NYTimes | In New York, almost 120,000 black men
between the ages of 25 and 54 are missing from everyday life. In
Chicago, 45,000 are, and more than 30,000 are missing in Philadelphia.
Across the South — from North Charleston, S.C., through Georgia, Alabama
and Mississippi and up into Ferguson, Mo. — hundreds of thousands more
are missing.
They are missing, largely because of
early deaths or because they are behind bars. Remarkably, black women
who are 25 to 54 and not in jail outnumber black men in that category by
1.5 million, according to an Upshot analysis.
For every 100 black women in this age group living outside of jail,
there are only 83 black men. Among whites, the equivalent number is 99,
nearly parity.
African-American men have long been
more likely to be locked up and more likely to die young, but the scale
of the combined toll is nonetheless jarring. It is a measure of the deep
disparities that continue to afflict black men — disparities being
debated after a recent spate of killings by the police — and the gender
gap is itself a further cause of social ills, leaving many communities
without enough men to be fathers and husbands.
Perhaps the starkest description of the
situation is this: More than one out of every six black men who today
should be between 25 and 54 years old have disappeared from daily life.
“The numbers are staggering,” said Becky Pettit, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas.
And what is the city with at least
10,000 black residents that has the single largest proportion of missing
black men? Ferguson, Mo., where a fatal police shooting
last year led to nationwide protests and a Justice Department
investigation that found widespread discrimination against black
residents. Ferguson has 60 men for every 100 black women in the age
group, Stephen Bronars, an economist, has noted.
