My guest this week is Erec Smith, professor of rhetoric at York College and co-founder of the nonprofit Free Black Thought. Erec came onto the show to talk about why an organization dedicated to fostering and promoting the true diversity of black thought is necessary. Now with a podcast, a journal, and the nonprofit itself, Erec is doing more than just criticizing the current state of mainstream-left race discourse. He’s helping to change it. As the
From one "Pisces" to another, thank you Erec for being another voice of reason and substance. I am a subscriber of Free Black Thought, and wish you continued success at the CATO Institute.
What can I say but great conversation! Thx again, Glenn. Good stuff there from Erec, who is new to me.
Ya know, when you said, near the end, that you'd enjoyed the conversation, Erec said he was relieved, he wasnt sure you had, in a sort of lighthearted way. You seemed surprised and thought it was due to your devil's advocate tactics. But here's why I thought he said that - I actually noticed that every so often, after he'd say something, you'd respond w something like, "You're singing to the choir there." Or that you/your audience is "well aware of that" etc. Not that it was a big deal, but I thought at the time it could seem as if you were saying he wasnt really bringing anything new or of great interest to the conversation. So I wasnt really surprised when he said he was happy to hear you found it interesting!
So good to see another black person arguing in favour of personal agency, personal responsibility, and trying harder. I'm with him on the Democratic party - I'm voting indy next year. Jill Stein unless someone better comes along. And who cares what you think about her, she's less insane than Bobby Jr and none of them are going to win anyway, but the Dems will wonder where the hell their lost votes went to. Can't wait for the insane immediate post-2024 screams about a stolen election, mail bags thrown in ditches, GA officials who won't find the lost votes, etc. ;)
As a Black person who would be classified as Woke, this site has confirmed many impressions. Conservatives see most Blacks as pathetic people captive to white Liberals. Blacks who are not in lockstep with Conservatives are the great unwashed. The truth is the Blacks who strongly disagree with the current Conservative movement are living their best lives. We are reading about our exceptional ancestors and traveling around the world. We are told that when white children read about Black history, the white children feel bad. Confederate statues must remain to maintain our history. No one cares about how Black children feel.
Many Blacks live their best lives and then we come here and our told Blacks are pathetic. Stacey Abrams is pathetic. Kamala Harris is pathetic. Carole Swain, on the other hand, is worthy of respect. Those of us living our best lives are not deceived when the Ibrim Kendi’s of the Conservative movement tell us that there is nothing to fear if Christian Nationalists come to power. We laugh.
Why do you think this site is representative of "Conservatives"? Most conservatives wouldn't even waste their time on this "Black" website. Do yuo want me to extrapolate from, say , you and Monty to a general opinion about Black Americans? Just askin'.....
So moving! Eric Smith joins the likes of Glenn Loury, Coleman Hughes, Roland Fryer, Thomas Sowell, Jason Riley and Shelby Steele fighting black collective victimization rhetoric. I am in! Keep up the positivity! Good guest Glenn!
Glenn asks Erec about crime in a number of cities. Perhaps the largest share of blame belongs to my profession of public health or “APHA and allies”. Public health confuses the public’s understanding of arrest procedure by complaining about “unnecessary or inappropriate stops” by police. Our message is “Cops shouldn’t stop you for this or for that...” Our interference causes the civilian (of any race) to view interaction with cop as negotiation. Civilians who listen to public health concern about civilian rights fail to understand that cop has higher authority than civilian. If public health were to be abolished (The Army could do pandemics) and if activists would go home, there would be much less civilian-police conflict.
On “woke grading at college” - time 40 min: (1) I wasn’t aware of identity-based course-grading standards. But, I read somewhere (probably APHA) that “woke” crime sentencing in the courtroom would result in fewer prison years if defendant is from “historical oppression” category. It sounds like Jim Crow Or Apartheid. (2) The purpose of an elite college is to deliver elite skills/expertise like an Olympics training camp. The goal is to have big muscles or big knowledge at competition. (3) Prasad of UCSF warns about “woke interference in standards and competition”. Medical school applicants who no longer compete on MCAT or grades discover a replacement competition realm - published papers, which favors the competitive students even more.
