Three Reasons Black Kids
Should be Celebrated
USAG-Humphreys/Flickr.com
Newt Gingrich attacked the character of poor and black youth, but he’s wrong.More than two weeks after Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich blasted poor kids for having “no habits of working and…nobody around them who works,” the controversy his remarks ignited has yet to die down. Gingrich’s criticism of poor kids has inspired discussions on “The Daily Show” and “The View” as well as a Forbes magazine article, an NPR piece about the Forbes article and countless blog posts. The outcry over Gingrich’s sweeping generalizations about poor and African-American children (he mentioned black youth unemployment in a follow-up to his rant about impoverished youth) marks the perfect time to highlight the things black kids have going for them. Yep, black kids are actually doing some things right. They’re much less likely to abuse drugs than youth from other ethnic groups. And in the Big Apple, the country’s largest city, black teens have the top high school graduation rates among immigrant youth. Nationally, African-American young people boast impressive rates of civic engagement, turning out in greater numbers than their peers from other racial backgrounds at the polls.
Top Immigrant Graduation Rate: In November, the New York Times analyzed high school graduation rates of immigrant students in New York City from 2005 to 2009. Teens from Jamaica and Guyana topped the list of immigrants who earned a high school diploma with a 96 percent graduation rate. These Caribbean teens edged out the Chinese, long regarded as the model minority in the United States, to accomplish this achievement. So, evidently some black kids have the discipline and work ethic to succeed in school.
Low Drug Use: A new study released by the Archives of General Psychiatry last month found that African-American and Asian-American youth have remarkably low rates of drug and alcohol abuse. Just 5 percent of black teens and 3.5 percent of Asian-American teens have substance-use disorders. Given that the study was conducted over a period of two years and examined the drug use habits of 72,561 teens, this is a significant finding. It certainly raises questions about why young black men in New York are disproportionately targeted for stop and frisks resulting in arrests for marijuana possession when police are much more likely to find drugs on non-black kids.
High Civic Engagement: Young African Americans care about their country. A whopping 58 percent of blacks between the ages of 18 and 30 turned out at the polls in the 2008 election, according to a report released in November by Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. That’s a higher percentage than any other racial group in the same age range. It’s easy to argue that these young blacks simply cast a ballot to usher in the first black U.S. president. However, the 2004 election saw a spike in young black voters as well. That year, 1.6 million more young blacks voted than in 2000, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found. Apparently, young blacks truly value their right to vote.