because black boys and black girls don't show the same disparity relative to whites of the same gender. This is a huge leap of logic given the results show such a large difference in outcomes between black boys and girls. Because boys and girls do in fact have inherent differences. This aspect of the data needs to be studied in more detail.
2
The statistics on those raised in areas with many vs. low numbers of fathers is telling. When men abandon their children with little or no support, they doom them to more than a life of economic inequality. Many studies show that children of divorce perform worse in school, have higher rates of drug and alcohol use and criminality, the very behaviors that can derail hopes and dreams.
Yes, these boys (and girls) deal with the effects of systematized racism. Add to that abandonment by a father, and they face almost impossible odds of success at any level.
2
I think it's unfortunate that the article (and maybe the study? not sure) glosses over what's portrayed in the "large income gaps persist between men-but not women" figure. The data show that (1) black men and black women have the same outcome once parental income is taken into consideration; (2) black women and white women have the same outcome; (3) black men and white women have the same outcome; and (4) only white men do significantly better regardless of whether they're raised poor or rich.
What this figure implies is that in our society, only white men receive benefits out of the ordinary. This means the story should be less race oriented but rather on what makes our society always give preferences to white men? Maybe it's because we're a society dominated by white patriarchy. It's not that black men do worse, it's that everyone (both sexes and maybe other races?) does worse compared to white men. If the authors really want to take a deeper look, they should look at what factors promotes the continuation of white patriarchy in our society.
2
Maybe white men do actually have the skills and drive that it takes to get ahead.
A rather controversial aside: when blacks were discriminated against, back in the 50s and 60s, the ones that were determined to get ahead worked really hard, because they knew they had to be better than their white rivals to get the job. Now, it is the white men who nobody loves. They're on their own, and can't expect any special help. This tends to give the motivated ones a kick in the pants, because they know nobody will feel sorry for them if they screw up, so they have to do it all for themselves.
Just my two cents..
These facts may well generate defensive reactions from those on the right-wing: "Look at yourself. Don't be a victim blaming others for your problems." But turn the mirror. As soon as some of the country's leadership did not look like white men, many or some of you--in any case, too many--adopted the narrative that you were being ignored or silenced by political correctness (aka as giving some attention to the variety of people that make up this country and whose needs and aspirations were slowly getting recognition). Hiding behind the fact that economic changes have left a large fraction of the population behind, you are supporting or allowing policies and practices to be continued or revived that foster the inequalities summarized in this article.
1
Until we are willing to address in the broad light of day, the cultural influences that young black men encounter growing up then we will be fighting this trend with one hand behind our back.
The promulgation of horrible role models in the media and in sports for these young men - that can't be offset by a strong father figure - undoubtedly influences early life choices that become a one way path to disaster.
4
The truth is that underlying skills at a young age, taught at a very young ag, such as self control, communication, honesty, are one of the determining factors, in how well all children are able to navigate adulthood, no matter the race, class, etc. The other factor is the innate stability of the parents raising them. Single or divorced women, no matter the income level seem to not be able to give young males that which they desire the most, a male to emulate. My husband's father died when he was only 8, and even though he floundered, and had talents he hadn't utilized, when he married me, had direction, and a purpose in his life, he was able to have great success in his career, and his other talents, music, and art. However, when it came to money, he had no skills, wasn't able to be responsible about it, so I handled all of that for the last 47 years. He was also the second child. His older brother, had the PHD, made more money, and was, and is more financially minded. I, also, am an older child.
1
It's disappointing that the authors jump straight to racism as the only possible explanation without considering alternatives. Most glaringly, education is barely mentioned at all despite the fact that it is widely recognized as the single most significant determinant of upward mobility. It would be interesting to see whether the children who stay wealthy into adulthood are the same ones who are finishing college and attaining advanced degrees. This, of course, raises the questions of culture and values. Are students growing up in social environments in which educational achievement is valued and honored? Or are young people who take learning seriously stigmatized? Gender roles are also relevant here. What are the models of masculinity available to young men, and to what extent do they correlate with educational achievement and financial success? This is not to say that racial discrimination and lack of opportunity doesn't play a role, but I think it's part of a much larger picture.
60
An interesting article with good detail, but the claim about halfway through the article that "The disparities that remain also can’t be explained by differences in cognitive ability..." is not well substantiated. Such differences would go a very long way to explaining the wide range of evidence presented in the article. That explanation was dismissed too readily.
33
The (sic) apparent differences in cognitive ability would appear to be born more of the nurturing forces present in the students lives through childhood, teenage years and young adulthood. The sentiments expressed by youth across the country about the Parkland massacre, especially the children at Parkland are spread across a wide spectrum of expression: the demographics in Parkland would probably be in the 5th quintile, while the youth at the high school in Chicago that walked out were probably concentrated in the 1st and 2nd quintiles. You are making a statement that doesn't consider the effects of enrichment and nourishment, and how it plays out for the potential at success in society, which starts with mastering language arts and logic.
Peter Johnson, if you think that cognitive ability is a cause for the disadvantages for black boys, why then is it gender specific? Are you saying black males are genetically different from white males, white females and black females in innate cognitive ability? Interesting take on genetics.
2
I suspect that boys are genetically more aggressive/violent (on average) than girls (on average). So yes I suspect that there are some genetic differences between boys and girls, but of course only on average, and this should not be used as an excuse to discriminate in any way. Cognitive ability interacts with all sorts of other behavioral traits in complicated ways, probably including some behavioral traits with gender tilts.
