Black Men Can Succeed in College, and New Report Shows How

You are having a lot of fun with this series. Call me a Luddite or a simpleton, but I like virtually all breasts that are out there, depending on the heart of the woman to whom they belong. I don’t think we are slaves to hormones; ergo, it’s not an evolutionary question. Maybe you can wrap up this extended meditation on mammary glands and dispense with all pretenses — get a prescription to hustler. Or here, try this website: http://www.vivid.com. If you buy a monthly membership you are helping the local economy where I live, here in the San Fernando Valley, the porn capital of the world. My struggling students who depend on porn to pay their tuition thank you in advance.

David,

This has been very interesting.  I wonder whether there are any cultural norms on breast size?  I vaguely remember the ‘just a handful” phrase, but I am not sure exactly where it came from.  Vague recollection is that it might have been the French?  And of course Asian women seem to have smaller breasts.

Although in the abstract, to a Playboy reader perhaps, large breasts might be desirable, there are certainly advantages to smaller breasts for females. Many female athletes such as those who play tennis, basketball or run cross country seem to have smaller breasts on average. And female gymnasts are obviously child like in their figures.

I will also mention  that most of the women whom I have found attractive have had smaller breasts. See Boticelli: Venus

Confused in flyover land.   Bill

Good question, Bill. I dunno the answer, but would be surprised if there aren’t significant cultural variations in male preference for female breasts; however, it appears that even in bare-breasted societies, female breasts are found erotically stimulating, at least to men. You’re not the only one confused when it comes to the adaptive significance of nonlactating female breasts, but it seems quite clear that signalling and not milk production is key.

One side comment. “But why might women have gone along with being judged and evaluated in this way?”

Well, perhaps because they didn’t have a hell of a lot of choice. In our society, despite imo all too many lingering inequalities, women have made considerable progress in the past century. A hundred years ago, women couldn’t vote, for instance. In some other parts of the world, rather more progress remains to be made. We’re still rather a ways away from universal parity. One might as well ask why Saudi women go along with being forbidden to act as if they were human beings.

Just had to, ah, get that off my chest.

I like the post by “pianiste.”  Another news story on this study contains this key sentence:  “But the fact that a full 60 percent of them [that is, successul black male students] grew up in homes with two parents probably differentiates them from the norm (census data show that 35 percent of black children grow up in two-parent homes).” Let me elaborate:  According to the most recent federal figures, more than 7 out of 10 African Americans (72.5 percent) are born out of wedlock, along with more than 6 out of 10 American Indians and Alaska Natives (65.6 percent), and more than 5 out of 10 Hispanics (53.3 percent) — versus fewer than 3 out of 10 whites (29.0 percent) and fewer than 2 out of 10 Asians and Pacific Islanders (17.0 percent). Disturbingly high for all groups (the composite figure is 40.8 percent), but do you notice any connection between these demographic-by-demographic numbers and how each group is doing educationally, economically, criminally, etc.?  Illegitimacy is THE key problem behind racial disparities.

It is also possible that one reason black men are not completing college is that they fail to see the direct connection between the a college degree and economic and social mobility.  The times have changed since the baby boomers went to college. Now we see unemployment all around, and it is hard to continue to sell students a narrative that presupposes the world of employment is a level playing field when we see the rescinding of programs that valued diversity and inclusion.  If we survey those recent college graduates who are unemployed after completing their degree, what percentage are minorities and what percentage are black men?  Higher Education must demonstrate that it believes in their success and start telling the stories of those who did complete a degree and what they’ve accomplished instead of continuing to fund studies of black men who don’t succeed.  There are too many examples of college-educated black men, perhaps not at predominantly white institutions where the discussion of black students’ failure prevails, who graduate from places like Morehouse, Dillard, Morgan State, and Temple University to name a few.  Lets begin this discussion by showing more examples of those who have succeeded and perhaps had support–parental, teachers and financial.  The finding are no-brainer.  Anyone would succeed with these elements in place; but when college tuition is increasing and financial aid is forcing students to take on enormous debt burdens, any wonder why these black men, who see themselves as least employable in a world where even the first Black president is treated with tremendous disrespect, would not want to subject themselves to the college experience?  Colleges and universities appear to be regressing and growing  increasingly hostile to difference, diversity and change. 

For all the yelling about how unfair affirmative action is, I was shocked by the very low (as in low-to-middle single digit) percentages of black men enrolled full-time in highly selective, public research, and liberal arts colleges and universities. I’m seeing 1-6%. This includes Occidental College and Columbia University, both of which President Obama attended.

You have the correlation wrong. 

But first I must say that I disavow the term “illegitimate” to describe anyone.  As a socially constructed concept, “family” can be configured in an infinite number of ways, not simply through a married man and woman. 

Second, children raised in single-parent homes are often raised by women who have fewer options than men to earn a living wage and therefore often must raise their children in adverse conditions.  There are many studies that show the dire impact that being raised in poverty has on children.  You might read them. 

