Free Republic

Black men in South Florida have made tremendous strides in longevity, according to new estimates released Thursday. Those born in 2009 could expect to live 7 years longer than those born two decades earlier. But researchers with the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation — who calculated lifespans in every U.S. county in 1989, 1999 and 2009 — also said there was troubling news. The numbers show women's lifespan gains have slowed to a crawl nationwide. Also, how long one might live varies hugely among counties in the same state, hinting at differences in healthcare access.

The rise of Herman Cain speaks volumes about America

..."Contemporary characterizations and depictions suggest that African American males harbor a lifelong disregard for their own personal development, and a lack of commitment to their loved ones and society in general," a societal attitude that keeps them from being helped, he said. Black male youths are likely to grow up in single-parent homes. The boys often don't have fathers residing in the home to serve as role models...Black males, even as boys, are more likely than other male peers to suffer from stress-induced depression and other physical and mental health problems that may result in homicidal and suicidal behaviors as...

A new report from the Schott Foundation reveals that only 47 percent of black male students earn a high school diploma on time. Ironically, this report came out shortly after Judge Vaughn Walker ruled regarding Proposition 8 in California. If the statements on which Judge Walker based his ruling are “facts,” how do we explain what is happening educationally to boys in the black community where a large majority are growing up without fathers? Nancy Pearcey, in an article on American Thinker, identified certain “facts that Judge Walker claims are now established by the ‘evidence’ presented in his courtroom.” Those...

So many black women are single, she says, because they are stuck in the groove of a one-track song: sitting alone, waiting for that one "good" black man to come along and sweep them off their feet. Waiting. Talking to girlfriends. Waiting. Going out alone. Waiting. Going to work. Waiting. Waiting for a "good" black man, with the same education level to marry them. Waiting. Even when they know the odds are stacked against them. Single black women with college degrees outnumber single black men with college degrees almost 3 to 1 in major urban areas such as Washington, according...

Marriage eludes many black women

Hell bent on deconstructing the two bastions of American White maleness, namely the White House and the clubhouse, our pc media have faces fully of eggs now. For our President and our golfer, beloved liberal icons both, have shown us that flying too close to the sun definitely does burn. Our President’s declaration of changing America forever certainly now translates poorly. His knave laden coterie of radicals, tax cheats and felon czars may need rethinking. Tiger’s tale just plain hurts–himself, his wife, his children, his mother, mother-in-law, his used women and his fans. Bling, babes & Black athletes don’t compute...

Why wouldn't you just fire a pistol the normal way? As police chased Raymond "Ready" Martinez through Times Square on Thursday, the street hustler and aspiring rapper fired two shots, holding the gun sideways "like a character out of a rap video."

Although the unemployment rate for African-Americans dropped to 15.6 percent in November, the unemployment rate for black teens between the ages of 16 to 19 currently stands at 49.4 percent - a sharp increase from last month's number of 41.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number only accounts for the number of teens actually participating in the labor market.

BLACK MALE DROPOUTS LEAD NATION IN INCARCERATION, ACCORDING TO NEW REPORT, WEEK OF OCTOBER 22-28, 2009The Wilmington Journal Originally posted 10/22/2009 SPECIAL TO THE NNPA FROM THE LOUISIANA WEEKLY (NNPA)--On any given day, nearly 23 percent of all young Black men ages 16 to 24 who have dropped out of high school are in jail, prison, or a juvenile justice institution in America, according to a disturbing new national report on the dire economic and social consequences of not graduating from high school. Dropouts become incarcerated at a shocking rate: 23 of every 100 young Black male dropouts were in...

DETROIT – Like the rundown houses and shuttered storefronts in his Detroit neighborhood, bleakness abounds in LeRoy Taylor's future. He is among tens of thousands reaching adulthood in a city where the American Dream appears just outside their reach. Taylor, 20, spends empty hours on basketball courts, zoned out in front of a television or aimlessly pedaling through streets he desperately wants to leave, but doesn't have the work skills, education or money to do so. "I fill out applications. No one will call me back," said Taylor, stopping his bike long enough to hustle change for cigarettes near a...