1
Thinking about the future of her young black son growing up the the US, a friend of mine has sent her kids to Guinea to live with relatives and attend private school. As a single-mom and travelling RN in the US this was her choice, though couldn't have been easy.
6
Life expectancy is 59 years there. Problems with ebola, genital mutilation of females, multiple coup attempts, military killing civilians, human rights violations too numerous to mention. Yeah, sounds like a utopia. You friend must REALLY love her children to send them to such a progressive, wonderful country.
7
Spare me my parents are Ghanaian immigrants and we were raised just fine in America. She probably sent him back because it's difficult raising a young son by yourself as a traveling RN, not because of racism. He'll get structure and an affirming culture not just left with a series of random caregivers. Then become a latchkey kid as he gets older where he runs the risk of falling in with a bad crowd.
2
Your comment isn't really clear. Single-moms raising kids are always at risk. True a certain percentage always defy the odds; if you are one of them, understand the bias in your judgement. Upward mobility is much harder for black people than white people, that is a undeniable trend.
There is no longer any point in reading the never-ending scroll of "groundbreaking" new research. The conclusion is always the same - racism and white privilege. Never absentee fathers. Never the influence of gangsta' music and culture. Never adolescent social norms that punish high achieving black males. It is simply always, ALWAYS, racism and white privilege.
If ever a legitimate study is completed to racial comparisons between US-born black males and African immigrant black males, we can all be certain that the results will never see the light of day.
230
Here's one although it's a working paper. http://home.uchicago.edu/~arauh/Rauh2013b.pdf
1
Full Name, you might be right - or wrong, but if any researcher was unlucky enough to get a paper with similar conclusions accepted and printed, he or she would soon find himself unemployed and unemployable.
4
You must have read a different article. This one specifically examined marriage rates (i.e. absentee fathers). And social norms (including disproportionate police harassment) that punish black males.
5
The authors have zeroed in on the conundrum that faces black boys/men in this society. As long as you wear a suit or jacket you are generally regarded as less threatening. In the workplace, all things being equal, your presence will be seen as disruptive to the career goals of white men, then white women.
The first and second generation Caribbean and African males of color will be not generally find the forces that tend diminish the accomplishments of black males. By the third generation, these black males will be seen as assimilated, with the same negative pressures.
Remember, we live in a culture and society where a reality show host, now President, when faced with awarding the first place prize on his show, offered to issue a tie to a black male who had advanced degrees from MIT and a white housewife with no degrees.
4
This narrative is DANGEROUSLY FLAWED. Too often articles like this paint individuals with the same brush to make a problem about race instead of individual choices and circumstances. Life is not fair, it never has been and never will. The road map out of poverty for EVERY American is documented and has been proven time and time again..... Work hard, be humble, constantly seek opportunity, capitalize on opportunity, be frugal, save what you earn, be well mannered, and pursue ownership of assets/business. Black Africans who come to America with nothing, climb the ladder of success at rates astonishingly higher than American born blacks with more means.
This article is filled with irony, honestly if rich boys become poor WHY do we as a society care. A rich child can get into decent schools, grow up in decent neighborhood and they can afford state tuition. How hard is it to get a decent job or join the army, learn a trade or start a small business. If their parents were rich and black, how is this a RACE issue?
77
I guess that affirmative action (e.g., race-favored university admission policies, corporate “diversity” programs, federal contract set-asides, invisible quotas everywhere) –- that engine for self-perpetuating success for upper middle-class African Americans (and the most blatant and grotesque of all examples of institutional racism in the US) –- isn't working all that well.
85
"Grotesque?" You don't know what that means, apparently. A few white borderline kids didn't get into the college of their choices, and the world just ends in a heap of grotesqueness.
Here's the deal: your racist country has no clue it is racist, and therefore has lost its cohesion and unity. It has been taken over by China economically, by Russia politically, and by Europe socially. No amount of shouting "Affirmative action is grotesque!" will reverse that.
The disparities that remain also can’t be explained by differences in cognitive ability, ..If such inherent differences existed by race, “you’ve got to explain to me why these putative ability differences aren’t handicapping women,” said David Grusky, a Stanford sociologist.
Really? And yet, we are 100% sure that racism affects only black men but not black women -- as the title of the article firmly proclaims. Ridiculous.
70
Agreed. Otherwise it is a hybrid sexist/racist thing that I do not have a name for.
Also, it is only African American Males, not even African immigrants as they statically do better than native born.
Seems to speak to culture
2
What this article doesn't explore further is why wealthy black girls do better than their male counterparts. Simply saying 'the hyper-criminalized black male' is not enough of a causation.
As a black woman (Canadian) African-Americans have a distinctly different culture and self-perception than other black immigrants - this would have made for a far more interesting research study into why these desparities occur, and to what extent it is how a adult parent and child view themselves and the confidence they have to succeed.
Generational poverty works very similar to generational wealth as well. How many of these 1% white families had rich ancestors? Vs. the 1% black families who were most likely 'new rich'? A lot more goes into this than just a simple 'black men are viewed as criminals and therefore will not succeed'
That is a very irresponsible narrative to push NYT.
59
Wealthy black women tend to disproportionately marry Middle, Upper Middle Class white guys.
2
Perhaps we can start with less perjorative headlines about POC. Black boys? Really? When is Auntie Mame coming into the conversation? The headline should be more to the effect that starting-off points make little difference to the lives of black males in this country. Then, we can take on the underlying problems in the language used to describe blacks with wealth versus whites with wealth.
Could lack of or no/low interaction with fathers have any correlation?
Why does racism always have to be the lone culprit of why some blacks fail?
Cultural mores and ethics count too.
