Being black in America: A community in crisis

Washington, May 4 , 2015: Even with an African-American president in the White House, it's a still a hard day's life for the blacks 150 years after Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and 50 years after two landmark legislations outlawed racial discrimination. With a population of 45 million, blacks make up about 14 percent of the total US population of about 320 million, but they have a much smaller share of the nation's economic pie. Though from the first African-American President Barack Obama down, a handful of blacks have made it to a few high places, a majority of them are still far less educated and engaged in low paying jobs. With a poverty rate of 27.2 percent in 2013, almost double of the national figure of 14.5 percent, they generally live in poor neighbourhoods, many of them come from broken homes raised by single mothers. According to the census bureau, the annual median income of black households in 2013 was $34,598, compared with the nation at $51,939 and almost one third of $100,547 of Indian Americans, the country's top earners. Though 83.7 percent of blacks 25 and over had a high school diploma or higher in 2013, only 19.3 percent of this group had a bachelor's degree or higher. And as the influential New York Times recently reported "African-American men have long been more likely to be locked up and more likely to die young" leaving what it called some 1.5 million missing black men in the US. Before Baltimore, a city of 600,000, about two thirds of them black, erupted in riots and violence last week over the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man in police custody, US had witnessed a spate of protests over such incidents. There have been at least 14 major instances of a white policeman shooting dead a black person since 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was fatally shot on Feb 26, 2012 in Sanford, Florida. And in all of them policemen have gone scot-free.