Morehouse College, one of the few remaining all-male historically Black colleges has taken a courageous stand with its new dress code that bans ghetto thug attire and cross-dressing on campus.Black Voices gave some background:Morehouse President Dr. Robert M. Franklin, Jr. is implementing the code starting today as part of his "Five Wells: well read, well spoken, well-traveled, well dressed and well balanced." Here are the standards as published in the student newspaper, The Maroon Tiger (via The Daily Voice):It is our expectation that students who select Morehouse do so because of the College's outstanding legacy of producing leaders. On the...

Derrius Quarles leans back in his seat and methodically analyzes Aristotle's theory of truth during freshman honors English class at Morehouse College. He strides across campus in a navy blue tailored suit and a bold red sweater handing out business cards that boast "Student/Entrepreneur/Leader." But behind the 19-year-old's dauntless appearance is a past that few on campus know. When Quarles was 5, the state took him away from his mother. He spent his childhood bouncing from home to home before ending up on his own at 17 in an apartment on Chicago's South Side. His arrival at a prestigious, historically...

The strange and sad case of Michael Vick got a bit stranger this week when the newly-signed Eagles quarterback appeared on 60 Minutes -- complete with a spokesman from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) -- to deliver his obligatory mea culpa to a waiting world. What makes this incident stranger than most is that America's love of animals, specifically dogs, has trumped the heretofore indestructible use of racism as a defense for wrongdoing and so has not saved Mr. Vick from the wrath of millions. Accusations of racism have long been employed to excuse the behavior of...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Attorney General Eric Holder says he was racially profiled years ago. The nation's first black attorney general, Holder tells ABC News that, as a college student, he was stopped by an officer while driving and told to open his trunk for a search. The nation's top law enforcement officer was asked about racial profiling in light of the debate over the arrest earlier this month of black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home by a white officer.

"I got mad when I, as a national security adviser to the president of the United States, I went down to meet somebody at Reagan National Airport and nobody recognized -- nobody thought I could possibly be the national security adviser to the president. I was just a black guy at Reagan National Airport. And it was only when I went up to the counter and said, 'Is my guest here who's waiting for me?' did somebody say, 'Oh, you're General Powell.' It was inconceivable to him that a black guy could be the national security adviser."

Governor Deval Patrick this afternoon empathized with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., recalling his own experiences with racial profiling and "feeling powerless" when he was a black teenager at Milton Academy.

Governor Deval Patrick this afternoon empathized with Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., recalling his own experiences with racial profiling and "feeling powerless" when he was a black teenager at Milton Academy. “In some ways this is every black man’s nightmare and a reality for many black men," Patrick told a crush of reporters at an impromptu press conference in a hallway at the State House. “Have I ever had the experience of feeling powerless in a situation like that? Sure I have," Patrick said. "When I was student at Milton Academy, I remember -- a new student fresh from...

Developing...How's that change working out for you? LOL!!

It is well known that the unemployment rate in New York City rose sharply during the recent recession. It is also understood that the increase was worse for men than for women, and especially bad for black men. But a new study examining trends in joblessness in the city since 2000 suggests that by 2003, nearly one of every two black men between 16 and 64 was not working. The study, by the Community Service Society, a nonprofit group that serves the poor, is based on data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and focuses on the so-called employment-population...

PHILADELPHIA — It's an old lie, claiming that The Black Man Did It.But it was trotted out again last week when a white mother from suburban Philadelphia said two black men snatched her and her 9-year-old daughter from their SUV and abducted them in the trunk of a black Cadillac. Blacks across the country were outraged after Bonnie Sweeten was found in a luxury hotel at Disney World. Authorities quickly unraveled the hoax, but not before an Amber Alert, frantic searches and national news coverage that played into images of marauding black men. Racial boundaries are slowly dissolving in America,...

Like global warming, swine flu and everything else wrong in the world, racist, sexist and homophobe, Rush Limbaugh is largely responsible for who I am today. In 1993, I had a great job as Art Dept. supervisor at an ABC affiliate TV station in Baltimore. The same station where Oprah was co-host on our morning show, years earlier. While minding my own business, my favorite radio talk show host was replaced with Rush Limbaugh. I thought, “Who is this wise guy?” A week later, I was hooked. Unapologetic, Rush courageously and boldly said everything I felt. Rush became my HERO!...

