This is what I'm talking about. They are not being specific about "education levels". We know that blacks are overrepresented in low-paying majors and under-represented in high-paying ones. But the study you linked just shows comparisons with everyone with a "Bachelor's Degree". I feel like people that devise these studies do this on purpose, because this is the most obtuse, idiotic oversight that any serious sociologist could make for showing income disparity in educational achievement.
"A black man with an associates degree has the same chances -- about 88 percent-- of finding a job as a white high school graduate, according to a recent analysis of employment rates and education for whites and minorities by Young Invincibles, a nonprofit group focusing on the economic issues impacting millennials. Getting a bachelor's degree ups those chances to 93 percent for a black man, the same as a white man who dropped out of college."
Again, are they controlling for the degrees? Who is getting what income with what degree? There are plenty of associates degrees that are garbage, and if blacks are overrepresented in junk degrees, then this is an expected outcome.
They are using census and IRS data of 20 million people, as far as I know they do not require the major and concentration on census forms. This is not some nefarious plot, its simply the limitations in the data.
If the hypothesis is that black men are just choosing lesser degrees than white men, perhaps, but we need to establish evidence of that. And we would also probably need to devise some way to measure it with the 1% of areas where this income gap phenomena is not happening according to this study.
However, I would point out much of what you two are arguing over is missing the forest for the trees when it comes to this specific study. What this study largely is showing is that in 99% of areas in the country, black men, when accounting for all variables they can account for, are performing worse off than their white peers AND if a black person is able to reach the same income level as his white counter-part he is far less likely for his children to remain in that income bracket. However, and the intersting aspect is what we can begin to discern in the 1% of areas where this is not the case. The study mentions a handful of things those 1% have in common. Perhaps another thing they have in common is types of degrees sought.
Given how monumental this study is, and how it literally is not even a week old, my guess is that a lot of work is going to built off this in the future. But as is it paints a pretty stark picture that a lot of the assumptions that both the left and especially the right have are not fully accurate.