59
Why is it so difficult to accept that the United States of America is a racist society? This is not new. Read your history books. Learn!
of course the lack of fathers is a correlation. The racism lies in WHY the fathers are not present. The overincarceration and overstigmatizing and irrational fear of black men is systemic and needs to be corrected.
If you actually read the article you'd have your answer.
Read Coates's The Case for Reparations in the Atlantic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-repara...
The parts of our culture and society that had been improving for decades have run into a stupid wall.
2
Never going to happen. Affirmative Action, Reparations already payed off through hundreds of thousands of slaughtered Unionists, endless money wasting boondoggles. Black men must clean up their own cultural calamities.
7
What strikes me here is the clear advantage white men have over black men and white and black women. It appears to be about even. It doesn’t surprise me that white man privilege still abounds, but it certainly flies in the face of all the whining coming from white men these days.
Racism and sexism in the 21st century who would have guessed that.
BTW, I am a 66 year old white guy.
18
There are two factors that need to be taken into account when discussing this -- the IQ of the black boys who didn't make it and the type of education they received in their wealthy homes -- did they value higher education and hard work? Could it be that these black boys are spoiled more than the black girls from the same households who succeed better?
11
Is this an actual published study in a scientific journal? Or a data-mining exercise? Typically, with very large data sets, you can draw a lot of conclusions based on patterns but that is not the same as hypothesis testing. And you cannot use the same data set you explored to look for patterns to then also test your hypotheses, for various statistical reasons mostly having to do with error rates. So, will the researchers follow up with a well-designed study of some kind, gathering new data to confirm/refute this? I would like to know more about the methodology and see this published in a reputable, peer-reviewed journal and not just see some pretty "graphs" at a newspaper. To be able to draw the conclusions you've reached, because they are so shocking, you really need to back it up with real science. I am skeptical of a lot of "data analytics" out there because they appear to be nothing more than fishing expeditions.
4
I didn't fully follow the rabbit hole, but they cite Raj Chetty and some others, and the article referenced is "Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective". Chetty has a pretty good reputation and has won some prestigious awards I know that. This is probably decently vetted data/conclusions. At least as far as economics/social sciences are concerned.
2
http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/race_paper.pdf
The graphs on this article are excellent, but they also make some of the text seem a bit hyperbolic. I suspect the readers using the web will draw somewhat different conclusions after reading this.
13
Its at least partially peer-group and what is cool vs. uncool. Being accepted.
31
I can't believe nobody has brought up the term "bling" as of yet. Are we really going to pretend like it doesn't have an effect on educational attainment, as well as the ability to start your own business that will lead to improved income opportunities?
"Shaq is rich. The white man who signs his check … is wealthy. 'Ah, here you go, Shaq. Go buy yourself a bouncing car. Bling, bling!'"
--Chris Rock
31
I can't believe that in the NYT you are quoting a comedian to attempt to disprove a study with which you disagree.
5
He is not disproving: he is supporting it with evidence.
Besides flashy cars and bling, gangsta music and culture, and sexual mores surely have an impact on the absence of fathers. But there seem to be no studies.
5
"The authors, including the Stanford economist Raj Chetty and two census researchers, Maggie R. Jones and Sonya R. Porter, tried to identify neighborhoods where poor black boys do well, and as well as whites."
Have they tried neighborhoods with high population densities of recent African/Caribbean migrants? Serious question.
57
I imagine that would be a yes. As you know, the Bronx and Queens have high Caribbean populations. The only data not included was undocumented immigrants. However, noticeably Brooklyn was not included as the exception to the rule and that borough also has a large Caribbean/African population.
"And, intriguingly, these pockets — including parts of the Maryland suburbs of Washington, and corners of Queens and the Bronx — were the places where many lower-income black children had fathers at home. Poor black boys did well in such places, whether their own fathers were present or not."
There was an article in the NYT some years ago about a neighborhood in the Bronx where black kids do better than whites. The black kids were primarily of Caribbean background and the whites were increasingly of Albanian background.
1
I'm glad you brought this up--it's a valid point. It struck me that the author of this article focused on the success of the son of a Nigerian immigrant, as if he was a reasonable representative of black males in the U.S. Nigerians have the highest educational levels in the country their success has been well documented. You can't conflate all black populations into one demographic profile.
Your graph of Black boys falling in class was chilling and counter-intuitive. The problem of racist assumptions won't be solved with one magic bullet, but with concerted effort on many. It seems like an incarceration problem as well, or a vicious circle.
3
What the study finds is just what conservatives and Christians have said for years. Family matters and having 75 or 80% of all black children born out of wedlock is a disaster for the child and the nation.
The left has been consistently wrong in shouting racist at all who cite lack of fathers as being the leading cause of black poverty. Even after this study makes the connection plain the left will persist is making the false charge of racism against all those who point out the obvious because it suits their political agenda and will to power.
This is directly responsible for much of the poverty and criminality in the black community and it is just the new Jim Crow run by the same old Democrat party!
The biggest tragedy of the Obama administration is that he could, as the first black President, have actually made a difference in the appalling lack of black fathers in the home had he chosen to do so. Obama should have made changing this dysfunctionality the most important goal of his presidency but his support of Democrat identity politics came before the actual welfare of black Americans. Very, very sad.
101
What? I do believe this is not supported by the study! "The income gap exists for black and white boys if they had one parent in the house or two."
4
Well, such "conservatives and christians" should look into the very discriminitary policies that lead to mass incarcerations of black males, which undermines the family matters of which you speak (i.e. absent fathers).
