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| As we have seen, the expansion of the prison industrial complex and mass incarceration began during a period of mass unrest, urban rebellion, and Black political challenges to the status-quo. The masses of disgruntled poor Blacks who might appear on the front lines of protests and demands for equality were gradually being steered into prisons at higher and higher numbers peaking during the 1990's and pushing the number of imprisoned into the stratosphere. Not only did mass incarceration suction off young and angry masses of Blacks off the street and into prisons, it coincides as Western and Wilde point out with the deindustrialization of the United States economy. |
| The issues of poor education, poverty and substance abuse touch all racial groups, and the biggest disparity seems to be the quality of maternal health care for black women. Pregnant women whose prenatal care is covered by Medicaid lose that insurance after their baby is born. For black moms like Lamar, who are at greater risk for high blood pressure and diabetes, their symptoms often go unchecked and untreated until they qualify for other insurance or get pregnant again. Respondents noted that black women often are heads of households and sole wage-earners raising their children's children, nieces and nephews. Some might live in dangerous neighborhoods. "They're stressed out," |
| Experts say the current increase in African-American unemployment is driven by a rise in Black women’s unemployment, which jumped 1.7 percentage points, from 8.3 percent in July to 10 percent in August. Last August, the Black female unemployment rate was 7.5 percent. This year, Black men’s unemployment rate declined slightly from July to August, going from 11.3 percent to 11.2 percent, but it is still significantly higher than it was just a year ago when it was a much lower at 7.9 percent. Young Black adults and recent college graduates (25 to 29-year-olds) are finding it difficult to find work. Their unemployment has risen from 5.1 percent in August 2007 to 6.9 percent last month. |
| Black New Yorkers are 13 times more likely to be murdered - or arrested for murder - than whites, an NYPD crime analysis shows. Blacks and Hispanics dominated tallies of both suspects and victims, according to an NYPD racial breakdown of crimes requested by the Daily News. The News asked for the stats after civil rights groups slammed the NYPD because 90% of people shot at by cops in 2007 - the last year for which data was available - were black or Hispanic. Police brass said that was because minorities accounted for the majority of crime suspects and victims. |
| Felony disenfranchisement — often a holdover from exclusionary Jim Crow-era laws like poll taxes and ballot box literacy tests — affects about 5.3 million former and current felons in the United States, according to voting rights groups. But voter registration and advocacy groups say that recent overhauls of these Reconstruction-era laws have loosened enough in some states to make it worth the time to lobby statehouses for more liberal voting restoration processes, and to try to track down former felons in indigent neighborhoods. “You’re talking about incredible numbers of people out there who now may have had their right to vote restored and don’t even know it,” |
| AIDS remains largely a disease of gay and bisexual men in the United States but also disproportionately infects black women, according to an analysis published on Thursday. Last month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than 56,000 people in the United States become newly infected with the human immunodeficiency virus each year, far more than previous estimates of about 40,000. "Among females, 61 percent of infections were in blacks, 23 percent were in whites, and 16 percent were in Hispanics," the CDC report reads. |
| Unemployment rose among almost all demographic groups, but women were hit hardest, with a rise of 0.7 pp to 5.3 percent. This is equal to the high for the last downturn in September of 2003. Black women saw their unemployment rate jump by 1.6 percentage points to 9.1 percent. The unemployment rate for blacks overall rose by 0.9 pp to 10.6 percent. The unemployment rate for Hispanics jumped by 0.6 pp to 8.0 percent, the highest level since reaching 8.1 percent in July of 2003. Workers at all educational levels had an increase in their unemployment rates. Workers without high school degrees had the largest rise, with their unemployment rate going up 1.1 pp to 9.6 percent, the highest level since October of 1994. |
| The U.S. lost more jobs than forecast in August and the unemployment rate climbed to a five- year high, heightening the risk that the economic slowdown will worsen. Payrolls fell by 84,000 in August, and revisions added another 58,000 to job losses for the prior two months, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The jobless rate jumped to 6.1 percent, matching the level of September 2003, from 5.7 percent the prior month. Workforce reductions at companies from UAL Corp. to Gannett Co. are adding to the woes of Americans hurt by lower home values, scarcer credit and higher prices. |
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