Archive for August, 2006

Click to Listen to the Show (24 MB MP3)

Open Source is off this week, so we’re re-broadcasting five shows we developed in the months after Katrina hit as part of an ongoing series on race and class. Tonight: Black Men in America: Behind the Numbers.

From Chris’s original billboard:

The story of “black males left behind” in America is a blur of bad numbers surrounding a void of good answers. In the standard statistical measures, many vital signs point down — about families, for example: 7 in 10 black fathers won’t marry the mother of their child; 85 percent of African American boys will grow up with a single mom, or grandma. Among black men between the ages of 16 and 34, half will get engaged in crime–many more than will get college experience. One in five today is doing prison time. Sociologist Ronald Mincy at Columbia asks a big question: why didn’t the huge job expansion of the Clinton years work the usual full-employment magic for black men–even as it did work for black women? Orlando Patterson at Harvard asks another one: what if the story here isn’t about the numbers, but about a flamboyant culture of irresponsibility?

Chris Lydon, Open Source, March 27, 2006