Democrats do a better job for Blacks economically.
The right way to answering the question of African-American loyalty is to treat blacks as rational citizens voting in their self-interest. And while the sluggish economy of the Obama years may seem like a bad case for Democratic loyalty, that’s not true of Democratic administrations overall. According to a recent paper from Zoltan L. Hajnal and Jeremy D. Horowitz—both political scientists at the University of California–San Diego—there’s clear evidence that when the nation is governed by Democrats, black well-being “improves dramatically” across multiple dimensions.
Specifically, looking at data from 1948 to 2010, Hajnal and Horowitz found that “African Americans tend to experience substantial gains under Democratic presidents whereas they tend to incur significant losses or remain stagnant under Republicans.” On average, under Democratic presidents, blacks gained $895 in annual income, saw a 2.41 point drop in their poverty rate, and a 0.36 point drop in their unemployment rate. By contrast, under Republicans, blacks gained $142 a year, along with a 0.15 point increase in poverty and a 0.39 point increase in unemployment.
What’s more, this was true in relative terms as well. As they write, “[W]hether we look at the gap between blacks and whites or at the ratio of black to white outcomes, the patterns are essentially identical: Republican administrations were, on average, bad for African Americans and Democratic administrations were, on average, good for them, both in absolute and relative terms.”
According to an Associated Press fact-check, household median income was higher for Black people before Trump took office. Furthermore, Trump’s focus on the unemployment rate ignores other economic hardships that Black people face, like low rates of Black homeownership and low Black male labor force participation rates, according to the New York Times.
Trump has also repeatedly mentioned how his administration has funded historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). “They couldn’t get funded. Nobody was funding them for years and years and decades, nobody was funding them,” Trump said.
This is simply untrue: Under Obama, the federal government invested more than $4 billion in HBCUs over seven years.
And while federal funding for HBCUs has been renewed under Trump’s presidency, Trump has not publicly acknowledged that the renewal is the result of congressional appropriations.
“Congress does all this work and presents it to him in the budget, and he can choose to sign it. This year, he held off on signing some significant STEM funding, making HBCUs beg for it,” Rutgers professor and leading HBCU authority Marybeth Gasman told the Washington Post. “Trump has promised all kinds of things to HBCUs and has followed through on little. Under Trump, the White House Initiative for HBCUs was moved to the White House and is quite quiet compared to the work under President Obama’s administration.”
Black people pay taxes. Is demanding that tax dollars go to HBCU a “give to me” proposition. Zin not understanding your argument. Voters vote to have things they want in their communities covered by their tax dollars. The other schools weren’t turning down funding.
I often point to the group of Black women funding Black female entrepreneurs. Conservatives object. How is the funding not individual agency?
Edit to add:
Conservatives have stereotypes, and cannot see Blacks outside of their bubbles as individuals. We are poor unthinking Blacks, trapped on the Democratic plantation. They have no knowledge of Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party or Black Democrats in South Carolina saying no to the Liberals who were choosing Bernie Sanders. Conservatives can’t understand why the Republican Party is not an option for most Black voters, so you tell us that we are brain dead.
Diamond & Silk? Seriously?
When Tim Scott and Byron Donalds were told not to criticize DeSantis, they very obediently shut up. They love life on the Republican plantation. As long as Conservatives cannot address the illness in the Republican Party, they will remain an afterthought in the Black community. The GOP is telling you what they plan to do if Trump is re-elected. Ban on is shouting the plan. Conservatives remain mute.
