Make Newark Clean
10-28-2007, 04:54 PM
From ThoraInstitute.com (http://www.thorainstitute.com/):
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Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/059538594X/qid=1149286008/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-1527081-8773453?s=books&v=glance&n=283155)
B&N (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&isbn=059538594X&itm=8)
Black men were half as likely to receive interviews and job offers as white men with comparable qualifications. Further, black men without criminal records were about as likely to obtain an interview or job offer as white men with criminal records.(emphasis added)
Among the errors of many black public intellectuals today is their failure to appreciate the persistent power of anti-black discrimination in the labor market. Bill Cosby (http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=/SpecialReports/archive/200407/SPE20040702a.html) argues that blacks need “to turn the mirror around” and that blacks are merely avoiding their faults when they talk about racial discrimination. It is certainly good to encourage blacks to be better and to strive higher. But if we wish for blacks to achieve more, we also have to address the obstacles and barriers in the path of black progress. Although there are a number of strong and recent studies of anti-black discrimination, there appears to be a “Cosby Consensus (http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=17755),” as the black public intellectual Cynthia Tucker calls it, that it is only “bad habits and poor choices that limit black achievement.”
The most eye-opening of the recent discrimination studies is the work of Devah Pager. In a Milwaukee study (http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/publications/papers/2003/pagerajs.pdf), Pager selected and trained black and white male college students to apply for low-wage jobs. Sometimes the students stated that they had a criminal record and sometimes they did not. This research strategy enabled Pager to examine both the effect of race and the effect of a criminal record. In Milwaukee, Pager demonstrated that black men in the low-wage labor market faced considerable discrimination. Black men were half as likely to receive interviews and job offers as white men with comparable qualifications. Further, black men without criminal records were about as likely to obtain an interview or job offer as white men with criminal records.
Pager and Bruce Western have repeated the study in New York City (http://www.princeton.edu/~pager/race_at_work.pdf). Once again, they found that black men without criminal records are treated the same as white men with criminal records. It is difficult for black men to achieve when they are essentially automatically assumed to be criminals and passed over for jobs.
Another recent, important discrimination study is “Race and the Accumulation of Human Capital across the Career,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 111, no. 1, July 2005, pp.58-89 by Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Melvin Thomas and Kecia Johnson. The Tomaskovic-Devey, Thomas and Johnson (hereafter TT&J) study responds to research suggesting that there is no evidence of racial discrimination when examining the wages of black and white men. This research challenging claims of racial discrimination compares blacks and whites with equivalent levels of education, cognitive ability, work experience, job tenure and amount of on-the-job training. When all of these items are controlled for, blacks and whites have statistically equal earnings. Equal earnings suggest that there is no anti-black discrimination in the labor market.
TT&J argue that it is incorrect to treat an individual’s work experience, job tenure and amount of on-the-job training as an individual choice outside of potential discriminatory treatment in the labor market. These work outcomes clearly depend on the actions of employers and co-workers. For example, Pager and Western’s studies show that blacks may have longer spells of unemployment, not because they choose not to work, but because racial discrimination makes it more difficult for them to find work. Longer periods of unemployment lead to less cumulative work experience. Therefore, controlling for the amount of work experience individuals have does not produce a more precise measure of discrimination, it removes an effect of racial discrimination from the analysis.
TT&J analyze men’s earnings over a 20 year time-period based only on race, age and education. They do not control for characteristics which are potentially shaped by racial discrimination.
TT&J conclude, “Blacks and Hispanics receive lower wages than whites not only because they have lower average levels and quality of education, but because the human capital they do possess is devalued in the labor market. The negative impact of this is cumulative over the work career and increases with education” (pp. 82-83). In general, they argue, “employers may tend to overvalue white education or undervalue minority education” (p. 82). TT&J’s research also indicates that relative to white and Latino high school dropouts, black high school dropouts have a very hard time finding work (p. 72). Racial discrimination is still a significant factor in the labor market.
Bill Cosby, Cynthia Tucker and other leading black public intellectuals have used their prominent positions to loudly condemn poorer, less-educated blacks. These intellectuals appear to be unaware or under-appreciative of the persistence of anti-black discrimination. A growing body of social science research makes it clear that we do not yet live in a colorblind society. [1] Racial discrimination is still a factor limiting black achievement. When black public intellectuals condemn blacks and argue that it is only “bad habits and poor choices that limit black achievement,” they encourage and provide a rationalization for employers’ anti-black discrimination.
