This commentary in the NYTimes today digs out part of the reason by the Jackson v. Jackson flap over Obama’s perspectives on blacks is really about boys, as in black boys. The great charts that run with the piece by Times columnist Charles Blow, pictured here, set the economic scene generated by single-parent households:

According to the United States Census Bureau, black children are the only group more likely to live with a single mother than in a two-parent household. (That’s in part because black men are the least likely to be married and most likely to be divorced or separated.) And, according to a 2002 report by Child Trends, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group, in 1997 single black mothers were the least likely to receive full child support payments (and most likely to receive none) and only about half of black children had any contact with their absent fathers in 1996.
If Mr. Obama’s message of stepping up is “talking down,” then so be it.

 What Blow undoubtedly knows, but didn’t have the space to lay out, is that this issue affects black boys far more than black girls. Twice as many black women as men earn college degrees, but this is an issue that starts well before college. The best place to view the data is state K-12 testing data, where every student is tested. Here’s a recent look I took at New York’s testing. This dilemma explains the recent surge in single sex classrooms, many of them aimed at black boys.

As best as I can determine, there are no national solutions in sight. Take the Presidential elections. The Republicans have nothing to offer, and the Democrats serve up universal preschool. I’m a big fan of high quality preschools, but there’s something to keep in mind about preschool and boys, which I post on here and here.

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