4 ms·
I started to develop a little skepticism when I came across this quote: "In college, black men represented just 5 percent of students in 2008." Isn't that exa
by asmithmd1 16y ago
I started to develop a little skepticism when I came across this quote:
"In college, black men represented just 5 percent of students in 2008."
Isn't that exactly how many you would expect based on the demographics of the US?
- Alex3917 16y agoWell by the time you get to the NYT article you're on the third layer of overlapping propaganda, after NAEP and the CGCS. But since most HN readers aren't interested in reading through the hundreds of pages of methodology for the NAEP, you just have to take pretty much the whole thing with a grain of salt.
- nickpinkston 16y agoWikipedia says they're 14% of US population - I'm not sure how the age distribution is, but that's plenty high enough to show a problem.
- billpaetzke 16y agoBut the stat is about black men only--excluding women. So 7% then. Is 5% actual vs 7% desired a big enough gap to cause alarm? I don't know.
- kmak 16y agoI suppose it depends on the way you're framing it. If it gets to 7% as desired, it is 40% more!
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- billpaetzke 16y agoBlacks account for 13% of the population, according to US Census estimates of 2009 (39.6 mil / 307 mil). (Now, we only want to look at 18-25 yr olds, but I don't have that data. So we have to assume equal distribution among age ranges). And let's say, of that 13%, half are men and half are women. So, it would be "normal" if 6.5% of college students are black men. 5% vs 6.5% doesn't seem like a HUGE problem. Data source: http://www.factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-ds_name=PEP_2009_EST&-_lang=en&-redoLog=false&-mt_name=PEP_2009_EST_G2009_T003_2009&-format=&-CONTEXT=dt http://www.factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DTTable?_bm=y&-...