Monday, April 16, 2007

"But let's look at a few of the supposedly boring facts. According to the U.S. Census, black households in 2005 had a median income of $30,858, compared with $50,784 for non-Hispanic white households. The black poverty rate was 24.9 percent. The white poverty rate was 8.3 percent. In 2005, according to the Justice Department, 4.7 percent of black males were in prison or jail, compared with 0.7 percent of white males. For men in their late 20s, just under 12 percent of blacks were incarcerated, compared with 1.7 percent of whites. Life expectancy for black men is more than six years shorter than for white men. Yes, these numbers are an ongoing legacy of racism. And cultural factors, including family breakdown, are an important part of the story. But unless we spend a lot more time, energy, intellectual capital and money grappling with these facts, we can hold countless seminars on "Who Can Say What?"-- the words pasted over Imus's mouth on Time magazine's cover this week -- without doing a single serious thing to undo racism's gravest damage to our most left-out citizens."