How African-Americans See Their Lives
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. The state of the African-American family is often a topic of discussion of academic study, of public policy debate, even White House initiatives. But too often the voices of African-Americans themselves are not central to those conversations. Now there's a new effort to address that. It's called the Survey of African-American families. The poll is a joint project between Ebony magazine and the W.K. Kellogg foundation. It is featured in the latest issue of Ebony. That's on the newsstands today. Joining us to speak about the results is Ron Lester, who led the survey, and Dr. Gail Christopher. She is the vice president for program strategy at the Kellogg Foundation. And they're both with us now. Welcome to you both. Thank you for joining us.
RON LESTER: Glad to be here.
GAIL CHRISTOPHER: Pleasure.
MARTIN: So, Ron Lester, let's start with you. You say this is sort of a good news, bad news report. Tell us a little bit more, if you would.
LESTER: Well, first of all, we had an opportunity here to really cover the whole gamut of issues affecting family, even going into relationships. It's the first poll that I've seen of African-Americans since the affordable health care has passed. We cover health in a holistic manner, even dental, mental health, drug use. We touch on the issues of homicide and suicide. So it's not just a standard survey of standard measurements, but it's fairly comprehensive.
MARTIN: So tell me more about the findings and what stood out for you.
LESTER: OK, well, basically the mood of African-Americans is kind of lukewarm, as you said starting out. Forty-eight percent say things are going in the right direction, and 37 percent said, wrong track. So that's the mood question. We always start out, in a poll, at the outset to kind of gauge the mood. The mood is good in the West, in the Southwest and in the South where people are migrating towards - the mood - it's net positive.
Like, 60 percent say, right direction, and less than 40 percent say, wrong track. In terms of some key measurements, in terms of where we're making progress and losing ground, there's clearly a recognition that we're making progress in health care, in education reform, in equal opportunities. But we're kind of losing ground on the fundamental economic issues. People believe, by a strong margin, that there's income inequality in America. People believe that they don't make enough. About 33 percent actually indicate some kind of economic issue as their top concern. So things are going fairly well, but folks are not making enough money and having difficulty fitting into the new economy.
MARTIN: OK. So, Gail Christopher, one of the numbers that stuck with you was that 88 percent of those surveyed were satisfied with the quality of their lives, and that number actually disturbed you. And you wrote actually a whole piece about this for Ebony magazine in a column accompanying the poll results. Why did that disturb you?
http://www.npr.org/2014/04/01/297705059/how-african-americans-see-their-lives
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