New Orleans   An exhaustive study of Census Bureau figures for 20 million people now in their late 30s by researchers from Stanford and Harvard has produced some terrible facts that establish firm proof behind what many have suspected:  race is ubiquitous in oppressing and institutionalizing inequality among African-American men.

As a community organizer, one of the most frightening discoveries of this study is that that this is true in virtually every census track in the country.  In other words, there is no community that is a model.  Among the best might be Silver Springs, Maryland, a Washington suburb, but for the most part the rest of the country discriminates at some level or another constantly in terms of inequality according to the facts of the matter.  Worse, this constant racism reverberates over and over again in other areas as well when it comes to black men.

To draw from the New York Times:

• Black boys raised in America, even in the wealthiest families and living in some of the most well-to-do neighborhoods, still earn less in adulthood than white boys with similar backgrounds, according to a sweeping new study that traced the lives of millions of children.
• White boys who grow up rich are likely to remain that way. Black boys raised at the top, however, are more likely to become poor than to stay wealthy in their own adult households.
• Most white boys raised in wealthy families will stay rich or upper middle class as adults, but black boys raised in similarly rich households will not.
• Even when children grow up next to each other with parents who earn similar incomes, black boys fare worse than white boys in 99 percent of America. And the gaps only worsen in the kind of neighborhoods that promise low poverty and good schools.
• Black and white girls from families with comparable earnings attain similar individual incomes as adults.

The results of this discrimination correlate with experiences early in life.  The study also leads to the conclusion that testing does not accurately measure the abilities of black children.  Even when black men were boys they experienced the impact of poverty and discrimination differently than girls.  School discipline is inordinately distributed to black boys and young men rather than other groups.  This level of racism likely impacts employment access as the economy has become more service-based and customer facing than industrial and manufacturing.

The authors of the study believe that the data demands policy solutions that are specifically targeted to the individual and structural racism that impacts black men, and who can disagree.

Professor Kendi of American University nailed the results of this study to the wall, saying, “One of the most popular liberal post-racial ideas is the idea that the fundamental problem is class and not race, and clearly this study explodes that idea.  But for whatever reason, we’re unwilling to stare racism in the face.”

Likely that’s because of racism itself, Professor.