6
The biggest tragedy of the Obama administration is that, as the first black president, you and your ilk would never have supported his administration's attempt to focus any resources (meaning your tax money and the precious tax money of "hard-working" white Americans) towards addressing the issue of black fathers.
And read this:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-levs/no-most-black-kids-are-no_b_111...
1
Apparently the writers are unaware that black students from families earning 100K+ have consistently scored beneath poverty level asians and whites on the SAT's since statistics were first compiled decades ago. Anyone knowing this cannot be surprised at the facts the writers seem to find surprising.
127
And yet when Charles Murray has tried to discuss this....he is screamed at and repudiated as a "racist!"
7
Read the research done by Claude Steele to better understand the causes of this disparity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Steele
1
It's because white males usually come from families that own and run companies and businesses that the sons inherit, work at, and continue to prosper while African American males lack those options. Black Americans wealth come from mainly working for someone else. In Maryland, there are few Black-owned businesses at the corporate level that hire any sizable numbers of black men. White owned businesses abound that are family run.
54
Are you saying that most white families own a business? Do you have any evidence for this? America's about 70 percent white. If most of these people owned businesses that would mean over a third of Americans are businesses, without even counting minority owned ones..
6
"It's because white males usually come from families that own and run companies and businesses that the sons inherit, work at, and continue to prosper..." You don't know much about white males, do you?
1
I think what you are saying is that the next generation in the white community have the ability to be successful when the next generation of black people
do not have that ability.
I would suggest that in addition to the reason you gave you will find that the educational levels these whites had was higher and that they were more likely to make sure their children did well in school
Oh look, black men are treated like women in the workforce. The first graphic made the case that black men are falling off the top of the ladder. But the trend line for black men is the same as for all women. The real story is the unique privilege of white men.
164
I wish I could recommend this 100 times.
1
Exactly! For the article to show how great the disparity is for white women as well as black men and women in the graph (basically we are all at the same disadvantage), say nothing about it, and think this is just a black men's racial issue is to vastly underestimate the size of the problem. We need to commit to leveling the playing field for all regardless of race or gender.
1
And yet, there are thousands of Black males (single and married) that come from poor families that become wealthy and stay wealthy. Stop reporting the negative on Blacks all the time.
27
Bringing bad thing to light is the first step in solving the problem.
1
Look at how our society treats--reacts to--Black boys and tell me you're surprised. We accept that Black boys are a danger when they're wearing a hoodie and carrying Skittles. We treat them differently almost without exception compared to white boys who commit the same crime. We discipline them in our schools much more harshly--even when they're 5 and 6 years old--expelling and suspending them at staggering rates, pushing them right into the school-to-prison pipeline. This isn't Black boys--this is US, America.
97
I'm disappointed with the way the Times chose to present this study. If you actually read it, you'll see that they also studied Asian-American and Hispanic kids, and, in general, that income gap between generations did not persist as it did with African-American kids. That information is in this article, but it is buried deep. Instead, the reporters went for quotes early on from the director of the "Antiracist Research and Policy Center", who, of course, cites the problem here as...racism. I get that the reporters are trying to draw eyeballs to the article, and that the academic authors might be trying to do the same, but, I also think Times readers deserve better than the sensational lead that this must be a racist, whites vs. blacks problem.
211
Or...MAYBE there are unique anti-Black factors in American history and culture that do not express themselves against Hispanics or Asians to the same degree or at all.
Whites don't riot and flee when Asians or Hispanics move into their neighborhoods. Whites don't call the police because an Asian man is standing on the street. Whites didn't spend decades lynching Asians and Hispanics for fun. And so on.
4
Asian American is a mostly known multiethnic national origin designation that is not comparable to mostly unknown ethnic national origin African American.
While Hispanic American denotes a Spanish language and cultural heritage that has nothing to do with either national origin or color aka race.
There is only one race aka human.
2
You are right about that misleading, inflammatory, race-baiting headline.
I did research on black integration/school busing in the 1960's, and am happy to see that "big data" analytic techniques are now offering new insights into economic mobility of various racial/ethnic groups. I was struck by this statement from the study's website: "We conclude that reducing the black-white income gap will require efforts whose impacts cross neighborhood and class lines and increase upward mobility specifically for black men."
Given that black men, and the black boys who will become the black men, seem to be the main sub-group with limited/downward mobility, and that huge data sets often obscure individual and sub-group differences, I would like to see a more narrowly focused and in-depth examination of factors that might affect the upward mobility of black men/boys, e.g., family structure, father-absence, cognitive ability, economic status, even genetic/hormonal differences. Often such differences are best illuminated not only by number-crunching but by complementary psychological, sociological and anthropological examination and analysis of individuals. For example, in the 1960s studies at several top universities showed consistent cognitive differences among racial and ethnic groups, an unwelcome finding that led to disbanding the research projects. However, the way to ameliorate any such differences would be objectively to identify them and apply remedial measures.
1
Wealthy black men and white women? So how do their kids stack up? And how about poor black men and poor white women?
3
The authors extrapolate about the positive effects that black fathers may have on other people's children within neighborhoods. As far as I can tell they are using correlative statistical data.
If you use similar data about the presence in neighborhoods of immigrants who look like the people in question, I would postulate that we could make a similar correlation to the one about fathers. In other words, the presence of recent immigrants of similar ethnic background within neighborhoods could also be potentially beneficial for children other than their own.
It seems highly likely that African immigrants are rare within black neighborhoods, whereas white and Asian and Latin immigrants are more plentiful within white and Asian and Latin neighborhoods.
The prospects children have may well depend upon many other factors than simply the structure of their immediate family. The presence of immigrants, with the energy and purpose they bring as models and participants in community, is one such possibility.