One of the most obvious areas of interest within the statistics were the numbers that dealt specifically with reporting. According to the statistics, a total of 64 cases were brought before the past Committee. Of these cases, 27 reports were brought against white students, 21 against black students, 11 against Asian and/or Asian-American students, four against Latinos and four against students of unknown race. “When I saw [the statistics], I was a little bit surprised at the disproportionate number of minority students reported compared to [white] students,” said Vice Chair for Investigations Mary Siegel, a third-year College student. “Looking at...

The Coen Brothers’ 2007 film No Country for Old Men revolves around the tale of several young men engaged in a violent race for a satchel of cash. Tommy Lee Jones plays an aging sheriff investigating the depressing trail of bloodshed, markings that inform the old man that the customs and morals that guided his generation have decayed even faster than he has. Jones ends up as a depiction of the anguish experienced by people left without a country they can call home. Democrats remain on their quest to offer similar anguish to African-Americans, as liberals now embark on their...

DURHAM – After the inauguration of the first black president, America is now on the precipice of changes that were never before possible, 1960s radical turned academic Angela Davis told a crowd of hundreds at the University of New Hampshire last night. The vestiges of slavery, colonization and exploitation remain rife throughout America, as is evidenced by the over-representation of minorities in prison, Davis said. The prison population, now estimated to be one in 100 adult Americans, only contributes to the oppression of minorities, she said. It is a pattern seen across the country, even in New Hampshire, Davis said....

A study finds Pennsylvania again leads the nation in the rate of black homicides. The nonprofit Violence Policy Center supports gun-control efforts. They found in the study that there were nearly 37 homicides per 100,000 black Pennsylvania residents in 2006. Michigan was second and Indiana was third. The report analyzed the most recent data available from the FBI. Pennsylvania has finished first twice in the three years that the group has conducted the study. Co-author and Violence Policy Center executive director Josh Sugarmann says the results show that the role of guns in black homicides cannot be denied and must...

The 71 homicides in 2008 in Milwaukee represent the fewest killings in the city since 1985, a decrease officials attributed in part to improved cooperation among law enforcement agencies and policing focused on the most violent neighborhoods. Although nonfatal shootings also declined from 2007, they accounted for more than 400 victims, a reminder that the homicide total could easily have been much higher. Homicides fell 32.4% from 2007, when 105 people were killed, according to Police Department data. Police do not count vehicle homicides or those ruled justified. "It's an amazing drop," Mayor Tom Barrett said. "It's something I'm very,...

The murder rate among black teenagers has climbed since 2000 even as murders by young whites have scarcely grown or declined in some places, according to a new report. The celebrated reduction in murder rates nationally has concealed a “worrisome divergence,” said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University who wrote the report, to be released Monday, with Marc L. Swatt. And there are signs, they said, that the racial gap will grow without countermeasures like restoring police officers in the streets and creating social programs for poor youths. The main racial difference involves juveniles ages 14...

Congressional Leaders, Scholars Gather to Strategize on Black Male Issues by Jamal Watson NEW YORK — For the third consecutive year, more than a 1,000 academics, activists and political leaders gathered in New York on Friday to strategize on the problems that beset young Black males. The gathering, which was convened by Charles J. Ogletree, who teaches and directs the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard University’s Law School, is part of “The Pipeline Crisis/Winning Strategies Initiative,” a national effort aimed at identifying ways to tackle the many barriers that limit the number of young Black...

The fact that Jeremiah Wright has not been rejected and condemned by his fellow African-American preachers is disturbing. The fact that they feel he represents a larger theology is repulsive. It should give all Americans apprehensions about black "liberation theology." I say this because Jeremiah Wright has become the nation-wide spokesman for this so called "theology." The fact that liberal Americans are defending Wright (to defend Obama) is equally disgusting. Wright has made too many radical claims. He has praised Jew-haters and allowed Hamas editorials to appear on the Pastor's Page of his Church newsletters. This man hates America, he...

ATLANTA -- Judge Marvin Arrington insists he's not a racist; despite ordering white lawyers out of his courtroom on Thursday. The Fulton County Superior Court judge said he was just fed up seeing a parade of young black defendants in his courtroom. "I came out and saw the defendants, about 99.9 percent Afro-Americans, and some point time I excused some of the lawyers, most of them white, and said to the young people in here 'What in the world are you doing with your lives,'" he told WSB-TV Channel 2 reporter JaQuitta Williams. Arrington said he thought his message might...

