Even as crime has fallen and graduation rates have risen in New York over the past decade, city officials said that black and Latino men, especially those between ages 16 and 24, remained in crisis by nearly every measure, including rates of arrest, school suspension and poverty. Although the populations of young white, black and Latino men in New York are roughly the same size, 84 percent of those in the city‘s detention facilities and nearly all of those admitted to children‘s and family services facilities are black and Latino youth, according to data from the Bloomberg administration. ―The magnitude of the disparities is stunning,‖ said Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor for health and human services. ―It‘s tragic.‖ (Michael Barbaro and Fernanda Santos, ―Bloomberg to Use Own Funds in Plan to Aid Minority Youth,‖ The New York Times, August 3, 2011.) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/nyregion/new-york-plan-willaim-to-lift-minority-youth.html?pagewanted=all?src=tp
Marian Wright Edelman, CDF CEO, summarized the situation of minority youth today, as follows: Right now, The State of America‟s Children 2011 tells us children of color are behind on virtually every measure of child well-being. They face multiple risks that put them in grave danger of entering the pipeline to prison rather than the pipeline to college, productive employment and successful futures. Children of color are at increased risk of being born at low birth weight and with late or no prenatal care, living in poverty and extreme poverty, lacking family stability, facing greater health risks, lacking a quality education, being stuck in foster care without permanent families, ending up in the juvenile justice system, being caught in the college completion gap, being unemployed and being killed by guns. (Marian Wright Edelman, ―A National Family Portrait,‖ HUFF POST—IMPACT, July 29, 2011.) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marian-wright-edelman/anational-family-portrai_b_913729.html
Among Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, a group often characterized as the ―model minority,‖ there are also children at-risk. A 2008 report done at New York University expressed a common misconception: ―Under the ‗model minority solution,‘ Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are all lumped together as if they have the same traits: that they are all highperforming achievers. Indeed, there are exceptional Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who are extremely accomplished, and they are a source of pride and inspiration. But it is simply not true that they are typical.‖ (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders—Facts, Not Fiction: Setting The Record Straight, The National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education (CARE) and The College Board, 2008, p. 2) http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/08-0608AAPI.pdf
That report countered the monolithic ―high-achieving Asian‖ stereotype, as it stated: ―In reality, there are significant numbers of Asian American and 98