As for your correlation, you might also take a look at the astronomical rates Black men are imprisoned for non-violent offenses often related to drug possession and distribution.  Studies also show that Black men are no more likely to use or possess controlled substances than are White men but they are far more targeted by law enforcement than White men are.  There are wonderful studies, not least of which are those by Michelle Alexander and Devah Pager, that show the havoc wreaked on Black families and Black communities because of unfair law enforcement practices.  When families and communities are disrupted in these ways, it stands to reason that the children being raised in these families and communities will fare poorly.  If you controlled for SES, you would find very similar findings for poor Whites in rural parts of the country who are often the victims of deindustrialization, drug use and distribution (meth) and  alcoholism.  Children coming out of these families and communities look strikingly similar to children coming out of highly concentrated impoverished urban spaces.

You are misinterpreting the implications of “necessary and sufficient” in the quote.  I believe the point of the study is that black males need all 4 factors to succeed, whereas (by implication, apparently) perhaps white males don’t need all 4 to succeed.
Are there any studies that attempt to determine if white males from single-parent female-head homes are more successful in college than black males (holding family income constant)?

I think we could have better conversations if people considered how their language might be perceived by the very group they are referring to, in this case children born out of wedlock.  Many times you have researchers researching populations of which they have never been members of.  It makes sense to me that they would be cautious with the language they use to describe these populations.  So, I think that while jaysanderson may have gone a little too much off the deep end, I can certainly understand his position, being a member of this “illegitimate” population myself. 

Jaysanderson also brings up a good point about children being “RAISED” in two parent homes.  I believe the usual research looks only at married couples, but there are many children being raised in a two-parent home despite the fact that their parents may not be married.  In modern times, where the definition of family has certainly changed, we might need to look at how we operationalize the demographic variables to get a better perspective of where we truly stand on these issues. 

I think you’re right – the findings are no-brainer.  As someone who worked with minority male academic support programs, it became frustrating to continue to read study after study with the same conclusions.  Enough with the problems already – let’s do something about it!  I’m certainly an advocate for these types of programs to help minority males succeed, however I have noticed more and more that our problems are becoming less about race/ethnicity and more about SES.  I don’t know how we can help a struggling low-middle-income class (from which I come and am only slightly better since becoming educated) with the complexity of the world’s economic problems???????  This would be a great round-table discussion.

 GREAT QUESTION!

If the focus is on children raised by two-parent families rather than by single parents, I would think that “born out of wedlock” is a misleading stand-in.  Assuming the premise is that children raised, for the most part, by two-parent families are likely to have better records of academic success, the research should attempt to identify the length of time during childhood spent in two-parent vs. one-parent households.  Children may be born to married couples but spend much of their childhood with a single parent following divorce, eg–a common occurence among white folks as well as non-white folks.  Further, children of single parents (particularly among non-white families?–what would the research say?) often have supportive extended families with “high expectations” for those children.

Let’s get past focusing narrowly on the marital status of parents before and/or after the birth of the child and look at the impact of broader family support and expectations.

What economic and social mobility? No wonder they can’t see it, it isn’t there. The US as a bastion of meritocracy is a myth foisted on us by civics classes in middle school.

There are a lot of “black” people in the US who are not African Americans.  I presume that they meant Af Am here but maybe not.  There are thousands of men from the Caribbean or with Caribbean ancestry and even other regions and for all I know black Canadians, etc.  The ones with ancestry from Spanish-speaking countries/territory may or may not be listed as black since there is often a “black non hispanic” category which they would not fit and might exclude them as blacks.  The likelihood is that there is no consensus on self-reporting on racial/ethnic self-reporting at universities and anyone who has done long-term research on racial categories in the US would note that they are not static – terms have shifted across time…

Is anyone else surprised by the headline?  I already knew that black men could succeed in college, and I assumed most Chronicle readers knew this as well.

I agree, the racial categories have shifted, but the questions on applications/surveys have not kept up with this so data, for research purposes, may be a bit blurred as time goes on.  For example, I usually have to check a box stating whether I am white (non-Hispanic), black (AA), asian…etc.  Well, my father is black (skin color reddish-brown from Indian ancestry), my mother is half German, half Mexican.  What do I check?  Only recently has the “other” box shown up on many applications, but if it isn’t there I usually check black since that is what I mostly identify with. I can’t tell you the number of times a nurse looks at my intake forms and makes sure I checked the right thing on account of my very fair skin… :)  

Speaking of which, my other issue with this is, as you pointed out in your post, our use of the terms white and black, which seems to me to refer to your skin color really.  If you’re born in Canada, what are you?  Canadian (despite what color your skin is).  If you’re born in Mexico, what are you?  Mexican (despite what color your skins is).  So if we’re born in America, why can’t we just be American?  For all of the biracial families that are out there, the term black and white won’t even be applicable in a few years.  My son refers to my skin color as peach and his as peachy-brown.  My sister, same multi-racial makeup, married a half-American (black), half Asian man.  What does that make her children!  The world will be full of wonderful shades of peaches, browns, and blacks before long and I think it will be wonderful…