WASHINGTON: New studies suggesting that black males in the United States are falling ever further behind other groups in health, education and employment have ignited a debate within the black community about who is to blame and what can be done.

"There's a major discussion within the community about what we need to do about black males," said Peter Groff, a Colorado state senator and director of the Centre for African American Policy at the University of Denver.

Traditionally, many black leaders have blamed the legacy of slavery, institutional racism and poverty for the problems faced by blacks in general and men in particular. But comedian Bill Cosby rejected that approach in two provocative speeches last summer, in which he called on fellow blacks to stop blaming society for their troubles and start looking at themselves.

Attacking urban "hip hop" culture and the collapse of the two-parent family, Cosby challenged those within the black community who opposed "washing their dirty laundry in public".

"Your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2:30 every day, it's cursing and calling each other nigger as they're walking up and down the street. They think they're hip. They can't read; they can't write. They're laughing and giggling, and they're going nowhere," Cosby said.

His words were welcomed by many senior black figures, including civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and Kweisi Mfume, then-director of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.

Others, like Groff, take a more nuanced approach that still blames the legacy of racism and poverty for the crisis along with the low expectations many people have for young black men, failures of the education system, a lack of male role models and the "anti-intellectualism" fostered by black street culture.

Whatever the causes, the latest figures paint a bleak picture. For example, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said in December that 51 per cent of all HIV diagnoses were among blacks, who make up less than 13 per cent of the population.

Black men live an average of 7.1 years less than other racial groups and experience disproportionately higher mortality in every single leading causes of death - a fact recently seized on by President George W. Bush in a bid to win black support for his plan to partially privatise the Social Security retirement programme. -Reuters