One possible conclusion is that the black boys who grew up in neighborhoods where large numbers of fathers are present were racially isolated. They were out in the country in a place where there are few blacks, so they went along with what everybody else was doing. Of course, teenage boys can't be doing anything too bad with all those fathers around ready to stop them, so that is a factor too.
The study could give us more detailed information on this group, but they chose not to.
2
I wonder how the boys who succeeded compared to the boys who didn't in regards to these questions:
Did they attend school every day?
Did they do their homework every night?
Was there someone to provide homework support or tutoring?
At what point did the boys that failed fell behind? Why does the family think this happened?
Why did the ones that moved passed the chaos move forward?
Did they have a Grit score for each child?
Did they track family savings, family credit scores, family stability?
As someone whose father passed away during my senior year in high school I can tell you that most people would never complete the path I took. I spent 13 years going to school at night, working full time before I completed my MBA. I did not get married or have children until after these accomplishments and every single day was a test of grit and courage and self doubt. There is always an excuse to quit - the hard thing is to keep going.
183
Particularly when one is told, ad nauseum, by the media and the political left that one is under the thumb of a mythical systemic racism by white dominated society! Why keep trying when "the man" will keep pushing you down?
Even IF racism is a factor it is no where near the main factor in whether one succeeds of not, it's probably not even in the top 5 reasons but believing it does sure would be a motivation killer.
28
You are so wonderful. Except for your lack of any humble humane empathy.
My great grandfather was born enslaved and graduated from college.
My grandmother was born to enslaved parents who sent her and her four older sisters.
There are always things beyond your control. Like color aka race that no amount of confidence and grit can always overcome. Being black in America is one of those things.
4
3rd paragraph...sisters to college.
2
Community and goals are important, and unfortunately easy wealth is all too easily easily spent. Investing instead of buying glitter, Cristal, etc. is something young people don't think is necessary. But supposing the person who made it is sensible, there's another factor that isn't mentioned much.
The state as it is now constituted disadvantages people of color on every level. Their fees are larger, their access to property handicapped, their tendency to be targeted by authorities is large. On a lower level, if I am stopped for a driving offense, I will likely get off with a warning. My black friends are not only stopped more often, they are often subjected to lies and intimidation. They don't know when they get to court to negotiate. They're afraid. And when the judge gets going, there are often fees added on they can't afford.
Property theft by the state and local communities is a scandal.
Also, there is the dishonest debt collection industry, which has ties to courts and authorities, and will steal people's money if they can. I have 3 specific cases of this that I had to help with, and I was scandalized by the corruption of the authorities in each case.
20
" On a lower level, if I am stopped for a driving offense, I will likely get off with a warning. My black friends are not only stopped more often, they are often subjected to lies and intimidation."
Putting aside anecdotal evidence, it makes rational sense that a population that is poorer/has trouble making insurance payments/has trouble keeping car in 100% working condition would be more likely to be pulled over for something like expired plates, or burned out tail lights (a poorer population will have on average older cars). Or for more serious reasons: blacks are significantly less likely to wear seatbelts (an offense you can be pulled over for in many states) even with children in the car: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/811107
None of this is to say that policing to obtain revenue to moral or just. I think in most cases in poor/urban communities, it's done as a pretext to find drugs, which is a whole animal by itself that we need to rectify.
2
Many of those things are awful, but they occur to white people too. It seems that poverty or lack of status is more of a factor than actual race. (Note that black WOMEN do not have these problems in the article.)
BTW: I am an older white woman, and I have NEVER EVER "gotten off" with a warming for a traffic violation -- though I have known younger and prettier women who DID get off.
Maybe you can address why such egregious violations of civil rights laws are being perpetrated in lefty liberal blue blue blue Boston -- run by Democrats forever -- vs other cities?
In my home city, many of the judges are black -- many are women -- some are black women. Are you saying that black people cannot negotiate even with black judges -- or that black judges "go easy" on white defendants?
5
I have gone to court with my friends. There was nothing wrong with their cars nor their driving. They were targeted because they were black. I've heard many many stories. No, we are not treated equally, and no, I don't get stopped frequently. Black people do.
It's called DWB: Driving While Black. There's another:
LWB: Living While Black. It's hazardous.
Did you all know that Barack Obama was harassed in DC because he was a black person in an assumed white area of privilege? Fact.
2
This is a very good article and eye-opening of income inequality. The graphs are good too. That being said, this topic has been written about so many times that nothing new or at least interesting comes out of it. Dig deeper and find something from a different perspective.
7
You just said this was eye-opening, and then you say there is nothing new. I think your first thought was right. The finding that having black fathers in the neighborhood as role models improves outcomes no matter whether your own dad is present is amazing and encouraging. Some of the other perspectives are sobering.
We read about every game that every basketball team plays, and about every word that comes from top politicians' mouths. Why shouldn't journalists keep writing about race, even if it is the same story with new data? In this case, it adds new dimension.
2
Interesting study and interesting results and what will further research tell us about the source of the disparity. However, I question the results based on geography and had the same concerns for the referenced geographic studies. The county I currently live in has less than 1% minorities (caucasian almost all scandinavian and native americans are almost the entire population). Given that, how big is the sample size for where black children end up?
2
If it's like previous inequality studies from these authors, it's essentially a 100% sample.
I have a somewhat different take on this. While there are differences between black and white individuals, the charts show there is significant income mobility in the US today. In a perfectly egalitarian world, each of the quintiles would end up with 20% of those starting in the top quintile. For black men, this turns out to be accurate, with a range of 17-22%. While white men have somewhat less mobility, 20% of white men growing up in the top quintile end up in one of the bottom two quintiles.
