LOS ANGELES — Education is the key to breaking Black men and youths out of a vicious cycle of crime and unemployment, African-American leaders said Thursday at the close of the annual NAACP convention.
The plight of Black males, who have above average rates of joblessness, incarceration, HIV infection and lower rates of educational achievement, was one of the themes of the six-day convention, which was attended by more than 5,000 members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
“We are losing a generation of our children,” said Sandre Swanson, who heads the California Assembly’s Select Committee on the State of Boys and Men of Color, at a panel discussion. “These young men need help and to know we care.”
Panelists noted that the problem originated with the loss of manufacturing jobs that minorities relied on for decades. Moreover, government jobs, which employ 21 percent of Blacks, are also now shrinking with government cutbacks, political analyst Jamal Simmons said.
The result is that minority youths have turned increasingly to crime.
About 10 percent of Black men born in the 1940s have served time in prison, said Yale University law professor James Foreman Jr. That figure doubles for Black men born in the 1960s. African-American males now comprise 40 percent of the nation’s prison population.
Swanson noted that 70 percent of parolees return to prison because they are paroled to isolated communities where there are few jobs, or schooling or training opportunities.
