men are missing from the community . According to the U . S . Census Bureau , while there are 1,182 African-American women between the ages of 25 and 34 living in Ferguson , there are only 577 African-American men in this age group . In other words there are more than two young black women for each young black man in Ferguson .” In April , The New York Times extended this line of reporting , pointing out that nationally , there are 1.5 million missing black men . As the paper put it : “ Incarceration and early deaths are the overwhelming drivers of the gap . Of the 1.5 million missing black men from 25 to 54 — which demographers call the prime-age years — higher imprisonment rates account for almost 600,000 . Almost one in 12 black men in this age group are behind bars , compared with one in 60 nonblack men in the age group , one in 200 black women and one in 500 nonblack women .” For context , there are about eight million African-American men in that age group overall . Mass incarceration has disproportionately ensnared young black men , sucking hundreds of thousands of marriage-age men out of the community . Another thing to consider is something that The Atlantic ’ s Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed out in 2013 : “ The drop in the birthrate for unmarried black women is mirrored by an even steeper drop among married black women . Indeed , whereas at one point married black women were having more kids than married white women , they are now having less .” This means that births to unmarried black women are disproportionately represented in the statistics . Now to the mythology of the black male dereliction as dads : While it is true that black parents are less likely to marry before a child is born , it is not true that black fathers suffer a pathology of neglect . In fact , a C . D . C . report issued in December 2013 found that black fathers were the most involved with their children daily , on a number of measures , of any other group of fathers — and in many cases , that was among fathers who didn ’ t live with their children , as well as those who did . There is no doubt that the 72 percent statistic is real and may even be worrisome , but it represents more than choice . It exists in a social context , one at odds with the corrosive mythology about black fathers .
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