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Andrew Nesi, junior American Studies major from Fairfield, Connecticut recently wrote an article on the racial divide in America.
 
According to “The Observer Online” Nesi writes 10 astonishing facts that highlight the racial divide in America. Here are the 10 facts.
 
1. According to filmmaker Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewin's documentary, "The Boys of Baraka," 76 percent of black teenage males will not graduate high school.

2. Author Jawanza Kunjufu has said that approximately 32 percent of black families today have a father in the home.

3. And it's not just Baltimore - a 2001 Manhattan Institute study reports that less than half of black teenagers in Georgia's DeKalb County graduate from high school, whereas 77 percent of white teenagers do so. (Latino teenagers graduate at a jaw-droppingly low rate of only 29 percent in DeKalb County).

4. Even those who graduate high school fall behind white citizens. As DeWayne Wickham noted at a Democratic debate earlier this year, "According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2006 the unemployment rate of black high school graduates … was 33 percent higher than the unemployment rate for white high school dropouts." You read that right. The unemployment rate for black graduates was higher than that of white drop-outs.

5. In 2006, the National Urban Institute's annual "State of Black America" report found that the median net worth of black households was 1/10 of the median net worth of white households ($6,166 versus $67,000).

6. According to a 2003 study by the Department of Justice, 32.2 percent of black males born in 2001 "are expected to go to prison during their lifetime, if current incarceration rates remain unchanged."

7. Wickham again: "According to FBI data, blacks were roughly 29 percent of persons arrested in this country between 1996 and 2005. Yet at the end of this 10-year period blacks were approximately 38 percent [of those in prison]."
 
8. According to one study in 2000, black seventh- and eighth-graders were three times more likely than their white counterparts to have had sexual intercourse (37 percent versus 11 percent). By 12th grade, meanwhile, 67 percent of black teenagers had engaged in intercourse, compared to 46 percent of white teenagers.

9. In a presidential debate at Howard University, John Edwards observed: "African-American women are 25 times as likely to be infected with AIDS today in America as white women." In the same debate, Hillary Clinton noted that HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death among black women ages 25 through 34.

10. Zero: the number of black professors I have had at Notre Dame. Zero: the number of black males in my section in my dorm. Zero: the number of black undergraduates in three of my four classes.
 
The facts are a reminder that the racial divide is still alive in America according to Nesi. He says we shouldn’t need “spectacular examples” like Hurricane Katrina or the Jena Six to make us see the divide.
 
Mr.Nesi you’re completely correct.

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