Notes
[1] One interesting sub-specialization in this literature is research documenting the anti-black prejudices and stereotypes of employers. For some of this research see Philip Moss and Chris Tilly, Stories Employers Tell: Race, Skill and Hiring in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001); Edward J. Park, “Racial Ideology and Hiring Decisions in Silicon Valley,” Qualitative Sociology 22, no. 3 (1999), 223-33; Johanna Shih, “‘. . . Yeah, I Could Hire This One, But I Know It’s Gonna Be a Problem’: How Race, Nativity and Gender Affect Employers’ Perceptions of the Manageability of Job Seekers,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 25, no. 1 (2002), 99-119; Joleen Kirschenman and Kathryn M. Neckerman, “‘We’d Love to Hire Them, But . . .’: The Meaning of Race for Employers,” in The Urban Underclass, ed. Christopher Jencks and Paul E. Peterson (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1991), 203-32.
MORE>>>
Discarding Future American Scientists
There are a disproportionate amount of black students expressing an interest in receiving more science education.
Today, black students are more interested in math and science education than white students, and yet fewer of these blacks will likely become scientists. America’s leaders believe that for the country to remain competitive in a technology-based world economy, we need to produce more scientists. But because we under-invest in the education of blacks, we are basically discarding many of America’s future scientists.
This year, the research organization Public Agenda published two important educational reports. The first, “Are Parents and Students Ready for More Math and Science?" indicated black students’ greater support for more math and science education. Twenty percent of white middle and high school students thought, “it’s a serious problem that kids are not taught enough math and science.” Thirty-five percent of black students felt the same. Fifty-four percent of white students agreed that “increasing the number and quality of math and science courses would improve high school education.” Sixty-seven percent of blacks felt the same. Forty-eight percent of white students believed that math and science were “absolutely essential” for success today. Fifty-three percent of minorities believed the same.
Given these results, one would expect that blacks would be over-represented among America’s future scientists. Most likely, however, these black students will continue the pattern of black under-representation. At every step in the educational process, we lose or under-prepare black students, and, thus, we end up with much smaller numbers of black scientists than we should have.
Children spend more time outside of school than in school, and a great deal of their educational development takes place outside of school. Black students tend to have less-educated parents than white students. Black communities tend to be poorer and to have fewer educational and extracurricular resources. The only way that black students can compete on the proverbial level playing field is if majority black schools were better than majority white schools to compensate for the black home and community disadvantages.
The second Public Agenda educational report, “How Black and Hispanic Families Rate Their Schools”, showed that black students and parents rated their schools worse than white students and parents. This finding is not likely to surprise anyone. The playing field is not level.
If we are really concerned about America’s competitiveness in the global economy, we have to stop merely talking about it and begin investing in black students. We can begin to compensate for some of blacks’ disadvantages by increasing black children’s enrollment in quality preschool programs. We need to make sure that poor black neighborhoods have adequate amounts of free or low-cost, entertaining and educational after-school and summer programs.
Of course, black students also need better schools. The only way we can have better teachers teach the neediest students is to provide these teachers with incentives and support. High quality teachers should earn significantly more for working in high-poverty schools with low-achievement histories. These schools should not be scrounging for basic school supplies, and their class sizes should be smaller than at the average school so that the students can receive more individual attention.
A great deal of research has shown that instituting these types of policies would reduce the black dropout rate and boost black student achievement. More of these students would then enter college interested in and prepared for math and science majors.
Programs like the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s (UMBC) Meyerhoff Scholars Program show what can happen if we make wise investments in black students’ education. The Meyerhoff program has increased the number of black science and engineering majors sevenfold and increased their GPAs. Most of the Meyerhoff graduates go on to pursue advanced degrees. (For more information on this program see Brent Staples, “Why American College Students Hate Science,” New York Times, May 25, 2006, and Michael F. Summers and Freeman A. Hrabowski III, “Preparing Minority Scientists and Engineers,” Science 31, March 2006: 1870-1871.)
There are a disproportionate amount of black students expressing an interest in receiving more science education. A number of these students can become future scientists. If we really want more American scientists, we have stop talking about it and begin investing in these students.
AND LAST>>>
Resolving the Washington Post’s Contradictions about Black Men
Although there is no evidence of a cultural crisis among black men, many black men have very negative views of black men.
