Plight of black men worsens, professor finds

Black men in the United States are becoming increasingly estranged from the labor force and mainstream American society as part of a trend which has accelerated despite considerable gains in the overall economy, recent studies from researchers at Princeton and peer institutions suggest.

Princeton sociology professor Bruce Western, one of the experts behind the findings, said that the situation for black men is even more serious than previously believed.

"We thought that the economic expansion at the end of the '90s produced better opportunities for young black men without higher education. But if you count the population in jail, this conclusion is incorrect," said Western, author of the forthcoming book "Punishment and Inequality in America."

Since employment studies typically use surveys of households, which do not account for the hundreds of thousands of incarcerated black men, employment rates have previously been overestimated, Western said.

Increasing incarceration rates for young black men are not only responsible for the skewed unemployment data, but a primary reason for the recent plight of African-American men, he said.

"The penal system really cemented the disadvantage of poorly-educated black men and ruled out their mobility into the mainstream of American society," Western said.

He places much of the responsibility for this phenomenon on policymakers who, "in an effort to get tough on crime," have advocated stiffer penalties and lengthier prison sentences.

Failing educational institutions have also contributed to the plight of young black men, with more than half of all African-American men in inner cities across the country failing to finish high school, Harvard education expert Gary Orfield said in an interview.

"Statistics greatly underestimate dropout rates because they rely on school principals who weren't checking on them," Orfield said. "When students disappeared, the principals just wrote them as transfers."

Orfield also said that the Bush administration's signature education law, the No Child Left Behind Act, was not helping the situation.

"The Education Department put tremendous emphasis on test scores, but this can be detrimental to graduation rates because schools send kids with low scores to alternate places of education or even into the workforce."

Black Student Union president Dwight Draughon '08 emphasized the need to "encourage these young students to stick with education, and hopefully be positive role models to them."

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Orfield agreed with this sentiment, saying, "No one even notices when they stop coming to school ... we need to focus on accountability for graduation rates."

While the increasing number of inner-city blacks who drop out of school may find it impossible to find work, the studies showed that even blacks with some education face substantial obstacles in entering the labor force.

Princeton sociology professor Devah Pager, who worked with Western in studying the effects of racial discrimination on the job market, recently conducted an audit study in New York that confirmed his findings.

After hiring black and white people with equal qualifications to pose as applicants, Pager found strong evidence indicating racial discrimination in the hiring process.

"Discrimination can be a major source of discouragement to young men who face hostile treatment and continual rejection," she said. "These encounters send feedback to young jobseekers that their skills will not be fairly rewarded."

The first step in addressing these problems, though, is convincing the public that black plight has reached alarming depths. "Suburban America has no idea about this crisis," Orfield said. "But we are all going to pay for it in the end."