Kerry: More Blacks in Jail than College?

by Liberty and Power

Ralph Luker reports the following:"Kerry said, 'we've got more African Americans in jail than in college. That's unacceptable.' Kerry's statement is correct for African American men, but becomes incorrect without the gender distinction. The numbers are remarkable. In 2002, 818,000 African American men were in prison and only 802,000 were in college. In the same year, 65,600 African American women were in prison and 1,476,000 were in college."

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Arnold Shcherban - 7/15/2004

I believe the main point in that Kerry's remark is not the absolute statistical accuracy, but to show the ugly
side of the today's American racial situation, though
I actually think the cause of this situation is much more intricate and politically "incorrect" than Kerry or any other US mainstream politician acknowledges.

Ralph E. Luker - 7/15/2004

You are, of course, right to raise this point about the data, as presented. I suspect that there is another obscure factor at work in these data. Historically, if there was a choice to be made, African American families have tended to send their daughters to college and white families have tended to send their sons. The sense was that, because of the job market, education for daughters was a better investment than it was for sons.

Steven Horwitz - 7/14/2004

It's true that more black men are in jail than in college, but one other factor to consider is age. The "black men in jail" number includes a good number of men who are well beyond typical college age. It would be interesting to see, and I believe I have seen it somewhere on the web, the comparison of black men aged 18-26. For that demographic group, there are surely more black men in college than in jail. Of course there are "non-traditional" college students as well, but I suspect there are many more post-26 men in jail than there are post-26 men in college. Thus the net in the 18-26 group is probably skewed toward there being more in college than jail. That doesn't change the underlying point here - that there are FAR too many black men in jail (many of whom are victims of the War on Some Drugs) - but it does represent what I'd call a more accurate picture of the matter.