ABSTRACT
A range of theories spanning the entire political spectrum has been advanced to explain the declining socioeconomic fortunes of the African American male vis-a-vis other males in American society. This chapter provides a general overview of four of the competing perspectives on "the African American male problem". There are: the spatial isolation hypothesis, the cultural capital/employer preference hypothesis, the search and destroy hypothesis, and the social capital hypothesis. The chapter discusses the theoretical underpinnings of each of these schools of thought, and reviews empirical studies that attempt to evaluate the relative weight of the various factors undergirding these competing perspectives which have been culled from the extant literature. It also reviews selected social and economic indicators of the status of the black male in American society. The spatial isolation hypothesis, views the plight of the African American male as essentially a structural problem.
