African Americans victims of financial meltdown

African Americans are far more likely than whites to be poor, out of work or in jail, and are hurting worse by the US economic crisis, a report says.

"Ironically, even as an African American man holds the highest office in the country, African Americans remain twice as likely as whites to be unemployed, three times more likely to live in poverty and more than six times as likely to be incarcerated," the State of Black America report said on Wednesday. 

Blacks and whites have both made progress in educational attainment, but progress was slower for African Americans, the report, which tracks trends between 2001 and 2007 added. 

The number of white children enrolled in preschool increased by about three percent, while among black children, it fell by one percent, causing the education gap to grow. 

Real median household income fell 1.7 percent for African Americans and nearly four percent for whites during the period, the report said. 

However, the poverty rate for African Americans increased nearly eight percent, while for whites it rose by around five percent. 

Millions of blacks are losing jobs at a faster rate than the general population during this punishing recession. 

Much of the disparity is due to a concentration of African Americans in construction, blue-collar or service-industry jobs that have been decimated by the economic meltdown. 

Unemployment among African Americans has been about double the rate for whites since the government began tracking those categories in the early 1970s.