Last week, the Washington Post published a very interesting and informative article based on a new national survey of black men (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/03/AR2006060300695.html). (See Steven A. Holmes and Richard Morin, “Being a Black Man,” Washington Post, June 4, 2006.) The Post found little evidence of the cultural crisis many black public intellectuals have been talking about. Instead, the article stated:
Black men report the same ambition as most Americans—for career success, a loving marriage, children, respect.
Three in four black men said they highly value success on the job, fully 20 percentage points higher than white men.
Even young black men, the focus of the debate over black men’s problems, defy familiar stereotypes. Nearly nine in 10 respondents ages 18 to 29 said they are either working or in school, the same proportion who reported that being successful in a career is personally important to them.
Although there is no evidence of a cultural crisis among black men, many black men have very negative views of black men. The authors of the article were perplexed by the contradiction between who black men are and what black men believe about black men. The authors suggested that media images and crime in black communities may be the cause for these negative views.
The Post authors failed to consider one source for these negative views of black men held by black men: black public intellectuals. When the most prominent and respected black public intellectuals proclaim loudly that blacks are degenerating culturally, it is very likely that many blacks will believe these statements.
For example, in How to Make Black America Better (2001) complied by Tavis Smiley, Henry Louis Gates Jr. claimed that the black “underclass” was expanding and that the cultural values of this class was at least partially to blame. Gates repeated these views in two opinion pieces in the New York Times in 2004. In one of the Times pieces he stated, “the 60’s generation now seems to be presiding over the permanent entrenchment of a vast black underclass.” Who wouldn’t believe a prestigious Harvard University professor writing in the prestigious New York Times?
The fact of the matter is, though, that Gates is “getting it wrong.” The black poverty rate was 42 percent in 1966. It was 25 percent in 2004. Relative to the 1960s, black poverty today is not vast. Over the 1990s, there was a nearly 30 percent reduction in the black poverty rate. Black poverty is not permanent. If “there is a culture of poverty” among blacks as Gates claims in the Smiley book, then he should be stating that it has weakened among blacks. Because Gates does not know the facts about black poverty, he has repeatedly argued the opposite. Gates has misled many Americans of all races.
The Post article shows that real black men do not exhibit the negative stereotypes widely attributed to black men. We have to hope that the leading black public intellectuals will read the Post article and begin to correct their statements.
I'm done, this time! :eek: Peace. Love of one's people is needed self-love!!!
http://www.thorainstitute.com/uploaded_images/Getting%20It%20Wrong%20face-737754.jpg
Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/059538594X/qid=1149286008/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-1527081-8773453?s=books&v=glance&n=283155)
B&N (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&isbn=059538594X&itm=8)
Black men were half as likely to receive interviews and job offers as white men with comparable qualifications. Further, black men without criminal records were about as likely to obtain an interview or job offer as white men with criminal records.(emphasis added)
Among the errors of many black public intellectuals today is their failure to appreciate the persistent power of anti-black discrimination in the labor market. Bill Cosby (http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=/SpecialReports/archive/200407/SPE20040702a.html) argues that blacks need “to turn the mirror around” and that blacks are merely avoiding their faults when they talk about racial discrimination. It is certainly good to encourage blacks to be better and to strive higher. But if we wish for blacks to achieve more, we also have to address the obstacles and barriers in the path of black progress. Although there are a number of strong and recent studies of anti-black discrimination, there appears to be a “Cosby Consensus (http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=17755),” as the black public intellectual Cynthia Tucker calls it, that it is only “bad habits and poor choices that limit black achievement.”
The most eye-opening of the recent discrimination studies is the work of Devah Pager. In a Milwaukee study (http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/publications/papers/2003/pagerajs.pdf), Pager selected and trained black and white male college students to apply for low-wage jobs. Sometimes the students stated that they had a criminal record and sometimes they did not. This research strategy enabled Pager to examine both the effect of race and the effect of a criminal record. In Milwaukee, Pager demonstrated that black men in the low-wage labor market faced considerable discrimination. Black men were half as likely to receive interviews and job offers as white men with comparable qualifications. Further, black men without criminal records were about as likely to obtain an interview or job offer as white men with criminal records.
Pager and Bruce Western have repeated the study in New York City (http://www.princeton.edu/~pager/race_at_work.pdf). Once again, they found that black men without criminal records are treated the same as white men with criminal records. It is difficult for black men to achieve when they are essentially automatically assumed to be criminals and passed over for jobs.
