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Equity & Diversity Opinion

Black Male: Re-Imagined

By Richard Whitmire — December 06, 2010 1 min read
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That’s the name of a summit taking place over the next two days to imagine how life might be different for black males.

From Russell Simmons writing in the Huffington Post:

If a black boy is born in the US today, he will have a 33% chance of going to prison in his lifetime. Stated another way - 1 in 3 black boys born today will face prison time. It has become sad normality, almost a backwards rite of passage, for black young men to enter the penal system and never return to our communities. And if we are "lucky" enough for them to return, they usually are much hardened criminals than they ever were before. Black men represent 8% of the population of the United States but comprise 3% of all college undergrads, 48% of inmates in prison and are 5 times more likely to die from HIV/AIDS than white men. 50% of black boys do not finish high school, 72% of black male dropouts in their 20s are unemployed and 60% of black male dropouts are eventually incarcerated.

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