I'll sidestep the issue of which political party is better for this group or that group. The numbers, and the context required to make sense of them, tell a complicated story that's not as cut and dried as some might think. Let's go through a few of them:
Real (inflation-adjusted) income statistics
Real median household incomes for black people rose on Trump's watch according to data from the US Census Bureau:
Median usual weekly real (inflation-adjusted) earnings for black workers 16 and older peaked during the third quarter of 2020 and have not fully recovered according to the St. Louis Fed's FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) database:
Data from the US Census Bureau (via FRED) shows that the black home ownership rate peaked at 49.7% back during the second quarter of 2004, fell steadily for the next 15 years and rose by almost five percentage points between Q2 2019 and Q2 2020, only to fall by almost three percentage points over the next two quarters. Suffice it to say there's a lot of "noise" in the numbers.
A longer view shows that the black-white home ownership gap has been relatively stable for over a century. A Zillow analysis from 2018 shows that the black-white home ownership gap has been in the range of 26 to 30 percentage points since 1900:
The gap was 29 percentage points as of Q3 (74.5% for whites vs. 45.5% for blacks) of this year according to the US Census Bureau. Use this link, download the press release, and go to Table 7 if you want to do a deep dive:
The black employment to population ratio peaked at 61.4% in April of 2000 and has been on a roller coaster since then. It was at 59.2% in October according to FRED:
The black labor force participation rate peaked at 66.4% in September of 1999. It fell steadily for years but began to rise in 2014. It's 3.5 percentage points below the September 1999 peak as of October (62.9%) of this year according to FRED:
The black unemployment rate hit an all time low (5.3%) in August of 2019. It rose during the pandemic, began to fall again and hit a new all time low in April (4.7%). It is up a bit to 5.8% as of October.
These numbers reflect the impacts of policies that played out over many years, including foreign policy, trade policy, immigration policy, actions of the Federal Reserve, and tax policy. Some of those policies (e.g., NAFTA) were supported by both parties. The noise in the numbers also reflects normal economic fluctuations that are beyond the control of politicians or political parties. Suffice it to say that claims that one party or another is better for this group or that group are really hard to prove.
Should make a small correction to this post. Just under 217,000 of the 287,000 students who attended HBCUs in 2021 were black. That means HBCUs educate a little over 11% of black college students.
Use this link if you want to do a deep dive into HBCU enrollment figures:
The funding of public HBCUs has been a sore spot in several places. The Biden Administration issued a report a couple of months ago that said 16 states have underfunded their HBCUs by $12.6 billion:
I'm not in a position to debate the numbers, but I've followed what happened in Maryland, one of the 16 states highlighted by Team Biden. A 15-year lawsuit over HBCU funding was settled in 2021:
The lawsuit was fought during the tenures of governors from both parties (Martin O'Malley, Larry Hogan).
More recently, the Maryland Higher Education Commission denied applications from Johns Hopkins University and Stetson University to start new physical therapy doctoral programs that would have competed with programs at two HBCUs, the University of Maryland at Eastern Shore and the University of Maryland, Baltimore:
The Maryland Higher Education Commission voted to deny proposed physical therapy doctoral programs at the Johns Hopkins University and Stevenson University due to their similarity to existing programs at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
In letters sent to each university Sept. 21, Commission Chair Cassie Motz said the decision was based on concerns that the proposed programs are “unreasonably duplicative of existing [doctorate of physical therapy] programs in Maryland and will cause demonstrable harm” to UMB and UMES, which is one of the state’s four historically Black colleges and universities.
The commission, which is tasked with overseeing the state’s 55 colleges and universities, also said that after examining the employer market for graduates of a DPT program, they found that adding programs would hinder faculty and student recruitment at both UMES and UMB.
This was a decision that many people thought was anti-competitive and ultimately bad for Maryland.