The reverse doesn't look nearly as good, but still over half of black men and two-thirds of white men growing up in the bottom quintile moved up at least one quintile.
What would be interesting and valuable would be a study analyzing the differences, for both black and white individuals, between those who succeed and those who do not.
45
Not having a father in the home is the greatest impediment they found.
3
Black men only end up in equal ~20% quintiles if they stared in the top quintile. If they started lower than that, they end up overwhelmingly in the lower quintiles. So, there is NOT much income mobility if you grew up in a disadvantaged circumstances, whether they be inferior schools, lack of role models, or financial hardship.
2
Consider that this study is of 20 million people. I think such a large sample size would overwhelm any attempts a nit-picking the findings. While yes their is mobility, the downward mobility of Black males from the wealthiest to the poorest quintile is significantly greater than that of whites males with the same background. This is the point that you seem to be trying to blunt for some reason.
I have many thoughts after reading this article. I'll start off on the positive--I really enjoyed the graphics and how the data were presented. I feel the NYT has been improving the way they portray stories and show data to their audience.
As to the findings themselves:
Studies like these, while vastly interesting, are never able to capture the role of things like culture, particularly within families--how do parents interact with their children; do parents find education to be important; how do parents value things like hard-work, independence, asking for help, etc.; what's the family structure like, and most important, how are these things portrayed to the kids. Race is often used as a proxy for "culture," since it is much harder to capture but I think we can all recognize that just because two families happen to be of the same race doesn't mean their approach to life or outlooks are at all similar. Race, in this study and many others, is obviously an issue but what none of these studies show is whether race might be a confounding variable. We might not have the tools, currently, to evaluate the factors that are truly important.
118
Like you, I find this article fascinating and highly relevant.
I'd urge you to think further on the disturbing disparity of financial outcomes for black boys vs. black girls. There's no reason to believe that the family culture of black girls should differ from that of black boys... it's 50/50 whether any given family gives birth to a boy or a girl. The authors' hypothesis that it's the culture of *our society* that drives the black boy-girl difference is far more persuasive. In other words, that our current American society has a problem with -- is biased against, and systematically mistreats -- black boys.
2
The study addressed your questions raised. For example, the study specifically addressed black parents of the 1%. How did they get there? Did they inherit their money? Almost certainly no. They had to have had valued education on some level, hard work or a combination of the two. The study specifically addressed the family structure and found that intact Black families whose kids went to good schools were subject to some economically downward force.
1
Actually, if you look at the figure for outcomes by race and gender, you'd see that black boys and girls have almost the exact same outcome once parental income is taken into consideration. Black girls and boys growing up with parents in the 90th percentile for income are at the 65th percentile when they're adults. The same is exactly true for white girls. That supports your argument that there should be no difference in family culture between black girls and boys. It seems that it's also true for white girls. It doesn't seem that our society has a problem with black boys or that we're biased against them. Rather, it suggests that our society has a problem because we elevate white males across the socioeconomic spectrum over everyone else.
This article may be misleading because it uses quintiles of income to define economic class. Household incomes would be:
Poor: $0-20K
Lower: $20-40K
Middle: $40-60K
Upper: $60-80K
Rich: Over $80K
The problem with this is obvious; most people don't consider households making over $80K "rich", and regional variations distort the numbers. For this study, in some parts of the country you could have a neighborhood with mostly black single mothers where there are many households with incomes over $80K. They aren't really rich, and don't have any advantages because mom is spending $3000 a month on a two-bedroom condo. The culture of teenage males in such an area would be oriented towards sports, girls, and rap music.
On the other hand, the results with black boys in neighborhoods where most families have fathers have probably detected bona fide affluent areas. The teenage culture there is probably more mixed, with some interest in science, art, and literature.
The researchers should do more research about the other characteristics of the boys they are studying and the neighborhoods they live in, to see if they can verify or refute my hypothesis.
30
Where are you getting your income quintiles? Those incomes bear no relationship to any numbers one finds when doing on line research for the definitions of rich, upper middle, middle, etc. They are not even close.
16
The article mentioned black men who grew up in households of black millionaires.
3
@Charlie - I'm using BLS numbers. They may be a little out of date, but these guys grew up a while ago. The quintiles are a little higher today, you may need a household AGI of $90K or $95K to be in the top quintile.
Remember, a quintile is huge numbers of households across the US. There are 23 million households in the top quintile, so you can't expect that many people to have a very high income.
1
“One of the most popular liberal post-racial ideas is the idea that the fundamental problem is class and not race, and clearly this study explodes that idea.”
40% of rich white boys stay rich, while only 10% of poor white boys become rich. That's a 4:1 ratio. Meanwhile almost 20% of rich black boys stay rich (again compared to 40% of rich white boys), so that's a 2:1 ratio. It looks to me as if class - or more accurately parental income, which is what this study looks at - is much more important than race.
49
Please explain how you reach that conclusion to yourself and then explain it to the rest of us if you are still so inclined. If 40% of rich "white" boys stay rich, and only 20% of rich "black" boys stay rich, how can "race" (or more accurately, the experience of racism) not account for that difference?
4
Racism by definition punishes anyone who looks/acts different from the norm, so the presumption that racists specifically target black boys while embracing black girls, Hispanic and Asian boys/girls doesn't pass the common sense test. Given the outcomes for all of these groups closely parallels that of rich white boys and girls, such narrowly targeted racism falls on its face as a causal factor. Why would you deliberately ignore direct correlations of fatherless homes, gangsta culture, and the beat-down of high-achieving adolescent black boys by their contemporaries? What agenda is so compelling that the truth must be ignored?
