Wesley Stevenson

speaker

1,470 appearances 54 recordings 1 series first heard Sep 2010 last heard May 2015

Wesley Stevenson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

No recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

More or Less · Are there more black men in college or prison in the US? · 18 Mar 2013 podcast

He's an associate professor of psychology at Howard University in Washington, D.C. voice-verified

And he's recently written about the use of this claim. voice-verified

It was a statistic that he himself has even used when he wrote a paper back in 2008 pushing for better educational success for black young men. voice-verified

But he's realised that while making this claim is good for rallying activists, it's also having a negative effect on young black men in the U.S. voice-verified

So it isn't true now. voice-verified

But what about when it was first published? voice-verified

The original claim came from a report by the campaign group the Justice Policy Institute. voice-verified

It was based on figures from the year 2000. voice-verified

So Ivory re-examined the numbers that we used and compared them to the current numbers of black men in college. voice-verified

And something struck him as odd. voice-verified

I mean, he says that when he looked at the census data from the early 2000s, this shows there were more black men in college than in prison at that time. voice-verified

And yet, in the face of the truth, this zombie statistic refuses to die. voice-verified

Now, you can see that when it was first written in the Justice Policy Institute report, it must have seemed like a really simple and grabby comparison. voice-verified

And it's one that they've stood by in the past. voice-verified

But how do they feel about it now? voice-verified

I asked one of their senior researchers, Melissa Neal. voice-verified

Yes, but she did actually raise another very good point. voice-verified

So there may be more black men in college than in prison, but this isn't really the end of the story. voice-verified

Black men still lag behind their white counterparts in the number attending top-rated universities, and they lag behind them in terms of the numbers who graduate. voice-verified

And in prison, black people account for 40% of the prison population, but only 12% of the US population. voice-verified

Showing 501–520 of 1,470 · page 26 of 74