Funding aside, HBCU enrollment numbers have been cyclical over the years. Here's an excerpt from an NCES post that illustrates the point:
In 2021, there were 99 HBCUs located in 19 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Of the 99 HBCUs, 50 were public institutions and 49 were private nonprofit institutions (source). The number of HBCU students increased by 47 percent (from 223,000 to 327,000 students) between 1976 and 2010, then decreased by 12 percent (to 287,000 students) between 2010 and 2021 (source). In comparison, the number of students in all degree-granting institutions increased 91 percent (from 11 million to 21 million students) between 1976 and 2010, then decreased 11 percent (to 19 million students) between 2010 and 2021 (source).
Although HBCUs were originally founded to educate Black students, they enroll students of other races as well. The composition of HBCUs has changed over time. In 2021, non-Black students made up 25 percent of enrollment at HBCUs, compared with 15 percent in 1976 (source).1
While Black enrollment at HBCUs increased by 14 percent between 1976 and 2021, the total number of Black students enrolled in all degree-granting postsecondary institutions (both HBCUs and non-HBCUs) more than doubled during this period. As a result, the percentage of Black students enrolled at HBCUs fell from 18 percent in 1976 to 8 percent in 2014 and then increased to 9 percent in 2021. (source, source, and source).
This link provides access to annual enrollment numbers going back to 1976:
There's no doubt that interest in HBCUs has been rising, but there are legitimate questions about whether the leaders of these schools should gear up for more students at a time when the economy could tip into recession over the next 12-24 months or if they should shore up their facilities and endowments. Student protests at Howard a couple of years ago over housing conditions illustrate the dilemma:
Very interesting discussion. I guess you could roll a lot of what he said into the discussion around the racism of low expectations. The fact that he said he had heard first hand that there was a policy to keep blacks from getting an education was troubling. The dems want people on govt programs because it gives control.
From one "Pisces" to another, thank you Erec for being another voice of reason and substance. I am a subscriber of Free Black Thought, and wish you continued success at the CATO Institute.
What can I say but great conversation! Thx again, Glenn. Good stuff there from Erec, who is new to me.
Ya know, when you said, near the end, that you'd enjoyed the conversation, Erec said he was relieved, he wasnt sure you had, in a sort of lighthearted way. You seemed surprised and thought it was due to your devil's advocate tactics. But here's why I thought he said that - I actually noticed that every so often, after he'd say something, you'd respond w something like, "You're singing to the choir there." Or that you/your audience is "well aware of that" etc. Not that it was a big deal, but I thought at the time it could seem as if you were saying he wasnt really bringing anything new or of great interest to the conversation. So I wasnt really surprised when he said he was happy to hear you found it interesting!
Does that make sense to you? Maybe ...?
Anyway, take care! Keep keepin on! Enjoy!
Free Black Thought...and free the Chicago 7! :)
So good to see another black person arguing in favour of personal agency, personal responsibility, and trying harder. I'm with him on the Democratic party - I'm voting indy next year. Jill Stein unless someone better comes along. And who cares what you think about her, she's less insane than Bobby Jr and none of them are going to win anyway, but the Dems will wonder where the hell their lost votes went to. Can't wait for the insane immediate post-2024 screams about a stolen election, mail bags thrown in ditches, GA officials who won't find the lost votes, etc. ;)
As a Black person who would be classified as Woke, this site has confirmed many impressions. Conservatives see most Blacks as pathetic people captive to white Liberals. Blacks who are not in lockstep with Conservatives are the great unwashed. The truth is the Blacks who strongly disagree with the current Conservative movement are living their best lives. We are reading about our exceptional ancestors and traveling around the world. We are told that when white children read about Black history, the white children feel bad. Confederate statues must remain to maintain our history. No one cares about how Black children feel.
Many Blacks live their best lives and then we come here and our told Blacks are pathetic. Stacey Abrams is pathetic. Kamala Harris is pathetic. Carole Swain, on the other hand, is worthy of respect. Those of us living our best lives are not deceived when the Ibrim Kendi’s of the Conservative movement tell us that there is nothing to fear if Christian Nationalists come to power. We laugh.