WASHINGTON -- More than three times as many black people live in prison cells as in college dorms, the government said in a report to be released today. The ratio is only slightly better for Hispanics, at 2.7 inmates for every Latino in college housing. Among Anglos, more than twice as many live in college housing as in prison or jail. The numbers, driven by men, do not include college students who live off campus. Previously released census data show that black and Hispanic college students -- commuters and those in dorms -- far outnumber black and Hispanic prison inmates....

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said if he wasn’t elected president, the population of African-American males is likely to either wind up in prison or dead. At an MTV/MySpace.com forum Thursday, Edwards responded to a question about inner-city kids partaking in violence by saying there was no “silver bullet” to fight the problem. “We start with the president of the United States saying to America, ‘we cannot build enough prisons to solve this problem. And the idea that we can keep incarcerating and keep incarcerating — pretty soon we’re not going to have a young African-American male population in America....

Dear brothers (do you mind if I call you brothers?), Have you heard about the movement to ticket and fine people - meaning, people like you - for wearing sagging, underwear-revealing pants? It started in a small Louisiana town, where you can now get up to six months in jail and a $500 fine for exposing your undergarments. Proposals have since popped up from Atlanta to Baltimore to Trenton, and last week even in Yonkers. It's only a matter of time before some enterprising City Council member puts it on the table here in New York. And in every city,...

IYAGO ENTERTAINMENT GROUP Presents WHAT BLACK MEN THINK — An In Depth View of How Myths, Stereotypes and Misrepresentations render Black Men Non-Necessities in their Communities and Families… In the most provocative Black film of the year, Janks Morton presents a searing examination of the role that myths, stereotypes and misrepresentations have played in the decimation of modern era black relationships, and how the symbiotic relationship between government, the media and black leadership perpetuates misinformation to further marginalize the role of black men as it relates to their families and community. Since the triumphs of the civil rights legislations of...

Because the Washington Post wants to obscure the basic reality of the situation, we believe that visitors to the nation's capital should be warned that there is a crime emergency in effect, sparked by a sharp increase in homicides, and they are potential victims. The fact is that white tourists are being injured and killed by roving black male gangs, who are even showing up in exclusive areas such as Georgetown where some rich reporters live behind iron gates. The Post, however, has a policy of deliberately keeping the public in the dark about the real nature of the problem....

Police are searching for two men who carajcked a family's SUV overnight and then ran over the family's toddler as they took off, according to television news reports this morning. The theft happened on Jensen near Sadler in northeast Houston as the father pulled into a car wash parking lot to use a payphone. He was then approached by two men, who demanded money and then the family's SUV. The suspects allegedly told everyone to get out of the car, including three young children. Police told television reporters that the child was run over in the confusion. The toddler was...

TALLAHASSEE - State Sen. Frederica Wilson knows what a little TLC can do for at-risk black boys. As the founder of the 5000 Role Models of Excellence Project, the Miami Democrat has seen troubled teens go from life on the streets to college graduation. For the past two years, Wilson, a former Miami-Dade School Board member, has made it her mission to pass legislation aimed at helping more black men and boys. She's just one vote away from success. A bill to create ''The Council on the Social Status of Men and Boys'' has cleared the House and will likely...

Young black men, according to several studies, are in a bad way - with joblessness and incarceration at alarming highs, and a street culture of swagger reinforcing these conditions as "normal." As a neglected group, they now need America's focused attention. It's disheartening to learn that: • In 2004, half of African-American men in their 20s were without work. Among high school dropouts, it was 72 percent. The dropout classification is relevant, because in inner cities more than half of all black men do not finish high school. • By their late 20s, more African-American male dropouts are behind bars...

The black men I know best are all hard-working, accomplished professionals. They include my brother, a physician, and my buddies — lawyers, college professors, political consultants, journalists. I live in an insular world of middle-class affluence, rarely stumbling into the troubled universe of marginalized underachievers. Until recently. After a contractor walked off the job, I was assigned the task of helping my mother find laborers to help complete her new house in my hometown, Monroeville, Ala., a small place with a declining textiles industry. The assignment led me into an alternative universe of black men without jobs or prospects or...

