Fact Checking President Obama’s NAACP Speech
EmailABC's Brian Hartman reports from Washington:
President Obama delivered a forceful speech at the 100th anniversary dinner, touting racial progress while warning substantial disparities continue to haunt the black community.
I checked the numbers behind the rhetoric and they indeed paint a disturbing picture.
Health
“Overall mortality was 28 percent higher for black Americans than for white Americans in 2006. In 2005, age-adjusted death rates for the black population exceeded those for the white population by 46 percent for stroke, 31 percent for heart disease, 22 percent for cancer, 108 percent for diabetes, and 782 percent for HIV disease.” Source: CDC
Infant Mortality
“In 2005, infant mortality rates were highest for infants of non-Hispanic black mothers — 13.6 deaths per 1,000 live births).” That’s nearly double the national rate — 6.71 deaths per 1,000 live births. Source: National Center for Health Statistics
Unemployment
The rate of unemployment for black Americans was 14.7 percent in June, compared to 8.7 percent for whites. For black men, the unemployment rate is 16.4 percent, vs. 9.2 percent for white men. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Education
“While the nationwide gaps in 2007 were narrower than in previous assessments at both grades 4 and 8 in mathematics and at grade 4 in reading, White students had average scores at least 26 points higher than Black students in each subject, on a 0-500 scale.” Source: Department of Education
Graduation
The high school dropout rate for black students was 6.3 percent in the 2005-06 school year, compared to 2.6 percent for white students. Source: Department of Education
Corrections
“One in ten (10.4%) black males aged 25-29 was in prison or jail in 2008… 40% of persons in prison or jail in 2008 were black.” Source: The Sentencing Project
Obesity
Blacks have a 51 percent higher prevalence of obesity than whites. Source: CDC
HIV/AIDS
“African Americans make up 12 percent of the total U.S. population, yet represented 46 percent of new HIV infections in the United States in 2006.” Also, “blacks with AIDS often don’t live as long as people of other races and ethnic groups with AIDS.” Source: CDC
Flu Shots
“Sixty-seven percent of whites received flu shots in the past year compared to 48 percent of blacks.” Source: CDC
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Again, past time for the black community to empower itself and start solving it’s problems from within – at the heart of the problem.
Posted by: Pulse | July 17, 2009, 1:14 pm 1:14 pm
dont you just love good news
Posted by: pat | July 17, 2009, 1:19 pm 1:19 pm
You call this a story? This isn’t journalism, it reads like something an 8th grader downloaded off the internet the night before it was due. The title should have read, “Here’s some statistics, draw your own conclusions.” How about digging down into the issues?
Posted by: David | July 17, 2009, 1:19 pm 1:19 pm
How can anybody who lives anywhere near any major urban area be surprised by these numbers ? How can anybody expect any external force, government or charity, to correct this ? NAACP must come to the front and say, as did Pogo, “We have met the enemy and they is us”.
Posted by: TOm Beebe | July 17, 2009, 1:20 pm 1:20 pm
Especially regarding the health related issues, only controlling by race doesn’t really give us any information that can be used to help the situation. If you ignored race and controlled for family income, what would the results look like? Is it lack of access to health care or is it an attitude that ignores preventative care. Do fat people not KNOW why they are fat? Do people still not KNOW how HIV gets transmitted? If so, they must be living in a cave in Pakistan.
Posted by: Doug Graham | July 17, 2009, 1:22 pm 1:22 pm
This is incredibly racist. Let’s just imagine if George Bush presented the EXACT same data to a room full of white people, and said ‘Great job, everyone.’ The media would go ballistic. But Obama presents the statistics and basically says ‘We need to do better than them (aka white people)’ and everyone’s just okay with it.
Why can’t we just let it all go? We do we have this need to categorize people as anything other than ‘American’?
Posted by: healthyaverageguy | July 17, 2009, 1:24 pm 1:24 pm
I’d like to see the CURRENT info — some of this data is four years old. I’ll bet the unemployment data is different now, for example.
Posted by: Jill | July 17, 2009, 1:32 pm 1:32 pm
Tom,
How could you come to any conclusion if you did what you suggest? If you ignore race, then you won’t learn anything about it.
