Panel researches black males’ status

• By SARAH CHACKO
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Mar 6, 2009 - Page: 12A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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More black males in Louisiana are incarcerated or fall victim to homicide than white males, officials with an educational research center said Thursday.

And the amounts by which black males surpass their white counterparts in those and other unfavorable areas are drastic enough to warrant special attention, said state Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans.

“African-American males are last in just about every category that measures the ability for success,” Richmond said.

The Council on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys, which met Thursday at the State Capitol, plans to release a preliminary report June 1 on how black males in Louisiana are currently faring. Chairman Calvin Mackie, a former Tulane University professor, said that data will show where the biggest needs are and direct the council’s full report, due by February 2010.

Among children, the percentage of black males in poverty is three times that of white males, said Bobbie DeCuir, a project director at the Cecil J. Picard Center for Child Development and Lifelong Learning.

The center is located at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and studies various factors that affect education and learning from birth through adulthood.

Growing up in poverty is an early indicator of other risks, like access to health care, learning deficiencies, unstable family environments, and contact with drugs, violence and ultimately law enforcement, DeCuir said.

Homicide is the leading cause of death for black males ages 15 to 34, said Gail Bonhomme, also a project director at the Picard Center.

And for every one white male age 19 to 44 that is incarcerated, about four black males of that age are incarcerated, she said.

Picard Center officials presented those and other statistics, taken from the National Center for Health Statistics and U.S. Census Bureau and compiled by LSU demographer Troy Blanchard, to the council.

“It’s just disheartening,” Bonhomme said. “We’ve got to stop it. We’ve got to do better. We’re throwing away this precious human capital.”

Those statistics were not surprising to council members, the majority of whom are black males themselves. But the figures evoked words like “sobering,” “depressing” and “stark” from the panel Thursday.

“It’s not surprising,” said Ronald Gardner with LSU Health Sciences Center. “But when you see it up close, it does take your breath away.”