This week the National Urban League released its 2013 State of Black America report, a comprehensive, data-driven assessment of where black and Latino Americans stand in relation to their white counterparts in the US.
The report documents extraordinary gains in education even as it underscores inequities in employment that continue to be reflected in the income gaps that underwrite so many social factors, effectively detailed in the Equality Index, the National Urban League’s comprehensive model that accounts for education, health, civic engagement, social justice, and economics across race, taking into account age, region, and other factors.
The report cites important gains in educational attainment in the last 50 years spurred by Civil Rights activism and legislation as well as Affirmative Action policies. For example, in 2013 there are 3-4 times as many black students enrolled in college as there were in 1963.
According to the report, “progress in closing the college enrollment gap is 5 times the progress in closing the unemployment rate gap.”
National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial sees several factors that account for this pronounced inequality in the progress towards equality:
“ The recession of 2008 made a tough problem even worse – spikes in the black unemployment rate were greater than the national rates. 2.) We have to acknowledge the existence of employment discrimination – its tougher for blacks (even with college degrees) to get a job. And 3.) African Americans tend to be more predominantly at the bottom end of the economic pool. There is a higher percentage of (black) people with less education.”
The 151-page study, which in 2007 featured a foreword by then-Sen. Obama bemoaning the problems facing black men, makes clear that it appreciates his efforts so far as president but that “much, much more must be done.”
“I think the health bill is a very important landmark piece of legislation that in the long term will also create jobs. But that’s not immediate,” Morial told The Associated Press. “In the short run, we may be looking at continuing high unemployment. It’s just not acceptable when Congress and the president spent a considerable amount of money bailing out the banks and auto companies.”
The report includes policy discussions and essays from academics, business leaders and members of the Obama administration such as Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
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