Education In The Divide, By Matt Taibbi

These numbers bring to light how incredibly important education is for wealth building, especially among African Americans. Although the decrease in unemployment corresponding with increases in education levels is a great thing, the story doesn’t necessarily end on a completely positive note. Regardless of education level, black men earn only 74.5% (and black women 69.6%) of white men in the same position (Gilman). So, even African Americans that are raised in poverty, manage to break the cycle, and graduate from college still end up with less potential to build wealth than their white counterparts. The end result of these factors, combined with the fact that lower percentages of African Americans graduate from high school and college, is

In many ways, Andrew’s story is a culmination of all of the influences mentioned so far. Andrew grew up in the projects with a lightly involved father, a drug addicted mother, ended up in a group home, and fell into a life of crime. Andrew is not exactly a model citizen, but may a perfect example of what is wrong with black America. He started out early with a variety of petty offences around the time his mother died, and worked his way up to dealing drugs, serving time for a stabbing, and spending a full year “in the hole” for giving verbal threats while in prison. After spending his entire youth living outside of the law, Andrew decided to clean up around age 25, and this is where his story stops making sense. He gave up selling drugs and committing crimes, but Andrew continued to be harassed by police officers because he “fits the description. (Taibbi 101)” It turns out that he fits the description because he is black, in a poor neighborhood full of black people. There is a law in the New York Penal Code that allows for officers to arrest or detain people for disorderly conduct, and this option is exercised regularly by the police to gain the opportunity to search African Americans in poor neighborhoods for drugs or guns. Disorderly conduct can be anything from “blocking pedestrian traffic (Taibbi 102),” which means standing on a sidewalk regardless of whether or not there actually is pedestrian traffic, to making an obscene gesture at a cop. Basically, anything a person does that a police officer doesn’t like can be interpreted in court as disorderly conduct. Overbearing police action and catch-all laws do not discourage poor behavior or encourage trust from the