Wednesday, April 22, 2015

“1.5 Million Missing Black Men”

They are missing, largely because of early deaths or because they are behind bars. Remarkably, black women who are 25 to 54 and not in jail outnumber black men in that category by 1.5 million, according to an Upshot analysis. For every 100 black women in this age group living outside of jail, there are only 83 black men. Among whites, the equivalent number is 99, nearly parity.
African-American men have long been more likely to be locked up and more likely to die young, but the scale of the combined toll is nonetheless jarring. It is a measure of the deep disparities that continue to afflict black men — disparities being debated after a recent spate of killings by the police — and the gender gap is itself a further cause of social ills, leaving many communities without enough men to be fathers and husbands…
The gender gap does not exist in childhood: There are roughly as many African-American boys as girls. But an imbalance begins to appear among teenagers, continues to widen through the 20s and peaks in the 30s. It persists through adulthood.”

This is short, but full of so many implications, and likely to be widely referenced.
Race/racism can be so gendered. At Princeton, the ratio of black women to black men was 4:1 (tbh, can’t remember looking at the actual numbers, but I remember lots of people pulling out that stat).
It’s like, I am perceived as not-quite-black way more often than my brothers are.

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