Posted by: lokasdf | July 17, 2009, 1:37 pm 1:37 pm
This is pathetic and so outrageously racist. Minorities want equality except when it comes to everything! Now we have a half black president that wants to guilt trip the rest of America into what, turning America into a welfare state for blacks? It’s the bad white people who are staying out of prison, avoiding aids, staying fit, staying in school, and now a half black president feels it is justifiable to what? It’s white peoples fault, all these statistics because white folks do what to create this? This is what you voted for America. Take a look at Africa, a country with enormous natural resources, and a continent that has been around for a lot longer than America, that’s where this president is going to take America with this sort of well meaning misguided leadership.
Posted by: Spacecowboy | July 17, 2009, 1:38 pm 1:38 pm
I study these issues as a journalist and as a statistician. One lesson that I inflicted on literally thousands of Columbia students is the statistical association of race versus income with respect to single-parent households in The Bronx. Income was 5 times more predictive than race using 1980 Census data, even after accounting for such effects as “autocorrelation.” It is true that almost all of the inequalities the President mentioned can be tied more firmly to income than race (HIV is a major exception and there are others as well).
But what causes the income disparity in the first place? Also, poor people living in areas that are mixed with regard to income and race tend to do better than poor people in a large, homogeneously poor area. The generally accepted hypothesis is that such areas generally have little political clout and thus do not get their share of available government help.
Posted by: Steve Ross | July 17, 2009, 1:47 pm 1:47 pm
If you looked at household income, you’d see the same disparity. So the question is not “who’s living in a cave,” but whether the disparities in mortality and health education have something to do with endemic, generational social injustice. Why does a particular group not have the resources or wherewithall to “fix the problem from within?” These are the questions the journalist is trying to spark, without editorial comment.
Posted by: Steve Ketelsen | July 17, 2009, 2:01 pm 2:01 pm
Ignorance is not about just the uneducated, it also is masked by the educated who hold powerful seats today….Silence is deadly, and denotes a criminal mind in these men who are fixsated on holding their postions of authority…Maybe speaking is not for me either…I have already been hit by the “Mob” of Men who indirectly use their soldiers to bring me down…The game is deadly President Obama…and I can speak very well on the issue at hand…How do I “stand” belittled, stripped of financial gain, and more…Why…Power and Men of Means! Women are involved only because of faith in the men who gave them the empowerment to keep a status quo! Apache
Posted by: Apache | July 17, 2009, 2:02 pm 2:02 pm
Mr. Obama is like any other President for me. I have allow him to push to the side our Black leader whether good or bad they got us to this point, and I have listened to him. The info presented by him is not surprising, again our gains have been step on and push aside by passed presidents and their hounds since blacks started believing in this dream of an higher education. One can not say that blacks should not aspire to be a little wayne or Lebron because when times or tough the money look to these folks for quick revenue, such is the case with Jackson. We can not fault them for having weakness, they were used and further the cause. We have had Black politicans to get caught up in bad deals because of their weakness. Obama for some one who is only going on his skin color, and know nothing about slavery on either side of his family, I do not know that it is appropriate to speak in terms as he has spoken to the NAACP. Perhaps it is just how he said it I think I understand what he is saying. Hopefully he is not saying that he can not find a black female for the supreme court. Too bad he can not find a Native American. He sounded like a white man speaking to black people. He wants to say what he want to and yet not in need of black people only when he needs their support. Mr. Obama you have 135 issues out on the table that you say are broke. You have open up the closet and pulled everything out. It is time to fix some issues your time is running short. I am going to give you your chance.
Posted by: Missy | July 17, 2009, 2:03 pm 2:03 pm
Steve, government help? your thesis makes no common sense, if African Americans need so much government help affirmative action etc, etc, etc, to equal the injustice placed upon them from an unequal society by whites, then how do you explain Africans in Africa that have no white oppression, Africans governed by Africans, there’s your example of a microcosm of what is occurring here in America, that’s what government help creates, a society that eventually implodes and cannot help itself.