Another recent, important discrimination study is “Race and the Accumulation of Human Capital across the Career,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 111, no. 1, July 2005, pp.58-89 by Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, Melvin Thomas and Kecia Johnson. The Tomaskovic-Devey, Thomas and Johnson (hereafter TT&J) study responds to research suggesting that there is no evidence of racial discrimination when examining the wages of black and white men. This research challenging claims of racial discrimination compares blacks and whites with equivalent levels of education, cognitive ability, work experience, job tenure and amount of on-the-job training. When all of these items are controlled for, blacks and whites have statistically equal earnings. Equal earnings suggest that there is no anti-black discrimination in the labor market.
TT&J argue that it is incorrect to treat an individual’s work experience, job tenure and amount of on-the-job training as an individual choice outside of potential discriminatory treatment in the labor market. These work outcomes clearly depend on the actions of employers and co-workers. For example, Pager and Western’s studies show that blacks may have longer spells of unemployment, not because they choose not to work, but because racial discrimination makes it more difficult for them to find work. Longer periods of unemployment lead to less cumulative work experience. Therefore, controlling for the amount of work experience individuals have does not produce a more precise measure of discrimination, it removes an effect of racial discrimination from the analysis.
TT&J analyze men’s earnings over a 20 year time-period based only on race, age and education. They do not control for characteristics which are potentially shaped by racial discrimination.
TT&J conclude, “Blacks and Hispanics receive lower wages than whites not only because they have lower average levels and quality of education, but because the human capital they do possess is devalued in the labor market. The negative impact of this is cumulative over the work career and increases with education” (pp. 82-83). In general, they argue, “employers may tend to overvalue white education or undervalue minority education” (p. 82). TT&J’s research also indicates that relative to white and Latino high school dropouts, black high school dropouts have a very hard time finding work (p. 72). Racial discrimination is still a significant factor in the labor market.
Bill Cosby, Cynthia Tucker and other leading black public intellectuals have used their prominent positions to loudly condemn poorer, less-educated blacks. These intellectuals appear to be unaware or under-appreciative of the persistence of anti-black discrimination. A growing body of social science research makes it clear that we do not yet live in a colorblind society. [1] Racial discrimination is still a factor limiting black achievement. When black public intellectuals condemn blacks and argue that it is only “bad habits and poor choices that limit black achievement,” they encourage and provide a rationalization for employers’ anti-black discrimination.
Notes
[1] One interesting sub-specialization in this literature is research documenting the anti-black prejudices and stereotypes of employers. For some of this research see Philip Moss and Chris Tilly, Stories Employers Tell: Race, Skill and Hiring in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001); Edward J. Park, “Racial Ideology and Hiring Decisions in Silicon Valley,” Qualitative Sociology 22, no. 3 (1999), 223-33; Johanna Shih, “‘. . . Yeah, I Could Hire This One, But I Know It’s Gonna Be a Problem’: How Race, Nativity and Gender Affect Employers’ Perceptions of the Manageability of Job Seekers,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 25, no. 1 (2002), 99-119; Joleen Kirschenman and Kathryn M. Neckerman, “‘We’d Love to Hire Them, But . . .’: The Meaning of Race for Employers,” in The Urban Underclass, ed. Christopher Jencks and Paul E. Peterson (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1991), 203-32.
MORE>>>
Discarding Future American Scientists
There are a disproportionate amount of black students expressing an interest in receiving more science education.
Today, black students are more interested in math and science education than white students, and yet fewer of these blacks will likely become scientists. America’s leaders believe that for the country to remain competitive in a technology-based world economy, we need to produce more scientists. But because we under-invest in the education of blacks, we are basically discarding many of America’s future scientists.
This year, the research organization Public Agenda published two important educational reports. The first, “Are Parents and Students Ready for More Math and Science?" indicated black students’ greater support for more math and science education. Twenty percent of white middle and high school students thought, “it’s a serious problem that kids are not taught enough math and science.” Thirty-five percent of black students felt the same. Fifty-four percent of white students agreed that “increasing the number and quality of math and science courses would improve high school education.” Sixty-seven percent of blacks felt the same. Forty-eight percent of white students believed that math and science were “absolutely essential” for success today. Fifty-three percent of minorities believed the same.
Given these results, one would expect that blacks would be over-represented among America’s future scientists. Most likely, however, these black students will continue the pattern of black under-representation. At every step in the educational process, we lose or under-prepare black students, and, thus, we end up with much smaller numbers of black scientists than we should have.