Robert:
Why do you think this site is representative of "Conservatives"? Most conservatives wouldn't even waste their time on this "Black" website. Do yuo want me to extrapolate from, say , you and Monty to a general opinion about Black Americans? Just askin'.....
You are free to extrapolate on me and the Black community.
My point about Conservatives being blind to flaws in their arguments will still stand.
Why should I do that? By what authority do you speak for anyone but your lonesome?
Everyone here is giving their opinion.
Glenn, you really are a master at examining various aspects of things - such a good devil's advocacy for things that make you cringe.
So moving! Eric Smith joins the likes of Glenn Loury, Coleman Hughes, Roland Fryer, Thomas Sowell, Jason Riley and Shelby Steele fighting black collective victimization rhetoric. I am in! Keep up the positivity! Good guest Glenn!
A great conversation! What do blacks today owe their ancestors? Willingness to progress the long way around without shortcuts or excuses.
Are Conservatives only aware of Kendi and DiAngelo when it comes to race?
Recent personal readings:
Black Tudor Society by Onyeka Nubia (blacks in Tudor England)
Dismal Freedom by J Brent Morris (escaping enslavement via swampland)
I Always Wanted to be Somebody by Althea Gibson (Jim Crow era success)
Without Concealment Without Compromise (Black Civil War surgeons)
Thunder of Angels (book used as basis for the film Boycott)
Pullman Porters 1925-1945
African American Almanac (400 years of excellence)
Black Angels (Black nurses who helped to fight TB)
New Brownies Book (republishes DuBois’ periodical encouraging children)
Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen
Passing For Who You Really Are (support for “multiracial whiteness”)
The Black Intellectual Tradition: Reading Freedom in Classical Literature
Each book is about not accepting barriers. Conservative understanding of what is available seems limited.
Books for Black children provide tons of encouragement and role models. Conservatives are the ones who need a Black stereotype of the Woke.
Glenn asks Erec about crime in a number of cities. Perhaps the largest share of blame belongs to my profession of public health or “APHA and allies”. Public health confuses the public’s understanding of arrest procedure by complaining about “unnecessary or inappropriate stops” by police. Our message is “Cops shouldn’t stop you for this or for that...” Our interference causes the civilian (of any race) to view interaction with cop as negotiation. Civilians who listen to public health concern about civilian rights fail to understand that cop has higher authority than civilian. If public health were to be abolished (The Army could do pandemics) and if activists would go home, there would be much less civilian-police conflict.
On “woke grading at college” - time 40 min: (1) I wasn’t aware of identity-based course-grading standards. But, I read somewhere (probably APHA) that “woke” crime sentencing in the courtroom would result in fewer prison years if defendant is from “historical oppression” category. It sounds like Jim Crow Or Apartheid. (2) The purpose of an elite college is to deliver elite skills/expertise like an Olympics training camp. The goal is to have big muscles or big knowledge at competition. (3) Prasad of UCSF warns about “woke interference in standards and competition”. Medical school applicants who no longer compete on MCAT or grades discover a replacement competition realm - published papers, which favors the competitive students even more.
Two of my intellectual heroes on the same podcast!? I look forward to this episode of The Glenn Show. Hell, I look forward to every episode of TGS!
Democrats do a better job for Blacks economically.
The right way to answering the question of African-American loyalty is to treat blacks as rational citizens voting in their self-interest. And while the sluggish economy of the Obama years may seem like a bad case for Democratic loyalty, that’s not true of Democratic administrations overall. According to a recent paper from Zoltan L. Hajnal and Jeremy D. Horowitz—both political scientists at the University of California–San Diego—there’s clear evidence that when the nation is governed by Democrats, black well-being “improves dramatically” across multiple dimensions.
