TAMPA, Fla.
At a recent summit of higher education officials looking to confront the crisis of minority males, Dr. James H. Ammons summed up the mission ahead: “We, as leaders, have to step to the plate. [Black male] enrollment in prison cannot continue to supersede enrollment in higher education.”
Ammons, chancellor of North Carolina Central University, challenged his colleagues during a summit, held in the last week, entitled “Black, Brown, & College Bound: A Summit on African-American & Hispanic Males Meeting the Challenge of Higher Education.”
Sponsored by Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Fla., the summit hosted sessions that addressed the alarming increase of Black male incarceration and the convergent decline in the numbers of Black men seeking a college education.
In his address, Ammons elicited alternating gasps of shock and “you know that’s right” nods of agreement as he laid out a series of alarming statistics concerning the plight of Black and Latino men.
In the past 40 years, the U.S. prison population has changed from 70 percent White to 70 percent Black and Latino, Ammons said. Additionally, one in three Black males are currently involved in the penal system and by 2020, if current trends hold, that figure will rise to more than 65 percent for Black males, aged 20 to 29.
“We will have more African-American men in prison than we did in slavery” by 2020 if current Black male incarceration trends continue, said Ammons, citing data from a book by Rutgers University Professor Byron Price entitled, “Merchandizing Prisoners: Who Really Pays for Prison Privatization?”
