[h=1]More Black Men in Jail Than in College? Wrong[/h] By: Ivory A. Toldson, Ph.D. The Root EXCERPT:
Posted: February 28, 2013 at 12:27 AM
Show Me the Numbers: A 13-year-old report using questionable data gave rise to an enduring myth.
What does the line "There are more black men in jail than in college" have in common with the Jheri curl? Answer: They were invented by white men (Jheri Redding and Vincent Schiraldi, respectively) and adopted enthusiastically by black people, and they left a nasty stain on the shoulders of millions of black men.
It's been more than 20 years since the Jheri curl faded away into infamy, and I'm proud to say that even in the 1980s, I never sported a curl. Unfortunately, I can't say the same about the line "There are more black men in jail than in college."
About six years ago I wrote, "In 2000, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) found evidence that more black men are in prison than in college," in my first "Breaking Barriers" (pdf) report. At the time, I did not question the veracity of this statement. The statement fit well among other stats that I used to establish the need for more solution-focused research on black male achievement.
I was in good company. The same year, at a 2007 NAACP forum, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama said, "We have more work to do when more young black men languish in prison than attend colleges and universities across America."
Both President Obama and I brought our own unique style to the line. I was deferential and academic, while President Obama was passionate and eloquent. In contrast, many people, like Charles Barkley, are reckless and aloof when they use the line. Recently he told Bob Costas, "You know, we as black people always, we don't have respect for one another. You know, we've got more black men in prison than we do in college, and crime in our neighborhoods is running rampant." In full context, Barkley was using the line to justify the need for armed defense against black men.
However, just as a Jheri curl would be wrong no matter how you dressed it up today, the line "There are more black men in jail than in college" is wrong no matter how you contextualize, qualify or articulate it.
Today there are approximately 600,000 more black men in college than in jail, and the best research evidence suggests that the line was never true to begin with. In this two-part entry in Show Me the Numbers, the Journal of Negro Education's monthly series for The Root, I examine the dubious origins, widespread use and harmful effects of what is arguably the most frequently quoted statistic about black men in the United States.
Basis for the Myth
More than 10 years ago, the Justice Policy Institute released the report "Cellblocks or Classrooms." While the report should have been a wake-up call to policymakers, one line resonated and echoed more than any other: "Nearly a third more African-American men are incarcerated than in higher education."
JPI has yet to acknowledge that today the enrollment of black males in college is drastically different from when it published "Cellblocks or Classrooms." If we replicated JPI's analysis by downloading enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics' Integrated Post‐Secondary Education Data System (IPEDS), we would find a 108.5 percent jump in black male college enrollment from 2001 to 2011. The raw numbers show that enrollment of black males increased from 693,044 in 2001 to 1,445,194 in 2011.
In September 2012, in response to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's screening of the film Hoodwinked, directed by Janks Morton, JPI issued a press release titled, "JPI Stands by Data in 2002 on Education and Incarceration." However, if one examines the IPEDS data from 2001 to 2011, it is clear that many colleges and universities were not reporting JPI's data 10 years ago.
In 2011, 4,503 colleges and universities across the United States reported having at least one black male student. In 2001, only 2,734 colleges and universities reported having at least one black male student, with more than 1,000 not reporting any data at all. When perusing the IPEDS list of colleges with significant black male populations today but none reported in 2001, I noticed several historically black colleges and universities, including Bowie State University, and my own alma mater, Temple University. Ironically, I was enrolled at Temple as a doctoral candidate in 2001.
END EXCERPT
Yeah, some of us knew that was a BS statistic the first time we heard it. Why was it so believed? IMHO, non-black racists believed it because it was easy to point to and say "See, we are better than them." Black racists believed it because they could point to it and say, "See, we are oppressed."
