Saturday, October 13, 2012

About half of the 2.3 million people in prison in the United States are black

When prisoners are included, the employment rate for young black men who have dropped out of school sinks from an already low 42% to 26%. Government estimates suggest that eventually one in three of all black male adults will spend some time in prison if current trends continue. In the 1930s, blacks were three times more likely to be incarcerated than whites, but the figure now is seven times more likely. The National Urban League civil rights group showed that from 2005 to 2009 the average black household's wealth fell by more than half. From 2009 to 2012, median annual household income for blacks fell by 11.1%, compared with a drop of 5.2% for whites and 4.1% for Hispanics. The current black unemployment rate of 14% is roughly double that of the white jobless.

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