Synopses & Reviews
Black Statsa comprehensive guide filled with contemporary facts and figures on African Americansis an essential reference for anyone attempting to fathom the complex state of our nation. With fascinating and often surprising information on everything from incarceration rates, lending practices, and the arts to marriage, voting habits, and green jobs, the contextualized material in this book will better attune readers to telling trends while challenging commonly held, yet often misguided, perceptions.
A compilation that at once highlights measures of incredible progress and enumerates the disparate impacts of social policies and practices, this book is a critical tool for advocates, educators, and policy makers. Black Stats offers indispensable information that is sure to enlighten discussions and provoke debates about the quality of Black life in the United States todayand help chart the path to a better future.
There are less than a quarter-million Black public school teachers in the U.S.—representing just 7 percent of all teachers in public schools.
Approximately half of the Black population in the United States lives in neighborhoods that have no White residents.
In the five years before the Great Recession, the number of Black-owned businesses in the United States increased by 61 percent.
A 2010 study found that 41 percent of Black youth feel that rap music videos should be more political.
There are no Black owners or presidents of an NFL franchise team.
78 percent of Black Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant, compared with 56 percent of White Americans.
Review
"As things are, our opinions upon the Negro are more matters of faith than of knowledge."
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Study of the Negro Problems” (1898)
Review
"Data help us understand how far we have come, and how far we have to go toward the realization of equal justice. Black Stats is an important resource for anyone seeking a better understanding of the status of Black America."—Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP
Review
"
Black Stats is an important resource for anyone seeking a better understanding of the status of Black America."
—Benjamin Todd Jealous, former President and CEO, NAACP
"Thank you, Monique Morris, for this gift of knowledge. Black Stats is a brilliant and needed work. We can no longer claim that we didnt know the depth of our crises or the wealth of our resources and resilience available to counter them. Now that we have the data, we must use it strategically to move our people—the nation and this troubled world—forward."
—Susan L. Taylor, Founder and CEO, National CARES Mentoring Movement, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, Essence Magazine
"Black Stats is a great tool offering descriptive statistics on the condition of our nation's promise of freedom, justice, equality and economic opportunity for all."
—Marc H. Morial, President and CEO, National Urban League
Synopsis
Amid the widespread spin and skewed analysis that is commonplace to media and politics alike, the need for less filtered information and more raw facts seems more pressing than ever.
Black Stats, a compact and useful guide, skips over the assumptions, suppositions, and hypotheses about trends and patterns in our society and offers up–to–date figures on black life in the United States today.
Author and advocate Monique W. Morris has compiled statistics from a broad spectrum of telling categories that illustrate the quality of life and the possibility of (and barriers to) advancement for a group at the heart of American society. With fascinating information on everything from disease trends, incarceration rates, and lending practices to voting habits, green jobs, and educational achievement, the material in this book will enrich and inform a range of public debates while challenging commonly held yet often misguided perceptions.
Black Stats simultaneously highlights measures of incredible progress, conveys the disparate impacts of social policies and practices, and surprises with revelations that span subjects including the entertainment industry, military service, and marriage trends. A critical tool for advocates, educators, and policy makers, Black Stats is an affordable guidebook for anyone seeking to understand the complex state of our nation.
Synopsis
An essential handbook of eye-opening--and frequently myth-busting--facts and figures about the real lives of Black Americans today
There's no defeating white supremacist myths without data--real data. Black Stats is a compact and useful guide that offers up-to-date figures on Black life in the United States today, avoiding jargon and assumptions and providing critical analyses and information.
Monique W. Morris, author of the acclaimed Pushout, has compiled statistics from a broad spectrum of telling categories that illustrate the quality of life and the possibility of (and barriers to) advancement for a group at the heart of American society. With fascinating information on everything from disease trends, incarceration rates, and lending practices to voting habits, green jobs, and educational achievement, the material in this book will enrich and inform a range of public debates while challenging commonly held yet often misguided perceptions.
Black Stats simultaneously highlights measures of incredible progress, conveys the disparate impacts of social policies and practices, and surprises with revelations that span subjects including the entertainment industry, military service, and marriage trends. An essential tool for advocates, educators, and anyone seeking racial justice, Black Stats is an affordable guidebook for anyone seeking to understand the complex state of our nation.
About the Author
Monique W. Morris is co-founder of the National Black Womens Justice Institute. She is a Soros Justice Fellow and formerly served as Vice President for Economic Programs, Advocacy, and Research for the NAACP. A faculty member at St. Marys College of California, she is the author of the novel
Too Beautiful for Words. Morris lives in the Bay Area with her husband and two daughters.
Khalil Gibran Muhammad is the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library and the author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America.