Purpose
A balanced viewThe literature review seeks to give a balanced view of the issues that exist for young men of color as identified by the research. Its particular value is that it looks at six distinct pathways that young men of color- and all students-take after high school and by arranging the research in this way, and for the first time synthesizes the literature for males of all four minority groups-African American, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, Hispanic/ Latinos and Native American and Alaska Natives in one place. In attempting to solve the crisis facing young men of color in the United States, we must rely on more than just outcome measures to find solutions. Data will help us to identify the issues, but much more thought and research will be needed to find solutions. It is imperative that we build a body of literature on young men of color that will help to get to the "why" behind the data. This report synthesizes the available literature, data and case studies relating to minority male achievement. |
Our goalOur goal is to isolate and identify the factors that contribute either to the persistence or to the attrition of young men of color from high school to higher education. Traditionally, research on African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos has been conducted in isolated communities of interest, concentrating on only one group at a time. Unfortunately, this has often put communities that may have much in common in a competition that often provides benefits to only one race/ethnic group. By synthesizing the literature across each of these communities, this report seeks to find connections and intersections in the literature for each of these racial/ethnic groups. This study does not, however, ignore areas of divergence among these groups. This examination of the literature will note, in fact, the divergent needs of these communities and will seek to develop best practices that have been shown to be effective for persistence in high school and higher education by young men of color, as a whole and for subgroups. |