Question 1
African-Americans
45,003,665 (14.1% of the U.S. population), according to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2013
Fertility rate: 2.0 births per woman (PRB 2012).
Life expectancy: 74.4 years (Reinberg 2014)
Literacy: the average African-American twelfth-grade student reads at the same level as the average white eighth grade student (Thompson 2013).
Crime: African Americans are now about one million of the 2.3 million people in prison in the United States, and they are incarcerated at about six times as high a rate as white people (NAACP 2013).
While there are many different theories that surround the performance gap that exists between African Americans and their white counterparts, the challenge of literacy has to be one of the most crucial. The fact that the average African American high school senior has similar literacy skills to white middle school students means that too many African American students are leaving the school system at a clear disadvantage. The challenge for policy planners is to find a way to close this achievement gap in a meaningful way. It is necessary to enlist the support of all of the major stakeholders in a community in order to change the outcomes, so that students enter adulthood on more of an even footing. Some of this has to do with priorities within the African American community. While more and more African Americans are pursuing college degrees and enter professions that require four-eyar or graduate degrees, there are still too many who are left behind. Students who struggle in school are more likely to end up causing discipline problems or simply dropping out altogether. Their frustration reaches a point where they act out in classes or simply decide that school is not the best place for them to spend their time. African American children receive suspensions from class, in the form of in-school suspension, out-of school suspension and placement in alternative educational environments at a higher rate than members of other ethnic groups. If you connect that fact with the numbers about the incarceration of African Americans, which takes place at a much higher rate than people from other ethnic groups, it is clear that what starts out as an educational gap becomes a much more tragic one later, as far too many promising lives end up being spent behind bars. For policy planners, starting literacy programs as early as possible for children will help to break generational cycles of poverty and poor educational outcomes. Finding ways to provide an entire suite of services for families, ranging from emergency aid to parenting classes to child care assistance so that young parents have the chance to pursue their own training and career outcomes will help to bridge the achievement gap. Without this opportunity, though, it will be extremely difficult for African-american children to overcome these gaps in achievement, and the trends from later life will remain unchanged. This means that, even with the billions that are spent in education each year, too many people from an entire cultural group will move from kindergarten to graduation without having their educational needs met.
Question 2
The recent deaths of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner, in New York City, are two symbols of an endemic trend of prejudice that has an awful effect on the life outcomes of too many African-Americans. Eric Garner was placed in a chokehold by a New York City police officer who suspected that Garner was selling loose cigarettes illegally, even though the officer did not see Garner selling them at that time; instead, what Garner was doing was breaking up a fight. Even so, Garner ended up being placed in a chokehold and saying “I can’t breathe” a total of eleven times before he ultimately died (Mathias 2014). In the weeks since, protests have broken out in major cities all over the United States, with protesters blocking major highways and lying down in public places, with the catch phrase “I Can’t Breathe” appearing everywhere from protesters’ posters to T shirts that NBA players are wearing during warmups before their games.
The deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner have been taken as signs that the law enforcement community targets African Americans at a higher rate than people from other ethnic groups. Consider the fact that even though African Americans and Hispanics only make up about 25 percent of the American population, they were about 60 percent of the nation’s prisoners in 2008 (NAACP 2013). As of 2001, on average, one out of every six black men had spent some time behind bars. If that number is going to continue, that means that one out of every three African American men can expect to spend time in prison during their life at some point. It starts young, too – of all the young people who are admitted into prisons, 58 percent of them are African Americans (NAACP 2013). Clearly, the epidemic of incarceration for African Americans is not slowing as one generation gives way to the next.
Much of the disparity in incarceration comes from two phenomena: an emphasis on “broken windows policing” and a high level of disparity in sentencing for drug offenses. “Broken windows policing” refers to an emphasis on targeting people who commit lower level crimes. According to this theory, focusing on those types of crimes will keep people from committing crimes that are more serious (Mathias 2014). This became part of the policy of the New York Police Department during the 1990s, when William Bratton was the police force’s commissioner. This philosophy explains why Eric Garner was being targeted as a known seller of loose cigarettes (a black market trend in which people buy packs, break them up, and then resell the cigarettes individually at a profit), and it also may explain why Ferguson (MissourI) police officer Darren Wilson stopped Michael Brown and his friend in the first place. Their only visible offense was walking down the center of the street, which would have been an almost flagrant form of jaywalking. It did not take long for this stop to turn into tragedy, though. According to William Burnett, a member of the board of directors for Picture the Homeless (an advocacy organization), the “broken windows” crime fighting philosophy has “allowed the NYPD to target people of color and the poor to violate their civil rights” (Mathias, 2014).