Specifically, looking at data from 1948 to 2010, Hajnal and Horowitz found that “African Americans tend to experience substantial gains under Democratic presidents whereas they tend to incur significant losses or remain stagnant under Republicans.” On average, under Democratic presidents, blacks gained $895 in annual income, saw a 2.41 point drop in their poverty rate, and a 0.36 point drop in their unemployment rate. By contrast, under Republicans, blacks gained $142 a year, along with a 0.15 point increase in poverty and a 0.39 point increase in unemployment.
What’s more, this was true in relative terms as well. As they write, “[W]hether we look at the gap between blacks and whites or at the ratio of black to white outcomes, the patterns are essentially identical: Republican administrations were, on average, bad for African Americans and Democratic administrations were, on average, good for them, both in absolute and relative terms.”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/05/democrats-are-good-for-minorities-minority-voters-are-making-a-rational-choice.html
According to an Associated Press fact-check, household median income was higher for Black people before Trump took office. Furthermore, Trump’s focus on the unemployment rate ignores other economic hardships that Black people face, like low rates of Black homeownership and low Black male labor force participation rates, according to the New York Times.
https://www.vox.com/21524499/what-trump-has-done-for-black-people
Trump lies about his role in funding HBCUs.
Trump has also repeatedly mentioned how his administration has funded historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). “They couldn’t get funded. Nobody was funding them for years and years and decades, nobody was funding them,” Trump said.
This is simply untrue: Under Obama, the federal government invested more than $4 billion in HBCUs over seven years.
And while federal funding for HBCUs has been renewed under Trump’s presidency, Trump has not publicly acknowledged that the renewal is the result of congressional appropriations.
“Congress does all this work and presents it to him in the budget, and he can choose to sign it. This year, he held off on signing some significant STEM funding, making HBCUs beg for it,” Rutgers professor and leading HBCU authority Marybeth Gasman told the Washington Post. “Trump has promised all kinds of things to HBCUs and has followed through on little. Under Trump, the White House Initiative for HBCUs was moved to the White House and is quite quiet compared to the work under President Obama’s administration.”
https://www.vox.com/21524499/what-trump-has-done-for-black-people
Blacks vote rationally. They are not the unthinking mass that forms the Conservative stereotype.
Weirdly, that's what I thought liberal blacks thought of conservative ones.
Give to me give to me! Eric is all about individual agency. Do you get it?
Black people pay taxes. Is demanding that tax dollars go to HBCU a “give to me” proposition. Zin not understanding your argument. Voters vote to have things they want in their communities covered by their tax dollars. The other schools weren’t turning down funding.
I often point to the group of Black women funding Black female entrepreneurs. Conservatives object. How is the funding not individual agency?
Edit to add:
Conservatives have stereotypes, and cannot see Blacks outside of their bubbles as individuals. We are poor unthinking Blacks, trapped on the Democratic plantation. They have no knowledge of Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party or Black Democrats in South Carolina saying no to the Liberals who were choosing Bernie Sanders. Conservatives can’t understand why the Republican Party is not an option for most Black voters, so you tell us that we are brain dead.
Diamond & Silk? Seriously?
When Tim Scott and Byron Donalds were told not to criticize DeSantis, they very obediently shut up. They love life on the Republican plantation. As long as Conservatives cannot address the illness in the Republican Party, they will remain an afterthought in the Black community. The GOP is telling you what they plan to do if Trump is re-elected. Ban on is shouting the plan. Conservatives remain mute.
The Black community won’t bend the knee.
I'll sidestep the issue of which political party is better for this group or that group. The numbers, and the context required to make sense of them, tell a complicated story that's not as cut and dried as some might think. Let's go through a few of them:
Real (inflation-adjusted) income statistics
Real median household incomes for black people rose on Trump's watch according to data from the US Census Bureau:
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2023/demo/p60-279/figure2.pdf
It has grown a bit more since then.