Posted by: Spacecowboy | July 17, 2009, 2:06 pm 2:06 pm
I’m a supporter of President Obama, but this speech was not presidential. I didn’t vote for a black minister addressing his flock. Where was this rhetoric in his campaign…if he had presented me this I would have voted for the old white guy.
Posted by: Roark | July 17, 2009, 2:22 pm 2:22 pm
You were not listening, it was there, no one was listening, all you heard was one word, change, and you swallowed it hook line and sinker, you were fooled and duped with clever rhetoric and simple words.
Posted by: spacecowboy | July 17, 2009, 2:26 pm 2:26 pm
Hi Jill.
Most of this information is the most recent available. Some of the health data are a few years old. But the unemployment figures for June 2009 were released just about two weeks ago.
And Steve Ross, you raise some interesting points.
Posted by: Brian Hartman | July 17, 2009, 2:30 pm 2:30 pm
I also believe that income is a more relevant causal factor than race in many of the above statistics. To see the true discrepancies attributable to race factors, you would need to sort by income then race. For example, what percent of prisoners in a given year were living below poverty level when charged? Then, what percent of those were black? Then, how does this compare to the black percentage of the total population under the poverty level? All of these factors would need to be considered to determine if race was a factor, or merely poverty. This is why I seldom give much credence to statistics, they are generally overly simplistic and used subjectively, without cross-examination to screen out other relevant factors.
Posted by: iamwomaninMI | July 17, 2009, 3:12 pm 3:12 pm
welcome to their word, me me me me me me me me me !
Posted by: pat | July 17, 2009, 3:15 pm 3:15 pm
This is a fact check? Where is the back-up? This looks like quotes from the speech without any analysis of their veracity. I’m assuming that this reporter never sat through a statistics class in his indoctrination institution.
Posted by: dnha14 | July 17, 2009, 3:29 pm 3:29 pm
I don’t see how anyone black or white would find this speech offensive. We all have a stake in African Americans being healthier and committing less crimes. I say this as a black person.
Posted by: Abby | July 17, 2009, 3:48 pm 3:48 pm
I agree with Brian Hartman. In addition I wonder if we can ever stop looking at race…I wonder if we can ever just see people…and I wonder if you can ever fully understand where a person is at in life if you never walked in their shoes…or on their street…or in the same town…I wonder if you can ever understand how it is to struggle if you never really did…
Posted by: sriker | July 17, 2009, 3:58 pm 3:58 pm
iamwomaninMI also raises many good points
Posted by: sriker | July 17, 2009, 4:00 pm 4:00 pm
GREAT STORY … this just justifies that socialism doesn’t work! Thank you for sharing.
Posted by: Legalette | July 17, 2009, 6:36 pm 6:36 pm
Re Posting by: Missy | Jul 17, 2009 2:03:02 PM… Missy, I hear you. President Obama goes to Germany and France and chastises the United States. He goes to Saudi Arabia and Russia and does not mention anything about women rights and human rights, in general. He goes to Latin America and face-to-face with Mr. Chavez, and he smiles, nods, and sags his shoulder. But, then, he goes to Ghana and the first reports we receive is how he is telling the African continent what a lousy place it is. Then he goes to the NAACP and tells that group, of mainly black folk, how they got to get their lives together; how they should dream about become a Supreme Court justice or like him, the president of the USA. Strange, but this is the same person who, in his haste to maintain his liberal credentials, said he would have never nominated Clarence Thomas, a black man. Oh, by the way, when is the last time Mr. Obama and Michelle stood amidst the people on Chicago’s South Side – one of this country’s most violent communities – and delivered the kind of message he delivered in Ghana and at the 2009 NAACP Convention? Yet, African Americans, in every poll I’ve seen, still think this man walks on water. Yet, those who have been put into very powerful positions are not African Americans. OK, I know Mr. Holder is the AG and I know his valet is black and I know Ms Jarret is black. But, I also know a Rev Ike when I see one.
Posted by: Percy | July 17, 2009, 6:47 pm 6:47 pm
I just watched parts of this speech and while Pres. Obama is a great orator. This was an overtly racist speech. He is now the President of the United States. He needs to rise above this and be the spokesman for all Americans, not blacks.
