A recent study by an advocacy group suggests that black men and white men are still not the same.
According to the Young Invincibles, African American millennial men need two or more levels of education to end up with the same employment prospects as their white peers. Suffice to say, blacks would have to have a master’s degree or a doctorate in order to have the same job as someone white who only graduated with an associate’s or bachelor’s degree.
The report notes that white male college graduates have a 97.6% employment rate, while their African American counterparts have a 92.8% employment rate. The latter figure correlates more closely with the job prospects for white men who have some college education but no degree (92.5%). Racial discrimination continues to impact the economic disparities experienced by young African Americans, which means that they are starting off their post-education career on an uneven playing field.
The one silver lining in this study is that those who are focused on educational attainment overall close the gap dramatically. Earning a high school diploma gives an African American male a 50% larger impact on gaining employment than it does for a white man. When those two factors meet again at the professional degree level, the 50% becomes 146% in favor of the African American. Even though a white man with a bachelor’s degree still has slightly better employment prospects, a black man is able to have greater success the higher he climbs educationally.
With students such as Kwasi Enin, Akintunde Ahmad, and Avery Coffey, all making news for getting into the Ivy League, it’s reasonable to assume that that educational and employment gap will shrink sooner than later.
You can read the full here.
SOURCE: The Atlantic/Young Invincibles