Underprivileged young black men face tougher obstacles than any other ethnic group in the workforce, the authors of a public policy book said Wednesday.

The authors of "Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men" discussed their research on the rising unemployment rates for young black men and other minorities and their plan to combat these issues in a lecture honoring the book’s late co-author, former Wisconsin Sen. Paul Offner.

"There continues to be an achievement gap, or a basic skills gap, between young minorities and young whites, between all young people from lower-income backgrounds to young people from higher-income backgrounds," said Harry Holzer, professor and former associate dean the of Georgetown University Public Policy Institute, and co-author of the book.

According to Holzer, there are many different reasons why young, underprivileged men have struggled in the workforce, including highly segregated schools and neighborhoods and discrimination in the workforce.

"They face a labor market where there continues to be fairly significant discrimination; all the studies show that discrimination is the most severe against less-educated black men," Holzer said. "Employers are simply fearful of this population — rightly or wrongly — and that comes out in many kinds of studies."

Contributing to the decline in employment among young male minorities were young men returning to the streets with criminal records, according to Holzer.

"Employers really don’t like to hire young men with criminal records, especially young black men with criminal records," Holzer said.

In order to combat this gap between young minority men and other groups, according to Holzer, a policy needs to be put into place to improve opportunities for people at early ages.

According to Peter Edelman, co-author of the book and professor of law at Georgetown, communities and individuals need to take responsibility for this situation.

"It’s certainly about convincing these young men that there are real alternatives to dealing drugs, to gangs, to sitting around the corner doing nothing," Edelman said. "That means there needs to be real pathways to get there."

So far the book has made an impact on people in positions of power as far as introducing new public policy, according to Edelman.

"I am encouraged by the number of people who are addressing this, whether it has to do with anything the three of us did," Edelman said. "Sen. (Hillary) Clinton has made a proposal which is actually based on our book, and Sen. (Barack) Obama introduced legislation that we had some involvement with."

UW graduate student Allison Loomis said as a social work student, the lecture encouraged her to become more involved in changes that need to be made.

"Lectures like this help us become more culturally aware and also makes us look at the issues of poverty and ways we can help," Loomis said.