Concerned about the plight of African-American men and boys, several philanthropic organizations have launched initiatives to improve opportunities for them to succeed. Some programs address the structural bias that leaves these men more likely to be incarcerated, jobless and disproportionately affected by other social disadvantages.

One of every 15 African-American men is in a U.S. prison or jail compared with one of every 36 Hispanic men and one of every 106 white men. Moreover, scores of African-American men are affected by chronic unemployment, lack of education, poverty and poor health outcomes.

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Last September, Kellogg sponsored "Too Important to Fail," Tavis Smiley's PBS report on health and education disparities among African-American boys. The foundation also funded a University of North Carolina project, the Promoting Academic Success initiative, which worked with families, schools and communities to improve academic achievement of African-American and Latino children in Lansing, Mich., and Polk County, Fla.

Under its America Healing Initiative, the foundation funds many organizations, such as the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, that engage in efforts to address the challenges faced by black males. One grantee, the Opportunity Agenda, recently released a report on perceptions of black males in the media. The report seeks to educate media makers, educators and others on how negative images of black communities perpetuate negative stereotypes.

Read more at BlackNews.com.

On largely a party-line vote, legislators agreed Thursday to allow Secretary of State Ross Miller to spend $800,000 for a voter registration effort.

Two of the nine Republicans and all 12 Democrats on the Interim Finance Committee backed the plan, which Democrat Miller said was prompted in part by a lawsuit from the NAACP, La Raza and other groups against his office, which oversees voting in Nevada.

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Some Republicans questioned whether the voter drive was necessary. They said that political parties themselves are registering voters and that the funds should be used to buy or maintain voting machines.

None of them mentioned the obvious: that studies by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found 95 percent of blacks and 66 percent of Hispanics voted for Democrat Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, and a voter registration drive might lead to more voting by minorities in November, with Obama on the ballot again.

Read more at the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

President Obama pleased gays and lesbians when he endorsed same-sex marriage. He thrilled women when he signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

But when it comes to African Americans, a group that gave Obama 96 percent of its votes, there is disappointment over what many believe is the president's failure to address their concerns.

With black unemployment at 14 percent - nearly double the rate among whites - and a steep rise in rise in poverty and incarceration rates, many blacks are expressing frustration at the president's leadership.

While no one expects African Americans to make an exodus to presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, there is concern among Democrats over whether Obama will benefit from as large a turnout and the same level of enthusiasm as he enjoyed in 2008.

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David Bositis, who studies African American voting patterns at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said Obama will need strong black support to keep several states in "the Democratic column."


Read more at the Pasedena Star-News.

President Obama pleased gays and lesbians when he endorsed same-sex marriage. He thrilled women when he signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

But when it comes to African Americans, a group that gave Obama 96 percent of its votes, there is disappointment over what many believe is the president’s failure to address their concerns.

With black unemployment at 14 percent — nearly double the rate among whites — and a steep rise in rise in poverty and incarceration rates, many blacks are expressing frustration at the president’s leadership.

While no one expects African Americans to make an exodus to presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, there is concern among Democrats over whether Obama will benefit from as large a turnout and the same level of enthusiasm as he enjoyed in 2008.

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David Bositis, who studies African American voting patterns at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said Obama will need strong black support to keep several states in “the Democratic column.”


Read more at Silicon Valley Mercury News.

For more than four decades, the people in Charles Rangel's Harlem congressional district have willingly kept him in office every two years.

For a repeat performance, he's got to first get through Tuesday's congressional primaries, where changed demographics in a redrawn district, shadows from an ethics controversy in recent years and strong challengers could result in something no one under the age of 42 has ever known:

Harlem represented by someone who isn't Charles Rangel.

"He's more than just a long-standing incumbent, he's a significant historical figure," said David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington. "He's somebody who, when you think of people who symbolize New York, he symbolizes New York."

Read more at Real Clear Politics.

“Swing state” is something North Carolinians have been hearing a lot lately.  There’s no avoiding the importance the campaigns of both President Obama and his presumptive challenger Mitt Romney place on the state and its 15 electoral votes. As tightening polls and numerous candidate visits suggest, predicting the November result is not easy.

But for the president to repeat his surprising 2008 win here – by a slim, just over 14,000-vote margin – he will have to target, expand on and get out his strongest base. That would be minority, particularly African American, voters.

What will it take for the president to make North Carolina swing his way in November? Will the Democrats’ decision to hold their national convention in Charlotte, the state’s largest city, affect enthusiasm and turnout? How much does the president’s 2012 success depend on the rise of North Carolina’s minority population? And will the economy trump everything?

“A lot of politics is demographics these days, more than ever,” said David Bositis, senior research associate at the Washington-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Read more at The Grio.

The National Academy of Social Insurance will hold the first session of its 2012 Summer Academy for interns, students, and young professionals on Wednesday, July 11, 2012. This day-long event, entitled Demystifying Social Security, will explore the ins-and-outs of the Social Security system and the challenges faced by the government in determining its future.

The Joint Center's Dr. Wilhelmina Leigh will be making a presentation on Social Security benefit adequacy at this event.

For more information or to register, please click the REGISTER button in the box to the right.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies collaborated with the Center on Race and Wealth at Howard University to host a discussion of how to develop and use indicators to measure economic mobility in Texas and in Mississippi on June 21, 2012. Click here to view the full webinar or here for the webinar slides.

Interested in learning how to build data platforms to use in advocating for wealth-creating policies and programs?  Join the Howard University Center on Race and Wealth and Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies for a webinar on measuring economic opportunity and mobility across small geographic areas (like counties) and learn from the experts.

Presenters include:

• Don Baylor, Senior Policy Analyst, Center for Public Policy Priorities
• Ed Sivak, Director, Mississippi Economic Policy Center

For more information and to register, click the REGISTER button to the right.

When presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney appears before Latino small-business owners in Washington on Wednesday, he'll address a group whose explosive birth rates foreshadow a seismic political shift in GOP strongholds in the Deep South and Southwest.

"The Republicans' problem is their voters are white, aging and dying off," said David Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, who studies minority political engagement.

"There will come a time when they suffer catastrophic losses with the realization of the population changes."

Over the next several generations, the wave of minority voters -- who, according to U.S. Census figures released this week, now represent more than half of the nation's population born in the past year -- will become more of a power base in places like Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia. That hold will extend across the Southwest all the way to California, experts say.

Read more at CNN.