Chilling Stats

I happened to catch a fragment of Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C. Congressional rep) addressing a human rights conference in Harlem yesterday and citing some really chilling statistics on the prospects for African Americans. She suggested what probably most of us academics already know -- that the ratio of African American women to men getting higher educations is 3/2. However, what really got to me were the incarceration rates -- 1 of 3 of African American men will spend time in jail; 1 in 2 who drop out of high school will spend time in jail. And the devastating unemployment rates for African American men are making it impossible for increasing numbers to be able to afford to marry and raise families.

This is truly heart-rending news and says much about our Darwinian society with its intelligent designer pretensions. Our increasing gap between poverty and wealth -- widest of the developed nations -- truly spells trouble for all of us ahead as well as current suffering for far too many. Needless to say the costs for imprisonment could be much better spent on effective education and training and job provision programs:

http://www.dc.state.fl.us/pub/statsbrief/cost.html

What do you think?
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