New Book Offers Interesting Data on Black America

Filed in Black Studies, Books on February 7, 2014

Monique W. Morris is the co-founder of the National Black Women’s Justice Institute and is the former vice president for economic programs, advocacy, and research for the NAACP. She is also the author of the novel Too Beautiful for Words.

Morris’ latest book, Black Stats: African American by the Numbers in the Twenty-First Century (New Press, 2014), offer a wide array of interesting statistics on the African American experience. While readers of JBHE may be familiar with many of the items regarding education, there is interesting data organized by chapters such as lifestyle and identity, science and technology, entertainment and sports, health, justice, and the environment.

Here’s just a sample of some interesting “stats” included in the book:

• Over 70 percent of African Americans live in counties that fail to meet federal air pollution standards.
• The average African American watches television more than 6 hours a day.
• African Americans are 28 percent of all arrests made in the United States.
• The number of state delegations at the 2012 GOP National Convention that had no African Americans: 18