Where have all the men gone? Black gender gap is widening

The fatal price of being a black man in America
By Jonathan Tilove
Newhouse News Service

There are nearly 2 million more black adult women than men in America, stark testimony to how often black men die before their time.

Worse yet, with nearly another million black men in prison or the military, the reality in most black communities across the country is of an even greater imbalance — a gap of 2.8 million, or 26 percent, according to Census Bureau figures for 2002. The comparable disparity for whites was 8 percent.

Perhaps no single statistic so precisely measures the fateful, often fatal price of being a black man in America, or so powerfully conveys how beset black communities are by the violence and disease that leave them bereft of brothers, fathers, husbands and sons. And because the number of black males plummets as they move from their teens to their 20s, the gap first appears with the suddenness of a natural disaster.

KNN Note: This article was originally written in the Seattle Times, May 2005. To see the rest of this article click here: The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Where have all the men gone? Black ...