Median usual weekly real (inflation-adjusted) earnings for black workers 16 and older peaked during the third quarter of 2020 and have not fully recovered according to the St. Louis Fed's FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) database:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0252884600Q
Home ownership rates
Data from the US Census Bureau (via FRED) shows that the black home ownership rate peaked at 49.7% back during the second quarter of 2004, fell steadily for the next 15 years and rose by almost five percentage points between Q2 2019 and Q2 2020, only to fall by almost three percentage points over the next two quarters. Suffice it to say there's a lot of "noise" in the numbers.
A longer view shows that the black-white home ownership gap has been relatively stable for over a century. A Zillow analysis from 2018 shows that the black-white home ownership gap has been in the range of 26 to 30 percentage points since 1900:
https://www.zillow.com/research/african-americans-homeownership/
The gap was 29 percentage points as of Q3 (74.5% for whites vs. 45.5% for blacks) of this year according to the US Census Bureau. Use this link, download the press release, and go to Table 7 if you want to do a deep dive:
https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/current/index.html
Poverty rates
The black poverty rate hit an all-time low of 18.8% in 2019 according to the US Census Bureau:
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/09/poverty-rates-for-blacks-and-hispanics-reached-historic-lows-in-2019.html
It rose a bit during the pandemic, but was 17.1% last year, another all time low. Use this link and download Figure 2 for details:
https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-280.html
Use this link if you want to see a graph of black poverty rates going back to 1959:
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/09/black-poverty-rate.html
Employment statistics
The black employment to population ratio peaked at 61.4% in April of 2000 and has been on a roller coaster since then. It was at 59.2% in October according to FRED:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300006
The black labor force participation rate peaked at 66.4% in September of 1999. It fell steadily for years but began to rise in 2014. It's 3.5 percentage points below the September 1999 peak as of October (62.9%) of this year according to FRED:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300006
The black unemployment rate hit an all time low (5.3%) in August of 2019. It rose during the pandemic, began to fall again and hit a new all time low in April (4.7%). It is up a bit to 5.8% as of October.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS14000006
These numbers reflect the impacts of policies that played out over many years, including foreign policy, trade policy, immigration policy, actions of the Federal Reserve, and tax policy. Some of those policies (e.g., NAFTA) were supported by both parties. The noise in the numbers also reflects normal economic fluctuations that are beyond the control of politicians or political parties. Suffice it to say that claims that one party or another is better for this group or that group are really hard to prove.
Interesting economic trends and fluctuations.
A number like the funding of HBCUs seems straight forward.
True. Just keep in mind that HBCUs enrolled 287,000 students in 2021 according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES):
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_313.20.asp
This compares with 1.948 million black college students that year:
https://nces.ed.gov/fastFacts/display.asp?id=98
So while HBCUs are important and have a role to play in developing America's young people, they educate about 15% of black college students.
Here's a link to another NCES post that adds more context about HBCUs:
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=667
Should make a small correction to this post. Just under 217,000 of the 287,000 students who attended HBCUs in 2021 were black. That means HBCUs educate a little over 11% of black college students.
Use this link if you want to do a deep dive into HBCU enrollment figures:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_313.20.asp
The numbers for black students enrolled at HBCUs are in the bottom half of the table.
HBCUs have their growth limited by chronic underfunding.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/2023/09/20/states-underfunded-black-land-grants-13b-over-30-years
Tennessee State University was penalized for accepting too many students
https://comptroller.tn.gov/content/dam/cot/orea/advanced-search/2023/TSUFullReport.pdf
Tennessee State has been historically underfunded
https://www.claiborneprogress.net/2023/09/26/report-says-tennessee-state-has-been-historically-underfunded/
Black student applications to HNCUs are increasing
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2023/02/18/more-students-apply-historic-black-colleges-and-universities/11155356002/
The point of my post is that Trump and Conservatives lie about their role in funding HBCUs
The funding of public HBCUs has been a sore spot in several places. The Biden Administration issued a report a couple of months ago that said 16 states have underfunded their HBCUs by $12.6 billion:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/09/18/hbcu-land-grant-funding-disparities/
I'm not in a position to debate the numbers, but I've followed what happened in Maryland, one of the 16 states highlighted by Team Biden. A 15-year lawsuit over HBCU funding was settled in 2021:
https://news.yahoo.com/maryland-finalizes-577m-settlement-hbcu-144902534.html
The lawsuit was fought during the tenures of governors from both parties (Martin O'Malley, Larry Hogan).
