Alford A. Young

Alford A. Young Jr. is an American sociologist. He is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and the Edgar G. Epps Collegiate Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan. In 1988, Young graduated with a bachelor's degree in sociology, psychology, and Afro-American studies from Wesleyan University. In 2025, Young became the president-elect of the American Sociological Association. John L. Jackson Jr., reviewing the book in the American Journal of Sociology, wrote that it was "an exceptional rejoinder to standard attempts at describing black men’s contemporary crises" and praised Young's writing as "reflexive without being self-indulgent".

In 2018, Young released Are Black Men Doomed? which was published by Polity Press. The book reflects on scholarship concerning the so-called "Black male problem" and position of Black men in the United States of America. Savas described the book as "a good book for a thoughtful person who has a poor conception of black men and has had little or no contact with them". In the book, Young works from interviews with 103 low-income African Americans in Ypsilanti, Michigan to consider thoughts and perspectives concerning work and opportunity.

Young has been on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Work and Occupations, Qualitative Sociology, Racial and Ethnic Studies, Sociological Studies of Children, Social Psychology Quarterly, Sociological Theory, the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology, and the American Journal of Sociology.

Books Young Jr, Alford A. (2004). The Minds of Marginalized Black Men: Making Sense of Mobility, Opportunity, and Future Life Chances. Princeton University Press. Young Jr, Alford A. (2018). Are Black men doomed?. Polity. Young Jr, Alford. (2019). From the edge of the ghetto: African Americans and the world of work. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.

Select writings Young, A. A. (2004). Experiences in ethnographic interviewing about race: The inside and outside of it. In Researching race and racism (pp. 187–202). Routledge. Young, A. A. (1999). The (non) accumulation of capital: Explicating the relationship of structure and agency in the lives of poor black men. Sociological theory, 17(2), 201–227. Young Jr, A. A. (2010). New life for an old concept: Frame analysis and the reinvigoration of studies in culture and poverty. The annals of the American Academy of political and Social Science, 629(1), 53–74. Young Jr, A. A. (2021). Black men and Black masculinity. Annual Review of Sociology, 47(1), 437–457.