It is clear that there is a gap of trust between the African American community and law enforcement. While police shootings are the exception rather than the rule, their focus in the media as of late is laying bare a fact that there is a definite challenge for policy makers when it comes to law enforcement and its connection to the African American community. With regard to the practices of such departments as the Ferguson Police Department and the New York Police Department, there are some who claim that the latent racism at work in the system is leading to the tragic events that are taking the lives of too many. What many protesters are asking for is twofold: a refocusing of the priorities of law enforcement as far as the lawbreakers they pursue. For example, it is illegal for people to break up cigarette packs and then resell the cigarettes at a profit, even if the person selling the cigarettes is the one who bought the pack. It is true that this is taking away profits from the tobacco industry and potentially aiding minors to get access to cigarettes. However, as far as the whole spectrum of crime is concerned, the point that many protesters are making is that there are more important things for police officers to work on. For example, white collar crimes like tax fraud, securities fraud and other infractions of the criminal code in financial matters have a lot more monetary impact on society, but they are associated with a much lower rate of incarceration.
A similar disparity exists with regard to drug offenses. According to the 2013 census, approximately 14 million white people and 2.6 million African Americans report the use of drugs that are illegal. This means that for every African American who is using, there are five white people. However, if you look at the prison population to see which drug offenders are in there, there are ten African Americans behind bars for drug related offenses for every white person behind bars. Even though only about one out of every eight drug users is African American, three out of five of state prisoners serving sentences for drug-related offenses is African-American. One particularly alarming fact is that African Americans who go to jail are just as likely to spend almost five years for a drug offense as they are for a violent crime.
What are the salient factors that contribute to this problem? The economic and social isolation that affect so many African Americans leads to despair, and one common response to despair is to turn to drugs. Because this is so deeply ingrained within American society, it will require multiple interventions in order to correct itself.
Question 3
Online educational opportunities provide a robust exposure to sources on a number of topics, not just the disparities that are a part of the African-American experience today. However, perhaps the most noticeable impact that the online element of this course had for me as far as exposure to the issues that African-Americans face comes from the wealth of video footage available. There is a difference between reading a book about prejudice and watching videos and news footage that are connected to that same trend. It would be one thing to pick up a newspaper and read about the fact that Eric Garner was placed in a chokehold by a police officer and ended up dying on that very street, with the chokehold a part of the cause of death (pending the results of the autopsy) and seeing a video that one person filmed using his cell phone of the event. Being able to see that video has inflamed much of the anger about this death, much in the same way that seeing video of Ray Rice striking his fiancée Janay inside the elevator has inflamed anger about the abuse in ways that simply knowing that he had hit her in there does not. Putting visual images together with factual knowledge adds to the degree of emotional power that our response will have, and it is the same with the video of Eric Garner’s death.
Also, using the Internet provides exposure to many different types of news media that would not have been available before the online age. The mainstream news outlets are now supplemented with a variety of sources that come from different ideological viewpoints, offering (when taken together) a narrative that is more complete than it might otherwise have been without these additional voices. The good news about having more outlets is that more information will come out, giving a more balanced presentation.
Works Cited
2013 Black Population (2013). http://blackdemographics.com/
Ford, D., Botelho, G. and Brumfield, B. (2014). Protests erupt in wake of chokehold death
decision. CNN.com 8 December 2014. http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/04/justice/new-york-grand-jury-chokehold/
Fryer, R. and Levitt, S. (2004). Falling behind. Education Next 4(4).
http://educationnext.org/fallingbehind/
Mathias, C. (2014). Eric Garner said “I can’t breathe” 11 times – Now activists are making 11
demands in his name. Huffington Post 11 December 2014. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/11/eric-garner-protests-demands_n_6308956.html
NAACP (2013). Criminal justice fact sheet. http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-
Nichols, A. (2013). Black-white higher education gap larger today than 50 years ago. Metro
Trends 21 August 2013. http://blog.metrotrends.org/2013/08/black-white-higher-education-gap-larger-today-50-years/
Population Reference Bureau. (2012). World Population Data Sheet 2012.
http://www.prb.org/publications/datasheets/2012/world-population-data-sheet/fact-sheet-us-population.aspx
Reinberg, S. (2014). U.S. blacks still lag whites in life expectancy. WebMD 18 July 2014.
http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20130718/us-blacks-still-lag-whites-in-life-expectancy-study
Thompson, T. (2013). Fact sheet: Outcomes for young, black men.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/tsr/too-important-to-fail/fact-sheet-outcomes-for-young-black-men/