1
Rich people can buy themselves -- and their kids -- out of almost any kind of troubles, and there's the rub.
Poor folks cannot do this, and therefore, if their children mess up....they pay the piper.
A good example is Nikolas Cruz. His very wealthy older parents gave him a life of indolent luxury in an upscale Florida suburb, and got him out of all kinds of troubles and let him buy guns. They ignored red flags like his threatening neighbors, bullying other children and torturing animals.
Cruz had a "clean record" so no gun registration laws would have stopped his rampage. His record was "clean" because his parents kept him from any consequences of his actions.
Note that while Cruz is apparently 100% white, his adoptive father appears to have been hispanic and his half-brother is black (mixed race).
1
In the graph labeled
"Large income gaps persist between men — but not women."
It looks like the black men are doing as well as the black women, and both black men and black women are doing the same as the white women (and remember that this is not due to effort or knowledge as women overall have higher educational achievement than men:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/education/09college.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/21/women-are-better-educated-than-their-hus...
https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2014/10/31/women-more-likely...
So, rather than conclude that the black women are not affected, the data seem to demonstrate that everyone's income winds up in the same place except for the white men.
86
Thanks, I highly enjoyed this author but was bothered by the unaddressed assumption that women (black and white) having a gap with white men was natural.
3
What? No, it indicates no such thing. It indicates the consequences of racism fall disproportionately on "black" men, while both "white" and "black" women suffer from the consequences of sexism.
1
I had the same reaction. It's not that the same effects aren't seen in black women -- it's that all women do about as well as black men, and white men do better than everyone else.
2
No wonder my bi-racial cousin is thrilled that her daughter is a caramel skinned “mini-me” and that with her blonde streaked hair/ blue eyed son she was often assumed to be the nanny.
8
It's another issue for another day, but....even TODAY with all our "wokeness"....in the BLACK community....light caramel skin is prized over dark black skin, and silky straight hair is prized over natural kinky hair.
"Black" is not one thing in the US, as blacks can vary dramatically in appearance from a Haley Berry to a Gabourey Sidibe. There are reasons that people adore and admire a caramel skinned Beyonce, with her long straight caramel streaked hair (vs. the natural hair she was born with).
2
This study only takes into account the kinds of quantitative characteristic (i.e., race, gender, income). But where is the qualitative information that might shed more light on interpreting the results? What type of atmosphere are these kids growing up in? What are their friends like? Will different cultures produce different outcomes? Is that okay? Should we expect that groups who behave in different ways will all meet at the same place?
If you're research doesn't address these more qualitative questions, then the conclusions they reach will be dubious at best. People will fill find whatever conclusion suits them best.
79
What about the less fathers and father figures for the "black" boys? What about the higher incarceration rate of "black" men? What about the lower marriage rates of both "black" men and women? Isn't that "qualitative information"?
7
I absolutely agree with you that people approach such studies with biases (called hypotheses) and look for supporting evidence. And statistical studies never capture the whole truth or even everything that matters for any particular individual.
BUT this study produced a very interesting result: black girls with high-income parents are (on average) doing just fine. Black boys with high-income parents are (on average) not. Because it's luck of the draw whether a given black family gives birth to a boy or a girl, there's no reason to suspect that, on average, any of the qualitative factors you mention differ for black boys vs. black girls. And yet the black boys do so much worse. How would you explain that?
2
Some interviews with the fathers and mothers of the boys, especially mothers with husbands and without, will help. It also helps to know the number of children vs. the number of adults at home. Since black girls do well, it is curious they don't ask if birth order has an effect on black boys much younger vs. much older than the girls. Will it make a difference if the black boy has three elder sisters? Will sibling relations matter?
A study of 20 million children? How solid were their databases? Countries involved? Really, it would be very hard to do such a study and get reliable results.
7
This will never change as long as we continue to presuppose the problem, we never have an honest conversation. The largest problem is NOT racism it is a factor but not the driver. Would love to see an honest study that compares behavior and cultural beliefs that lead to economic success . A short list would be education, credit worthiness, willingness to delay shot term pleasure for long term security (saving) , criminal behavior, government dependence, family structure.
255
Individual-level explanations are for individual-level data. These are aggregated data--showing rates--and can only be adequately explained at the aggregate level. If you are using education or creditworthiness of these kids who grew up in rich households, you are going to have to control for them or explain why you assume they would be different.
3
The problem is in fact the long history of white racism in America. The physical and psychological environment has strong effects on how we perform as humans. America has not been pretty miserable to black people. This is the problem.
5
I cannot imagine a clearer, evidenced-based study, but you don't think the problem is racism? You, sir, are displaying cognitive dissonance. You are simply unable to see the evidence of structural racism directed at black males because it conflicts with what you've long told yourself about race in America.
11
Sorry. I don't buy into the philosophy that birth is destiny. There are countless examples of people from all demographic groups who have pulled themselves up by the proverbial bootstraps as well as examples of people who have squandered family wealth and found themselves on the brink of bankruptcy. Motivation, drive, perseverance, tenacity, and commitment are the factors that influence success.
173
Birth may not be destiny entirely, and all those qualities you describe certainly help, but you're living in a fantasy land if you fail to acknowledge that luck (at birth) plays an infinitely greater role towards the possibility that one succeeds or fails.
The evidence is both obvious and staggering.
12
How could you possibly review these charts and think they say "birth is destiny"? They indicate what you say in your second sentence! Unbelievable!
