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Chapter 8
African Americans Today
Education
• African Americans place special
importance on acquiring education
• Racial and ethnic groups realize that
formal schooling is key to social mobility
• Documented inadequacy of quality and
quantity of education
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Education
• Educational gap between Blacks and
Whites
– Always been present
– Gap is narrowing in recent years
• Many students would not drop out of
school were it not for inadequacies noted:
– Insensitive teachers
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Education
– Poor counseling
– Unresponsive administrators
– Overcrowded classes
– Irrelevant curricula
– Dilapidated school facilities
• Several can be addressed with more funding
• Some are stalemated by disagreements
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School Segregation
• De jure patterns of segregation
– According to policy or law children were
assigned to schools on the basis of race
– U.S Supreme Court decision in 1954 - Brown
v. Board of Education Topeka, Kansas.
• De facto Segregation
– Results from residential patterns
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School Segregation
• Apartheid Schools
– Refers to schools that are all Black
– 1 of 6 of the nation’s Black students are in
attendance
• Tracking
– Placing students in specific curriculum groups
on the basis of test scores and other criteria
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School Segregation
• African American children
disproportionately assigned to
– General classes and more White children
placed in college preparatory classes
• Integration is not one of the successes of
public education
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Acting White, Acting Black, or
Neither
• “Acting White”
• Shifts responsibility of low school
attainment from school to the individual
• Overemphasizes personal responsibility,
not structural features –
– Quality of schools, curriculum, and teachers
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Higher Education
• An increase in African American students
going to college and graduating
• Upward trend to higher education has
declined and in part is a function of:
– Decline in educational financial aid
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Higher Education
– Push for higher standards
– Employment opportunities
– Negative publicity and a decline in
enforcement of affirmative action
– Racial incidents on college campuses
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The Economic Picture
• Income and Wealth
– Two measures of overall economic situation
of an individual or household
• Income
– Refers to salaries, wages, and other money
received
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The Economic Picture
• Wealth
– Encompass all of a person’s material assets,
including land & other types of property
• In 2009
– Median income of Black families was $32,584
• Compared with $54,461 for White non-Hispanic
households
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The Economic Picture
• Black income today resembles that of Whites more
than 10 years ago
– 25.8% of Black people lived below poverty
level & 9.4% of non-Hispanic Whites
• Wealth demonstrates greater disparity
– Generations of social inequity left Blacks
unable to accumulate the wealth of Whites
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Employment
• Factors explaining official unemployment
rate of young African American males
– Many live in depressed economy of central
cities
– Immigrants and illegal aliens present
increased competition
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Employment
– White middle-class women entered the labor
force
– Illegal activities youth find they can make
more money have become more prevalent
• Official unemployment rate
– Unemployed people are only people actively
seeking employment
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Employment
– Leaves out millions of Americans, Black &
White
• Underemployment
– Refers to working at a job for which one is
overqualified, involuntarily working part-time,
• Or being employed only intermittently
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Family Life
• Challenges to Family Stability
– Female-headed household
– Economic status of African-American male
has been deteriorating
– Extended family & augmented members as a
means of emotional, social & physical support
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Family Life
• Sociologists attribute rapid expansion of
single-parent households to shifts in the
– Economy that keep Black men, especially in
urban areas, out of work
– Phenomenon not limited to African Americans
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Strengths of African American
Families
• Robert Hill (1999)
– 1. Strong kinship bonds
– 2. Strong work orientation
– 3. Adaptability of family roles
– 4. Strong achievement orientation
– 5. A strong religious orientation
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Strengths of African American
Families
• Most consistently documented strength
– Presence of an extended family household
• Most common feature
– Having grandparents residing in the home
– Extended living arrangements more common
among Black households than White ones
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The African American Middle Class
• Migration of middle-class African
Americans from ghetto in 1970s & 1980s
– No longer present as role models
• African American middle-class do not
– Automatically accept all aspects of White
middle-class
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The African American Middle Class
• W.E.B. DuBois (1952)
– When racism decreases, class issues
become more important
• Class
– Sociologist Max Weber
• Sociologist William J. Wilson
– The Declining Significance of Race (1980)
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Housing
• Plays a major role in determining quality of
a person’s life
• For African Americans, housing has been
restricted through discrimination
• President Kennedy Executive Order
• 1968 Federal Fair Housing Law and U.S.
Supreme Court decision of Jones v. Mayer
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Residential Segregation
• Factors that create residential segregation
in the United States
– Private prejudice and discrimination
– Prejudicial policies of real estate companies
– Ineffective enforcement of anti-bias legislation
– Public housing policies and past construction
patterns reinforce housing for the poor
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Residential Segregation
– Banks & other lenders create barriers based
on race to financing home purchasing
• Redlining
– Discrimination against people trying to:
• Buy homes in minority/racially changing
neighborhoods
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Residential Segregation
• Zoning Laws
– Enacted to ensure specific standards of
housing construction
– Can also separate industrial and commercial
enterprises from residential areas
– Some appear to curb development of low and
moderate-income housing
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Criminal Justice
• Blacks constitute (2010):
– 4.7% of the lawyers
– 14.1% of police
– 14.9% of detectives
– 28.6% of security guards
– 39% of jail inmates
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Criminal Justice
• FBI’s Uniform Crime Report
– Black’s account for 28% of arrests
• Even though they represent only about 12% of the
nation’s population
• Conflict Theory
– UCR focuses on index crimes most often
committed by low-income people
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Criminal Justice
• Victimization Surveys
– Annual systematic interviews of ordinary
people to reveal how much crime occurs
• Show that African-Americans are 35% more likely
to be victims of violent crime than Whites
• Differential Justice
– Whites dealt with more leniently than Blacks
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Criminal Justice
– Whether at the time of
• Investigation, arrest, indictment, conviction,
sentencing, incarceration, or parole
• Application of differential justice to the
harshest judgment that can be made:
– In the legal system
– The Death Penalty
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Health Care
• Black men are much more likely to fall
victim to:
– Unrelenting stress
– Heart disease
– Cancer
• Death from hypertension twice as high as
Whites
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Health Care
• Blacks’ high mortality rates from heart
disease, kidney disease, and strokes
• Conflict Perspective
– Howard Waitzkin (1986)
• Racial tensions contribute to the medical problems
of African Americans
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Health Care
• Stress from racial prejudice and discrimination help
to explain high rates of hypertension
• Blacks represent 6% of practicing
physicians
• Issues of environmental justice
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Politics
• Barack Obama entered the White House
as president in 2009
• Only 42 African American congressional
representatives
• Locally elected Black officials have
difficulty jumping to statewide office
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Politics
• African Americans have not received an
equal share of the political pie
• Non-Black voters are concerned that view
of Whites and non-Blacks:
– Will not be represented by an African
American
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Politics
• Gerrymandering
– Dated from 1810
– The bizarre outlining of districts to create
politically advantageous outcomes
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