Simon McCormack, Huffington Post, May 7, 2014

A jaw-dropping number of African-American men who do not complete high school risk ending up in prison.

According to a new report from the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, black male dropouts born in 1975 have a 70 percent chance of ending up in prison.

That percentage is more than three times lower for white male dropouts.

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The costs of incarcerating Americans of all races can be seen below. In 2010, the country spent about $80 billion to lock people up.

{snip} By the age of 14, a child born to a black father who dropped out of high school has a 50 percent chance of having a dad in prison. Less than 10 percent of white dads without a diploma wind up in prison, the study shows.

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On Monday, author, professor and activist Cornel West spoke about these types of disparities at a rally against solitary confinement in New York.

“Solitary confinement is torture, and it’s a crime against humanity to lock folks up when 60 percent of them are there for soft drugs, and everybody knows 12 percent of those are on the chocolate side, 12 percent of those are on the vanilla side of flying high in the friendly skies every week taking drugs, but 65 percent of the convictions are chocolate,” West said, according to Democracy Now. “That just lets us know that the legacy of white supremacy is still operating in America.”