Download AFRICAN AMERICANS TODAY

AFRICAN
AMERICANS
TODAY
CHAPTER 8
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Education
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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
Educational gap between Blacks and Whites
Always been present
 Gap is narrowing in recent years
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Many students would not drop out of school
were it not for the combined inadequacies
noted:
Insensitive teachers
 Poor counseling
 Unresponsive administrators
 Overcrowded classes
 Irrelevant curricula
 Dilapidated school facilities
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Several can be addressed with more funding but some are
stalemated by disagreements over what changes lead to
the best outcome
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School Segregation
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De jure patterns of segregation - according to
policy or law children were assigned to schools
on the basis of race
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De facto Segregation
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U.S Supreme Court decision in 1954 - Brown v. Board
of Education Topeka, Kansas.
Results from residential patterns
Apartheid Schools
Refers to schools that are all Black
 1 of 6 of the nation’s Black students are in
attendance
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Tracking
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The practice of placing students in specific curriculum groups
on the basis of test scores and other criteria
African American children disproportionately
assigned to general classes and more White
children placed in college preparatory classes
African American students more likely than
White students to be classified as learning
disabled or emotionally disturbed
Integration is not one of the successes of public
education
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Acting White, Acting Black, or
Neither
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“Acting White”
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Common view reason of African Americans, especially males,
not succeeding in education is that they do not want to be
caught “acting white”
Shifts responsibility of low school attainment
from the school to the individual
Overemphasizes personal responsibility, not
structural features – quality of schools,
curriculum, and teachers
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Higher Education
There has been 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:
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decline in educational financial aid
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
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Income and Wealth
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Income
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Two measures of overall economic situation of an
individual or household
Refers to salaries, wages, and other money received
Wealth
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A more inclusive term encompassing all of a person’s
material assets, including land and other types of property
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
In 2005
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Median income of Black families was $37,500
compared with $64,663 for White non-Hispanic
households
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24.7% of Black people lived below poverty level
compared with 8.4% of non-Hispanic Whites
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Black income today resembles that of Whites more than 10
years ago
That an African American family is three times more likely
to be poor shows staggering social inequity
Wealth demonstrates greater disparity
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Generations of social inequity left Blacks, as a group,
unable to accumulate the wealth of Whites, as a group
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Employment
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Even in the best of times, national unemployment rate
is significantly higher for Blacks than Whites
Factors explaining official unemployment rate of young
African American males
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Many live in depressed economy of central cities
Immigrants and illegal aliens present increased competition
White middle-class women entered the labor force
Illegal activities at which youth find they can make more
money have become more prevalent
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
Official unemployment rate
Federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics counts as
unemployed only people actively seeking employment
 Leaves out millions of Americans, Black & White
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Underemployment
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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
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Challenges to Family Stability
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Female-headed household
Economic status of African-American male has been
deteriorating
Extended family and augmented members as a means of
emotional, social and physical support
Sociologists attribute rapid expansion of single-parent
households to shifts in the economy that keep Black
men, especially in urban areas, out of work
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Phenomenon not limited to African Americans
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Strengths of African
American Families
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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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Social scientists are learning to look at both
weaknesses and strengths of African American
family life
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Most consistently documented strength
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Presence of an extended family household
Most common feature
Having grandparents residing in the home
 Extended living arrangements more common among Black
households than among White ones
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Arrangements recognized as having important
economic benefit of pooling limited resources
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The African American Middle Class
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African Americans still aware of racial
subordination even when that have achieved
economic equality
Migration of middle-class African Americans
from ghetto in 1970s and 1980s left a vacuum
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No longer present as role models
African American middle-class do not
automatically accept all aspects of White middleclass
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W.E.B. DuBois (1952)
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When racism decreases, class issues become more important
Class
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Sociologist Max Weber
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Refer to people who share a similar level of wealth and income
Sociologist William J. Wilson
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The Declining Significance of Race (1980).
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“Class becomes more important than race in determining
black life-chances in the modern world” (p. 150).
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Housing
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Plays a major role in determining quality of a person’s life
For African Americans, housing has been restricted
through discrimination
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President Kennedy Executive Order
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Government required nondiscrimination in federally assisted housing,
included only 7% of the housing market
1968 Federal Fair Housing Law (Title VII of the
1968 Civil Rights Act) and U.S. Supreme Court decision
of Jones v. Mayer combined to outlaw all racial
discrimination in housing
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Residential Segregation
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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 in inner city
neighborhoods
 Policies of banks and other lenders create barriers
based on race to financing home purchasing
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Redlining
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The practice of discrimination against people trying to buy
homes in minority and racially changing neighborhoods
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 moderateincome housing
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Criminal Justice
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Blacks constitute:
3% of the lawyers
 14.9% of police
 17.6% of detectives
 29.8% of security guards
 39% of jail inmates
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FBI’s Uniform Crime Report
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Black’s account for 28% of arrests even though they
represent only about 13% of the nation’s population
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Conflict Theory
Higher arrest rate is not surprising for a group that is
disproportionately poor and therefore much less able to afford
private attorneys, who might prevent formal arrests from
taking place
 UCR focuses on index crimes most often committed by lowincome people
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Victimization Surveys
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Annual systematic interviews of ordinary people to reveal
how much crime occurs
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Show that African-Americans are 22% more likely to be
victims of violent crime than Whites
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Differential Justice
Whites are dealt with more leniently than are Blacks
 Whether at the time of
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Investigation, arrest, indictment, conviction,
sentencing, incarceration, or parole
The application of differential justice to
the harshest judgment that can be made
in the legal system
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The Death Penalty
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Health Care
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Black men are much more likely to fall victim
to:
Unrelenting stress
 Heart disease
 Cancer
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Compared with Whites, Blacks have higher
death rates from heart disease, pneumonia,
diabetes, and cancer
Death from strokes twice as high as Whites
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
Conflict Perspective
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Howard Waitzkin (1986)
Racial tensions contribute to the medical problems of African
Americans
 Stress resulting from racial prejudice and discrimination help to
explain high rates of hypertension
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Blacks represent 6% of practicing physicians
Of students entering medical school in fall of
2004 – only 6.5% were Black
Issues of environmental justice
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Politics
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Barack Obama entered the White House as
president in 2009
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Only 38 African American congressional
representatives
Locally elected Black officials have difficulty
jumping to statewide office
Non-Black voters are concerned that view of
Whites and non-Blacks will not be represented
by an African American
Gerrymandering
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Dated from 1810; the bizarre outlining of districts to create
politically advantageous outcomes
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
African Americans have not received an equal
share of the political pie
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QUESTIONS
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To what degree have the civil rights movement
initiatives in education been realized, or do they
remain unmet?
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
What challenges face the African American
middle-class?
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.

What are the biggest assets and problems facing
African American families?
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
How are differential justice and victim
discounting related?
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
How is race-based gerrymandering related to
affirmative action?
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
How are the problems in crime, housing, and
health interrelated?
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.

What are the implications of Wilson’s assertion
that class has become more important than race
in determining life-chances of African
Americans? Why do you agree or disagree?
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.

How are the problems in crime, housing, and
health interrelated?
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. All rights reserved.