8
I do buy into the philosophy that birth is destiny. Many of the black families that fall into the rich category or 'nouveau rich' and lack the deep family contacts that help perpetuate being rich.
I also however know some very successful black family who's parent struggle to keep the children way from the detrimental black music/culture.
1
One way to test further for the effects of class vs race on black boys would be to compare the outcomes of African-descended immigrants from the Caribbean and African countries vs. African-Americans. I live in one of the suburbs mentioned in the article as a place where black and white boys have comparable outcomes (Silver Spring, MD). I have no data, but believe that I see differences in those two groups, with immigrants being treated in sublty different, more positive ways and having better outcomes.
135
Is it the ambition of the immigrant families that results in their success, rather than being treated differently?
4
I'm looking for the study, but I remember reading it about 5 or 6 years ago. They looked at 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation immigration among Africans, Asians, and Hispanics. What they found was African immigrants are the most educated and most likely to speak English of all these groups, and subsequently the highest 1st generation earners. 2nd generation fares well, but worse in comparison to 2nd generation of similarly situated Asian and Hispanic Immigrants. And 3rd generation fares about equally to native, African-American of similar education/wealth to the 2nd generation. Of all groups, African immigrants had the least success of passing down wealth, or remaining in the upper class in subsequent generations..
Another Study shows that when identical job applications are submitted for a Harvard Grad vs UMass (state school) Grad with a high GPA and same major, and the only factor varied is race, the Black Harvard grad is only as likely to get a call back as the white state school grad, and more likely to be called back for jobs offering less pay and prestige.
All this together suggests racial disparities in academics, the job market, and social caste has a profound impact on economic mobility.
3
The research by Ogbu confirms your hypothesis for the first generation of immigrants. However, the benefits of immigration status decline rapidlly through the generations as Immigrants with African heritage assimilate.
1
As a nation, we seem to have stopped worrying about important social issues such the one covered in this story. I can't help but think this may be because of the psychological triaging we are unconsciously doing in the era of Trump.
Thanks to the authors and the data team for this well written and illustrated story. The study shows that to alleviate poverty, looking at race by itself is not enough. Although we think of women when we think about the adverse social impact of gender, men can often be the vulnerable party. In parts of the Caribbean for example, black men have far worse educational outcomes than men and therefore the gender oriented development work done there in the education sector focuses on men. In this country, black men have it much worse than white men that much is obvious but they also have it worse than black women. Traditional notions of gender make it relatively easier on black women than men (the key word being relatively) and need to be targeted for social and economic interventions. We as a society need to acknowledge this fact before we can do anything about it.
3
I'm not sure why you focus on the Caribbean- This is the case for the whole United States. Males lag behind females not because of ability, but for a variety of reasons: hardly any male teachers, female teachers that discriminate in both behavior and grades, boys not getting the learning environment that they need but rather being pushed into a gynocentric environment that works better for girls, are medicated for ADD at much higher rates, disproportionally suffer from loss of PE in school, are only 35% of college students...honestly this should not be a surprise. We have put all our resources into praising girls and demeaning boys, most mentoring programs focus on girls, not boys, to the point where if a boy fails, they think it must be because they are not smart enough (rather than not receiving appropriate support).
But thank yiiu for acknowledging the issue. I wish more undersrstood the magnitude and the potential consequences (school violence).
22
School & college are hardly a "gynocentric" environment, seeing as in all of Western civilization, the education system at both levels was designed by men and originally was meant ONLY for boys. Girls and women did not gain access to equal education until much later. For them to be now doing better in a system that was not designed for them and where a lot of fields continue to be openly hostile to them, that's quite an achievement. You need to point a finger squarely at popular culture that teaches boys from an early age that it's not "cool" or "tough" to like reading, learning, cooperation, and empathy and that being considered "cool" or "tough" is the most important thing in the world, to the exclusion of almost anything else.
25
Female teachers are more than 85% of teachers in the US education system (non-college). Studies have repeatedly shown that female teachers discriminate against boys, both in terms of grade and in terms of of their behavior. Boys have a host of systematic structural barriers in lower education.
More Information:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/05/the-war-against-boy...
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/02/16/female-teachers-give-male_n_...
4
Of course it is easier to focus on economics than on race. For one thing, it is more comfortable. Just as importantly, if the problem is economic, there are many program options which can be tried - early childhood education, school improvements, scholarships, job training, child care, employment etc.
How to 'fix' the country's difficult and entrenched racial issues is far from clear. For one thing, racial disparities are partly about attitudes, world views, and opinions of millions of individuals. Such things are ingrained and very hard to change. Systemic racism is more concrete, but not always obvious either. Our current POTUS and the climate he had encouraged underscores the enormity of the problem in one way: it has encouraged the overt racists to come out into the open and given them permission to spew their hatred.
That said, perhaps even more problematic is the subtle and pervasive racism among the 'good' people, many of whom think that they have no racism in them, but who benefit from a biased system refusing to recognize the reality of it.
143
Please tell white residents of trailer parks in regions like Appalachia all about their "privilege". I'm sure they would be surprised to learn of it.
78
Black women supposedly have two cultural strikes against them, yet exceed their Y-chromosome brethren. The theory that black boys have been whipped via punishment from an early age, but I have to believe that is a minor factor for the son of a millionaire. This data shows that what you proscribe is less dominant than before this study. It's so easy to sit back and ascribe it all to racism by fiat.
20
Your last sentence is relevant to many of the people who wrote these comments - I hope. There's a distinct inability, or lack of desire, to register what these charts are saying notable in them. It's appalling.
2