Last week Premier Ewart Brown appointed a new study into young black males. Professor Ronald Mincy of Columbia University will head the project looking at the differences between young black and white men in earnings, jobs and education. But here he tells The Royal Gazette's Matthew Taylor why it is just as important to work out why black women are succeeding to fully understand why the men are being left behind

The failure of large numbers of young black males to take advantage of Bermuda's booming employment opportunities is a worry to most.

The problem is evident in everything from rising violent crime, glaring income and promotion disparities and even unemployment in an island which has more jobs than people.

But Professor Ronald Mincy, who is heading a study into the problem, is far from depressed and is actually excited that Bermuda has an economy which can find jobs for the marginalised once the things that hold them back are being addressed, unlike impoverished parts of America.

And those expecting Prof. Mincy to pin everything on simple racism will be sorely disappointed. His studies have focused a lot on family factors behind the failure. He told The Royal Gazette that the US had made great strides in reducing poverty and increasing employment for young black women in the 1990s.

While the US has a similar young black male problem he said there was less opportunity even if solutions were identified, whether they lacked skills or there were other barriers to their progress. "Bermuda does have the political will to deal with this which is why this study got commissioned. All the stars are aligned in very favourable ways.

"It gives me a great sense of optimism for Bermuda's potential to turn the situation around."

But it was important to get agreement on what the facts are so statistics on family structure are vital to identifying the patterns of failure said Prof. Mincy. He said young black men in Bermuda, in the States, the UK and Caribbean all had a common problem of not being raised in a household with a father.

Girls developed quicker than boys and throughout the countries mentioned it is a tradition to educate girls academically while boys tend to be sent to technical schools. "I think what occurs in many of these countries, particularly in Bermuda, is that particular strategy of gendered educational system has turned... and it's turned against the men.

"The long-standing practices of training boys to work with their hands and girls to work with their minds may have come back to haunt many of these societies, Bermuda included.

"You can still make a decent living as a carpenter or whatever but if schools are not giving men in Bermuda the basic education to enter those trades and they are not interested in becoming a receptionist then what else would they do but be on the wall? Are young men and women competing for the same jobs? If they are not that might help to explain why."

The answer might help to explain why girls were doing better. "If they don't exhibit the same oppositional behaviour, the same dress, the same deportment in school and so they are ready to take on entry-level positions as clerical workers or lower level management."

It was still a theory which needs to be checked out by data said Prof. Mincy who is aware of local concerns about the transition to middle schools and the decline in technical training.

His studies have made him keenly interested in the decline of marriages and its effect on children. Differences in earnings between men and women are a factor. "The situation shaping up in Bermuda really does conspire against people taking up marriage in the first place and then it being sustained, at least among blacks where among younger women are much more successful at landing jobs and sustaining jobs than young men.

"If men are not able to support a family the likelihood they will want to get married or someone will choose them is very slim. That's an important part of it."

While young women might make fairly high salaries he said the cost of living was "extraordinary". He added: "You have young women raising adolescents and working two jobs to maintain the household — those young people are not being supervised, as a consequence you might get a lot of early births just because parents are not available to supervise their children because they are working so hard."

Women often held their daughters to high expectations, men did the same for boys because they knew what is needed to achieve. "I was raised by a single mother and I am not diminishing the challenges single mothers experience."

But it was hard for mothers on their own to keep a grip on their teen sons if they didn't know what should be expected.

"She can figure it out for her daughters but she is kind of clueless about what to do with this young man who quite rapidly begins to outstrip her in height and so forth."

Prof. Mincy grew up in a poor neighbourhood in New York but said his academic ability was able to lift him out of the malaise. "If you were academically gifted school knew what to do with you."

Now he has adult sons in their 30s. "I used to tell my sons 'don't give me grief about the things I impose on you because you are privileged as a young black man to have a father in your home to do this. You will be the better for it'. And they are."

He said studies showed men wanted and needed to get attached to their children — but the cycle of fatherlessness continued.

"A common theme that many of the young men have is 'I grew up without a father and that created a lot of pain for me.' They say to themselves 'I will never do to my children what my father did to me — desert me.'

"But the fact they couldn't maintain their family and make less than their partners meant they were unable to fulfill the commitment they made to themselves of: 'I will never neglect my children'. Young men experience a great deal of guilt and uncertainty about failing on that commitment hence why they withdraw themselves or allow circumstances to take them away from themselves. Relationships are complicated. They just are.

"But if you are not clear and determined to see these things through and you feel at fault for not holding up your end then we, as human beings, seek rewards and we flee from trouble and I think that tends to push away the dissonance of 'I am not going to do this and then doing exactly that.'

"It means from one generation to another this cycle of fatherlessness continues."

The upshot was increased crime and violent behaviour. "You are less likely to find that with young men who have fathers in their homes to set boundaries. Children want boundaries. They want to say 'Mom, dad, set me straight on this'."

His study will question whether children raised in single parent homes have better employment and graduation rates than those in a nuclear family. Prof Mincy is teaming up with Statistics and is planning several trips to meet educators, business leaders and MPs.

Asked about the affect of naked racism on the plight of the young black male he said: "But plain old racism can't explain 'why girls?'. So in other words it's not plain old racism.

"It may be nuanced racism because girls are black as well. They may not be as threatening or off-putting because there is a male culture they are less affected by. But that means it is not plain old racism.

"But it could be that young black women earn a lot less than white women earn for the same set of skills. But so far the most sensational aspects of these problems, the 'on the wall', the crime, the drugs, the arrest rates, all of that is distressing and is a manifestation of male behaviour but I am also interested if there are differentials between white girls and black girls in Bermuda."