Black Man Heal Thyself: Address The Racial Pay Gap (And Divergent Unemployment Rate) By Obtaining A College Degree

CNN: Pay gap persists for African-Americans

Reasons for the gap

According to Morris, much of the shortfall may be traced to educational achievement. The Census report revealed that only 19.7% of African-Americans had bachelor's or advanced degrees. That compared with 32.6% for whites. And 17% of blacks had not graduated from high school, exactly twice the rate of whites.

Family wealth, low for blacks, also restricts opportunities; it limits access to good schools growing up and private colleges in young adulthood.

Wealthier families also tend to have wider social networks of successful friends and relatives, often a key to opening a door to a higher-paying career.

Morris said discrimination also plays a role, with the NAACP still documenting cases in which blacks with equal or better qualifications are offered less money to do the same jobs as white colleagues.

And once anyone, white or black, settles for less pay than they deserve, their earnings power can be affected for years. Working a low-paying job usually means climbing the earnings ladder step by step, with income lagging behind other members of an age group every step of the way.

"Part of what you get paid for is your work history," said Morris. The wages for each new job builds on the previous ones.

Ending hiring discrimination and giving job applicants the information they should have concerning pay scales would go a long way toward narrowing the disparity between white and black income, according to Morris.

"When you start out with a level playing field and are transparent about pay during the rest of the hiring process, the outcomes are more favorable for everyone," she said.

Now let's be honest folks because I have seen in the past that I can read the same information as others and they will promote a different set of responses (the wrong ones).

The reasons for the gap are:

1. Different Educational Attainment levels
2. Differences in Family Wealth
3. Availability of Quality Schools
4. More Qualified Social Networks
5. Discrimination In Pay Being Offered

We can do a count of the lines that the article has dedicated to the DISCRIMINATION in pay being offered to understand their perspective on the problem.   I will leave it up to the NAACP to keep this chase going.

In my view numbers 1 through 4 are completely in the hands of the Black community.  If there is an interest in coordinated "directed outcomes" this is achievable without any external dependencies (lawsuits and legislation)

Differentiated Educational Attainment Levels

So often we are told that "education is the great equalizer".  I maintain that if our community focused on raising every student's educational competencies up 2 standard deviations by grassroots management of all aspects of a child's academic career - many of the problems that are flash points between Black and White would be mitigated:

• The need for Affirmative Action admissions to obtain a sufficient number of Blacks in competitive schools
• The limited opportunity facign young people without high school diplomas
• The abundant jobs that go unfilled due to a skills gap (registered nurses, pharmacists, etc)

Differences In Family Wealth

In effect this is a problem with access to capital.  A family with wealth in theory has a better opportunity to send their children to an expensive private school and the tuition will not be such a large portion of the family's cash flow that it becomes cost prohibitive.  

At the same time I have engaged with no less than 5 Black parents who's children will soon set off to college. Everyone of them influenced their children to go to an "instate school" because of the dramatically reduced tuition costs.  In addition some were better than others in pursuing scholarship aide that is available, much of which goes unclaimed from year to year.  

In summary the balance of the school of school (affordability)  and the effort to line up the money to pay for it can mitigate the challenges of family wealth.

(Note: I personally do not value the premium Ivy League education and thus don't consider the lack of access to these elite schools by moderately income people as proof of structural class discrimination.  It is only the case because people choose to place special value on these schools and positively discriminate toward their graduates.)

Availability Of Quality K-12 Schools

This is the point that I talk about frequently.   A quality school is a function of a well managed school.  Where all adults - int he class room, administrative offices and at the kitchen table do their parts to manage the key resource involved here - the student.

It stands to reason with the recent diversity debates in Durham NC that if a poor child can be bused to a well managed school outside of his home area and receive a quality education within the very same school district that his home area school is contained within - the problem is not with the student and his capabilities.  The problem is with that LOCAL SCHOOL and the adult forces who are assigned to govern it.   

The process for expressing a "quality school" needs to be documented, communicated and then operationalized.  To do otherwise is to admit that the people at this local school lack something that is present in the other school to which these same children will be bussed to and allowed to blossom.  I have fully documented on this blog how certain people's biases and entrapments prevent them from seeing the part that they play in the problem.

More Qualified Social Networks

This point closely approximates the one above about the "Families".  The social network can make one known about educational funding sources and quality job opportunities.  There exists excellent networks for both of these areas today.   The question if - are the people who need the information the most fully engaged in the network and utilizing all of its advantages?

It is indeed more likely that the "Discrimination Chasing" track will be followed.  This allows legislators and lawyers to point out these discrepancies and then demand that someone else prove that these difference are not due to active racial discrimination by those who guard the resources for selective consumption.  

My pushback to this strategy is to ask: "What are the COMPETENCIES that are developed in pursuing this course as compared to the others that I have itemized?"

To which I get the response: "None of these are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE".

To which I respond:  "From my observations over the years - if these different "doors" are placed in front of the activists in question - it is clear which of the doors they will travel through - all else being equal.  The door in which they can make an indictment upon SOMEONE ELSE rather than doing the hard work of installing the more enduring infrastructure that these other items represent'.