The Plight of the Black Male Editorial | Change policy and lives "Is there some kind of conspiracy to get the black male?" That question, asked by Philadelphia Urban League president Patricia A. Coulter in an Inquirer article Sunday, has been thought, if not spoken, by others. Genocide has even been used to describe what is happening to black men. They die younger and faster than most U.S. demographics, often as a result of violence. Yet the lack of public policies to specifically address the problems of black men nationally raises another question: Who cares? Has the rest of America...

SEVERAL recent studies have garnered wide attention for reconfirming the tragic disconnection of millions of black youths from the American mainstream. But they also highlighted another crisis: the failure of social scientists to adequately explain the problem, and their inability to come up with any effective strategy to deal with it.[snip] Nor have studies explained why, if someone cannot get a job, he turns to crime and drug abuse. One does not imply the other. Joblessness is rampant in Latin America and India, but the mass of the populations does not turn to crime. And why do so many young...

BALTIMORE — Black men in the United States face a far more dire situation than is portrayed by common employment and education statistics,... Focusing more closely than ever on the life patterns of young black men, the new studies, by experts at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and other institutions, show that the huge pool of poorly educated black men are becoming ever more disconnected from the mainstream society, and to a far greater degree than comparable white or Hispanic men. ...These were among the recent findings: ¶The share of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly...dropouts.... ¶Incarceration rates climbed in...

Chicago plans high school for black males CHICAGO, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- The Chicago school district plans to open an all-boys high school primarily for black teenagers. The Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men must be approved by the Board of Education this month, the Chicago Tribune reported. Mayor Richard Daley plans to open 100 schools in the city in the next five years. Plans for the next two years include a virtual elementary school, a high school operated by the University of Chicago and a high school stressing business entrepreneurship. Urban Prep would be located inside Englewood High...

'Millions More' Not Adding Up To the Original Celebration Begins Tomorrow By Robert E. Pierre and Hamil R. Harris Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, October 13, 2005; B01 Ask black men who attended the Million Man March in 1995 about the experience, and a typical response is a smile and a gaze into a faraway place followed by wistful remembrances of the "brothers" they met and the lift in spirits they felt for weeks and months after it was over. Keith Brockington missed the inspiring pep rallies in advance of the march, the caravan of buses from all over the...

"...The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us. Gen. Banks was distressed with solicitude as to what he should do with the Negro. Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, "What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core,...

Tuesday, August 30, 2005 Why do faces like mine evoke negativity? By ROBERT L. JAMIESON Jr. SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST Thugs are thugs. Their behavior should not be tolerated, regardless of their race or the race of their victims. That was one underlying message in Saturday's column about a vicious beating in Pioneer Square that left two servicemen from the war in Iraq unconscious. The attackers are three young black men -- a narrative arc the city pounced on. People were quick to grab hold of the military angle of the assaults. Some assumed that the victims are white war heroes...

Sunday morning arrived, like so many before, with a mix of sunlight and chirping birds outside my bedroom window and a warm greeting from my tiny son, lying beside my wife and me. My wife rose quickly, announcing her plan to jump in the shower and get ready for Sunday school at the Baptist church, not far from our house in suburban Chicago, that she and our two children attend. As for me, in what has become my ritual nowadays, I turned over and pulled the covers up around my head. Soon I overheard my 9-year-old daughter's familiar question: "Mommy,...

If you listened to the rhetoric of black politicians and civil rights leaders, dating back to the Reagan years, you would have been convinced that surely by now black Americans would be back on the plantation. According to them, President Reagan and later Presidents Bush I and II would turn back the clock on civil rights. They'd appoint "new racists" in three-piece suits to act through the courts and administrative agencies to reverse black civil rights and economic gains. We can now recognize this rhetoric as the political equivalent of the "rope-a-dope." As my colleague Tom Sowell pointed out in...

Darryl Jeffries, the spokesman for East Orange, calls his city "the most densely populated community of color in the United States." The Essex County city covers less than four square miles, but it is home to more than 70,000 people. Mostly black. Some Hispanics. A few whites. But the most salient statistic about East Orange is the number of black men who are not there. Under the age of 18, there are more black boys than girls. Among the adult population, however, there are 37 percent more women than men. Where are these missing men? Most are dead. Many others...