Ok. They aren't in the military...or not in large absolute numbers at any rate, because the military is shrinking. They aren't in manufacturing jobs in large numbers (with the exception of places like Detroit), because those jobs are shrinking as well. And they aren't in schools like Washington University or the University of Michigan because these schools routinely have female-male ratios of 4:1.
So the easy answer is that they are incarcerated.
I don't think this answer is the easy one at all.
Angela Davis most notably has fought against the prison industrial complex, arguing that it has directly led to a stark increase in the number of incarcerated men and women in general, and an even starker increase in the number of incarcerated black men and women. For those of you who are unaware, black men and women constitute a numerical majority of the prison population. The majority of these men and women are in jail because of non-violent drug-related crimes (dealing, possessing, etc.). There are at least three political and economic interests that of course, benefit from this boom:
1. Rural communities benefit economically, as most prisons are placed in rural areas. These prisons replace manufacturing plants as a sure fire way to economic growth as they create well-paying jobs with benefits. Because prisoners count for the purposes of representation (even though most of them can't vote), they also increase the political strength of these communities.
2. Multinational corporations benefit economically, as they use prison labor for their products. The image of prisoners pressing license plates has been replaced by prisoners manning 1-800 phones. Customer service anyone?
3. The three-strikes crowd benefits politically because not only does crime sell advertising, stances against crime get votes.
But yet and still I am not convinced that this actually answers our question. Because it seems to me that the prison dynamic impacts lower-income black men, and some middle-income black men. So the population of men most likely to attend places like Michigan or Washington University is a very different population than the one most likely to be sent to jail.
Presenting this in another way. I've got three sets of friends--friends from Inkster, Michigan (poor town/city about twenty minutes outside of Detroit). Friends from undergrad (my fraternity brothers who attend schools all over, and friends from the University of Michigan), and friends from grad school (the University of Michigan). Each of those friendship groups is part of a larger network (comprised of people i know second hand through my friends). Looking at the networks, I know of a significant number of people in the Inkster network who spent time in jail. I know of fewer people in the Michigan network. I know maybe a couple in the grad school network.
But maybe I'm thinking about this all wrong. To a large extent this question is a comparative one. That is it isn't "where have all the black men gone?" It's "where have all the black men gone in relation to the women?"
So we're comparing two distributions across class. The distribution of black women, and the distribution of black men. If we assume that black women regardless of class are more likely to go to college, less likely to go to jail, less likely to go to the military, less likely to be incarcerated....then the end result would be what we have. Women far outnumbering their male counterparts in most college settings. And we would expect women in lower-income schools to outnumber their counterparts 8-1, whereas women in upper -income schools to outnumber their counterparts 4-1?
Taking The Miner's Canary as a guide...the quicker we answer this question and get solutions, the quicker we can deal with the larger problem. Because as quiet as it is kept, top tier schools are now thinking hard about instituting male quotas. Because white men are dropping like flies too.
Posted by at November 22, 2003 08:22 AM | TrackBack
Crunching numbers,another way to look at it LKS ,the church and the bar scene are full of single or visibly unattached women;why?From the eligible Men pool substract,men incarcerated,on dope,gender confusion,homeless and poor,and the mental handicapp whats left is not enough Men for UofM,WashU,orSalley Mae.
Posted by: tootsie at November 24, 2003 10:20 AM