The Top Ten Black Myths

1. There are more Black men in prison than in college.
False. The numbers that people quote are ALL of the Black men in prison, versus ONLY the free young Black men of college age, which spans the late teens to the early twenties.

The misleading “evidence” comes from studies such as the one conducted in 2000 by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI), a Washington-based research group. JPI found that there were 791,600 Black men in jail or prison and “only” 603,032 of them in colleges or universities. They presented the findings as “evidence” of more Black men in prison than in college.

Any of us can do the math: Out of the 33.7 million African Americans that the 2000 census found, less than one million are in jail or prison (.792 million).
The reality is that while there are too many of us in prison and more of us in there than others, there are NOT more of us on the inside than on the outside.


2. Black people, particularly Black men are lazy.

False. How can a people who built this nation and did it for free suddenly become the laziest people in the nation?
According to the US Census Bureau, 68.1% of all Black men and 62.3% of Black women over the age of 16 are in the civilian labor force, compared to 73% of white men. And 59.9% of white women. With racial discrimination and other challenges, more of us are still working than sitting at home.

While the majority of poor people in America are Black, the majority of Black people are NOT poor. Of the 33.7 million Blacks in this nation, 8.1 million have incomes below the poverty line.
Now, what we do with our money is another story…

3. Black people abuse the Welfare system and are swelling it beyond capacity.

False. First, the actual number of Black families on Welfare has been decreasing since the early 1970’s, when 46% of the recipients were Black. By the end of the 20th century, that number was down to 39%, as compared to 38% whites who were non-Hispanic. If the comparison were strictly based on race without ethnic identification, whites clearly outnumber Blacks on the Welfare rolls.
In addition, 40% of the families on Welfare have only one child, while the number having five or more is only 4%. And, by the last decade of the 20th century, Welfare accounted for just over 2% of the Federal Budget, while defense accounted for 24%.

Benefit programs for farmers and big businesses far outweigh the Welfare program. For example, US Airways was recently given permission to tap into a $718 million federally guaranteed loan package to fund daily operations while in bankruptcy proceedings. Who is abusing welfare?

4. Most Black men are married to white women.

False. As of 1998, interracial marriages composed of a white person and a Black person accounted for only .6% of all marriages in the nation. Of all interracial marriages, only 16% are Black male to white female.

5. Affirmative Action unfairly provides opportunities for Blacks.

False. First, Affirmative Action is inappropriately used to define Black preferential treatment and “quotas” but it was actually designed to benefit a number of groups who have been discriminated against, creating parity in the workplace. Since the 1970’s, Affirmative Action has benefited white women more than any other group. Secondly, no one who perpetuates this myth ever talks about other types of Affirmative Action, which benefit other races. For example, the Japanese descendants in America, who were each rewarded $20,000 in 1988 as reparations for internment during WWII, or the legacy programs which benefit people such as the current dimwit in the white house.

6. Let’s kill two ignorant rumors with the pursuit of truth: Poor Blacks would be better off if they stopped using drugs and took better care of their communities; and, Blacks need to stop pushing drugs to their own people.

False. This one always confuses me, because Blacks can’t even distribute their own movies or music, yet still get blamed for importing and distributing ILLEGAL drugs.

If a Black man can’t drive down the street without being racially profiled and stopped, what makes anyone think that he could fly a planeload of drugs into the nation and distribute them from state to state and city to city? The drug dealers in the ‘hood make a lot of money, but nowhere near the cash generated by the true drug lords who import it and distribute it to inner cities across the nation.

7. Blacks suffer from Black on Black crime.

True, but misleading. Whites also suffer from white on white crime. Many crimes, including murder, rape and robbery, are crimes of location, not color. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 85% of African Americans report another Black person as the perpetrator of the crime and 80% of white murders were committed by other whites. However, when race does play a role in crime, the victims of violent crimes are more likely to be Black, while the perpetrators, are more likely to be white.

8. Blacks commit more crimes than whites.

False. Neo-Conservative Whites and self-hating Blacks notwithstanding, the reality of racism in the justice system has to be understood in order to get into the reasons for the high number of Blacks in prison.
In an assessment of the impact of crime on minority communities, the National Minority Advisory Council on Criminal Justice concluded that “America is a classic example of heavy-handed use of state and private power to control minorities and suppress their continuing opposition to the hegemony of white racist ideology.”

Further, according to “The Real War on Crime,” a report by the National Criminal Justice Commission, “African-American arrest rates for drugs during the height of the ‘drug war’ in 1989 were five times higher than arrest rates for whites even though whites and African-Americans were using drugs at the same rate.”

Finally, by 1990, according to the Federal Judicial Center, the average sentences for African Americans for weapons and drug charges were 49% longer than for whites who had been convicted of the same crimes.
The simple truth is, more of “us” may be in court, but more of “them” are actually committing crimes.

9. Women outnumbering men in college is a Black phenomenon.

False. According to the US Department of Education, male undergraduates account for 44 percent of student population, while female undergraduates account for 56 percent. This is not race specific. There are some real reasons for it and I will deal with it in an upcoming column.

10. Black people are incapable of sustaining businesses in their own communities.

False. We had great success before integration. In fact, by 1900, the number of African-American businesses nationally, totaled 40,000, including the Greenfield Bus Body Company, which manufactured automobiles, and a hotel in New York City valued at $75,000. By 1908, we had 55 privately owned banks. By 1912, there were two millionaires, Madam C.J. Walker (hair care) and R. R. Church (real estate).

By 1923, Tulsa, Oklahoma was home to The Black Wall Street, an African American community of 11,000. Which featured nine hotels, nineteen restaurants and thirty-one grocery stores and meat markets, ten medical doctors, six lawyers, and five real estate and loan insurance agencies, complete with five private planes.

Okay, now there are the myths and the real stats to dispel them. Use them to stop the spread of ignorance, even if it has been spewing out of your very own mouth.