This is very scary to me.
Posted by: Nancy | July 17, 2009, 7:08 pm 7:08 pm
SpaceCowboy, Jul 17 Comment. If you thing that any thing Obama is “well meaning, but misguided”, you are sadly mistaken. Well meaning for who? Not the Nation as a whole. For blacks, maybe. Obama is taking us down the road to socialism, with himself as the leader. Wake up America, and recognize your enemies.
Posted by: Lloyd Revalee | July 17, 2009, 9:09 pm 9:09 pm
When I ask if blacks ever give credit to the 200,000 white boys that died to free the slaves, sold by blacks. Is that being racist? When I ask where is the African Air Force? I’m sure blacks would feel that a racist question, but how can you blame the whites for lack of progress? Blacks do well in America, but not Africa??
Posted by: Don Jones | July 17, 2009, 10:05 pm 10:05 pm
WHAT IS URL
Posted by: Tanya | July 18, 2009, 12:37 am 12:37 am
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
Posted by: Gregory | July 18, 2009, 2:04 am 2:04 am
If Blacks want more employment, then the government needss to deport illegal aliens, what was not reported in this article, is that Hispanics are hired more than Blacks!
Blacks should have those jobs that illegals are taking..as well as any citizen that is out of work!
Posted by: bobc | July 18, 2009, 8:42 am 8:42 am
“In 2005, infant mortality rates were highest for infants of non-Hispanic black mothers — 13.6 deaths per 1,000 live births).” That’s nearly double the national rate — 6.71 deaths per 1,000 live births. Source: National Center for Health Statistics
When I posted on these page, a month or so ago, that infant mortality for Whites was 50% higher than Europe and the rate for Blacks was similar to that in third world countries, some indignant commenter, without checking facts as usual, claimed I was highly exaggerating. I hope he reads this!
For those who feel Obama is blaming us White people, please note he’s putting more pressure on the Black community to clean up its act than any White President could.
Posted by: The_Mick | July 18, 2009, 10:19 am 10:19 am
Wheres the stats on single family households, rate of abortion(the number 1 killer of blacks)or the percentage of population receiving Government assistance?
The part of the Reverend Wright speech the President gave that I absolutely agree with is men stepping up to the plate and looking after their families and this is true for all races. As Americans we all should be ashamed of the shambles we have allowed the Government to make of our families.
Posted by: david | July 18, 2009, 12:46 pm 12:46 pm
Education and income have more to do with the statistics than race. Low income, low educated whites have similar statistics as would be true for Hispanics.
Additionally, cannot not discount the home environment – up bringing. Government cannot do it all.
I think if there was a study done identifying what groups of people rely the most heavily upon the government you would find they lag behind the rest of society in terms of income and income growth, education, health, etc. And, those results would cross over racial lines.
Posted by: RD | July 19, 2009, 2:11 pm 2:11 pm
All people need positive re-enforcements. We need to see what’s beyond our own immediate surroundings.
There has to be a stated Mission; what is needed to accomplish that mission; how do we go about accomplishing that mission; short term goals and long term goals need to be identified; then, finally, we need mentors to keep you focused.
Stating the obvious is okay; now you have to take the next step.
I suppose it does take a village to raise a child. That may be a lame statement, but it’s true.
Posted by: js | July 19, 2009, 3:05 pm 3:05 pm
I hope messages from Obama and others like Bill Cosby will help change the way some in the black community equate education and intelligence with being “white.” I do believe many support education, but it needs to be more and more encouraged, especially in the higher crime areas, that an education is a way out of a bad lifestyle and learning and reading books isn’t just a “white” thing, many africans, indians, asians, etc appreciate an education and are getting ahead because of it.
Posted by: guest | July 19, 2009, 4:56 pm 4:56 pm
If our economy/jobs do not “change”, skin color sure as heck won’t matter. Come on America quit letting these smoke screens get in the way of our true freedoms that are endangered! If this is for Advancement of Colored People, start with the name, it’s considered racial profiling for calling black colored these days.
Posted by: bittersweet4u | July 20, 2009, 4:41 am 4:41 am