Children spend more time outside of school than in school, and a great deal of their educational development takes place outside of school. Black students tend to have less-educated parents than white students. Black communities tend to be poorer and to have fewer educational and extracurricular resources. The only way that black students can compete on the proverbial level playing field is if majority black schools were better than majority white schools to compensate for the black home and community disadvantages.
The second Public Agenda educational report, “How Black and Hispanic Families Rate Their Schools”, showed that black students and parents rated their schools worse than white students and parents. This finding is not likely to surprise anyone. The playing field is not level.
If we are really concerned about America’s competitiveness in the global economy, we have to stop merely talking about it and begin investing in black students. We can begin to compensate for some of blacks’ disadvantages by increasing black children’s enrollment in quality preschool programs. We need to make sure that poor black neighborhoods have adequate amounts of free or low-cost, entertaining and educational after-school and summer programs.
Of course, black students also need better schools. The only way we can have better teachers teach the neediest students is to provide these teachers with incentives and support. High quality teachers should earn significantly more for working in high-poverty schools with low-achievement histories. These schools should not be scrounging for basic school supplies, and their class sizes should be smaller than at the average school so that the students can receive more individual attention.
A great deal of research has shown that instituting these types of policies would reduce the black dropout rate and boost black student achievement. More of these students would then enter college interested in and prepared for math and science majors.
Programs like the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s (UMBC) Meyerhoff Scholars Program show what can happen if we make wise investments in black students’ education. The Meyerhoff program has increased the number of black science and engineering majors sevenfold and increased their GPAs. Most of the Meyerhoff graduates go on to pursue advanced degrees. (For more information on this program see Brent Staples, “Why American College Students Hate Science,” New York Times, May 25, 2006, and Michael F. Summers and Freeman A. Hrabowski III, “Preparing Minority Scientists and Engineers,” Science 31, March 2006: 1870-1871.)
There are a disproportionate amount of black students expressing an interest in receiving more science education. A number of these students can become future scientists. If we really want more American scientists, we have stop talking about it and begin investing in these students.
AND LAST>>>
Resolving the Washington Post’s Contradictions about Black Men
Although there is no evidence of a cultural crisis among black men, many black men have very negative views of black men.
Last week, the Washington Post published a very interesting and informative article based on a new national survey of black men (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/03/AR2006060300695.html). (See Steven A. Holmes and Richard Morin, “Being a Black Man,” Washington Post, June 4, 2006.) The Post found little evidence of the cultural crisis many black public intellectuals have been talking about. Instead, the article stated:
Black men report the same ambition as most Americans—for career success, a loving marriage, children, respect.
Three in four black men said they highly value success on the job, fully 20 percentage points higher than white men.
Even young black men, the focus of the debate over black men’s problems, defy familiar stereotypes. Nearly nine in 10 respondents ages 18 to 29 said they are either working or in school, the same proportion who reported that being successful in a career is personally important to them.
Although there is no evidence of a cultural crisis among black men, many black men have very negative views of black men. The authors of the article were perplexed by the contradiction between who black men are and what black men believe about black men. The authors suggested that media images and crime in black communities may be the cause for these negative views.
The Post authors failed to consider one source for these negative views of black men held by black men: black public intellectuals. When the most prominent and respected black public intellectuals proclaim loudly that blacks are degenerating culturally, it is very likely that many blacks will believe these statements.
For example, in How to Make Black America Better (2001) complied by Tavis Smiley, Henry Louis Gates Jr. claimed that the black “underclass” was expanding and that the cultural values of this class was at least partially to blame. Gates repeated these views in two opinion pieces in the New York Times in 2004. In one of the Times pieces he stated, “the 60’s generation now seems to be presiding over the permanent entrenchment of a vast black underclass.” Who wouldn’t believe a prestigious Harvard University professor writing in the prestigious New York Times?
The fact of the matter is, though, that Gates is “getting it wrong.” The black poverty rate was 42 percent in 1966. It was 25 percent in 2004. Relative to the 1960s, black poverty today is not vast. Over the 1990s, there was a nearly 30 percent reduction in the black poverty rate. Black poverty is not permanent. If “there is a culture of poverty” among blacks as Gates claims in the Smiley book, then he should be stating that it has weakened among blacks. Because Gates does not know the facts about black poverty, he has repeatedly argued the opposite. Gates has misled many Americans of all races.
The Post article shows that real black men do not exhibit the negative stereotypes widely attributed to black men. We have to hope that the leading black public intellectuals will read the Post article and begin to correct their statements.
I'm done, this time! :eek: Peace. Love of one's people is needed self-love!!!