Report: The Educational Experience of Young Men of Color--A Review of Research, Pathways and Progress

About two weeks ago, President Obama announced a public-private partnership, called my Brother's Keeper, to help young minority men to stay out of trouble, succeed in school and find good jobs.

During the kick-off of the initiative, President Obama said, "So often, the issues facing boys and young men of color get caught up in long-running ideological arguments — about race and class and crime and poverty, the role of government, partisan politics."

This semester I am teaching a course at Medgar Evers College, a predominantly black institution, in central Brooklyn.  My class of 29 students consists of about 4 young men.  About 70% of the college's enrollment is female.  It's great to see so many young black women in school, but I cannot help but wonder with whom are these young women going to marry and raise a family if the educational and economic plight of minority men is not set on a new trajectory.  Young women all of races are outperforming their male counterparts at almost every level of education.

As someone who is fairly well-informed about current affairs, I have been reading and hearing news reports about the crisis in minority male achievement for years.  One thing that teaching has done for me is to really allow me to see firsthand some of the challenges that these young men face.  What I know for sure is that too many young men are inadequately prepared to become productive members of society.

When I asked a young man in my neighborhood, a recent high school graduate, what he was going to do after high school. He replied, "Get a job with transit."  For years, having a job with transit was one way for young minority males in New York City to become part of the middle class.  The one problem: Now these jobs are increasingly difficult to acquire because of technology and because of austerity and job cuts.

In my family, my grandfather in the 1940s was able to provide a decent living for his family because he worked for Bethlehem Steel in Baltimore.  Today, Bethlehem Steel is no more, and Baltimore's largest employer is Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital.  Even to be a secretary at Johns Hopkins, you need a college degree.  As a consequence, a significant amount of young minority men are left out a job market that requires a significant amount of post-secondary training.

According to a report commissioned by The College Board Advocacy & Policy Center called "The Educational Experience of Young Men of Color--A Review of Research, Pathways and Progress," there are six post-secondary pathways available to high school graduates:

1. Enrollment in a two-year or a four-year college or a vocational school
2. Enlistment in U.S. Armed Forces
3. Employment in U.S. workforce
4. Unemployment
5. Incarceration in state or federal prisons, or in local jails
6. Death

Obviously, some kind of transformation is needed in the lives of these young men. It is imperative that society assists them realizing their full human potential.  We need to change the narrative surrounding young men of color.  Policymakers and the communities in which these young men reside need to make these young men a priority.  Here's why:

As of 2008, only 41.6 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds in the United States had attained an associate degree or higher. More alarmingly, only 30.3 percent of African Americans and 19.8 percent of Latinos ages 25 to 34 had attained an associate degree or higher in the United States, compared to 49.0 percent for white Americans and 70.7 percent for Asian Americans. (Lee and Rawls 2010).