More recently, the Maryland Higher Education Commission denied applications from Johns Hopkins University and Stetson University to start new physical therapy doctoral programs that would have competed with programs at two HBCUs, the University of Maryland at Eastern Shore and the University of Maryland, Baltimore:
https://www.baltimoresun.com/education/bs-md-hbcu-degree-programs-hopkins-stevenson-universities-20230928-5t5ajcuys5dgridekfjgcflgzm-story.html
Here's an excerpt:
The Maryland Higher Education Commission voted to deny proposed physical therapy doctoral programs at the Johns Hopkins University and Stevenson University due to their similarity to existing programs at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
In letters sent to each university Sept. 21, Commission Chair Cassie Motz said the decision was based on concerns that the proposed programs are “unreasonably duplicative of existing [doctorate of physical therapy] programs in Maryland and will cause demonstrable harm” to UMB and UMES, which is one of the state’s four historically Black colleges and universities.
The commission, which is tasked with overseeing the state’s 55 colleges and universities, also said that after examining the employer market for graduates of a DPT program, they found that adding programs would hinder faculty and student recruitment at both UMES and UMB.
This was a decision that many people thought was anti-competitive and ultimately bad for Maryland.
Funding aside, HBCU enrollment numbers have been cyclical over the years. Here's an excerpt from an NCES post that illustrates the point:
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=667
In 2021, there were 99 HBCUs located in 19 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Of the 99 HBCUs, 50 were public institutions and 49 were private nonprofit institutions (source). The number of HBCU students increased by 47 percent (from 223,000 to 327,000 students) between 1976 and 2010, then decreased by 12 percent (to 287,000 students) between 2010 and 2021 (source). In comparison, the number of students in all degree-granting institutions increased 91 percent (from 11 million to 21 million students) between 1976 and 2010, then decreased 11 percent (to 19 million students) between 2010 and 2021 (source).
Although HBCUs were originally founded to educate Black students, they enroll students of other races as well. The composition of HBCUs has changed over time. In 2021, non-Black students made up 25 percent of enrollment at HBCUs, compared with 15 percent in 1976 (source).1
While Black enrollment at HBCUs increased by 14 percent between 1976 and 2021, the total number of Black students enrolled in all degree-granting postsecondary institutions (both HBCUs and non-HBCUs) more than doubled during this period. As a result, the percentage of Black students enrolled at HBCUs fell from 18 percent in 1976 to 8 percent in 2014 and then increased to 9 percent in 2021. (source, source, and source).
This link provides access to annual enrollment numbers going back to 1976:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_313.20.asp
There's no doubt that interest in HBCUs has been rising, but there are legitimate questions about whether the leaders of these schools should gear up for more students at a time when the economy could tip into recession over the next 12-24 months or if they should shore up their facilities and endowments. Student protests at Howard a couple of years ago over housing conditions illustrate the dilemma:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/15/us/howard-protests-housing-agreement-reached/index.html
Similar protests were held at Atlanta-based HBCUs in 2021 as well:
https://thegrio.com/2021/10/20/atlanta-hbcu-students-protest-sleep-in-tents-for-better-campus-conditions/
To make a long story short, the HBCU backstory is complicated.
A note for Eric's dad.
Job well done sir.
Very interesting discussion. I guess you could roll a lot of what he said into the discussion around the racism of low expectations. The fact that he said he had heard first hand that there was a policy to keep blacks from getting an education was troubling. The dems want people on govt programs because it gives control.