Thank you for downloading from the BBC.

The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use

go to BBCWorldService.com slash podcasts.

Hello, this is more or less on the BBC World Service.

I'm Ruth Alexander and this week we're looking at this claim.

We still have more work to do.

We have more work to do when more young black men languish in prison

than attend colleges and universities across America.

That was Barack Obama in 2007 before he became US President,

making the claim that there are more black men in prison than in college in the US.

Wesley Stephenson's here with me and Wesley, Barack Obama isn't the only person

to have seen the power in this statement.

No, it's something you'll hear repeated again and again.

My last time hearing it was last Friday at Howard University's Charter Day program

and it was our keynote speaker.

What was your instant reaction when you heard those words come out of his mouth?

It wasn't necessarily a visceral reaction, a more humor.

Here we go again.

This is Ivory Tolson.

He's an associate professor of psychology at Howard University in Washington, DC.

And he's recently written about the use of this claim.

It was a statistic that he himself has even used when he wrote a paper back in 2008

...