根据以下资料，回答下列各题： Early this week a bit of cheery news was reported by the Manhattan Institute，a conservative think tank：black segregation has hit its lowest point in more than a century—declining in all 85 0f the nation’S largest metropolitan areas．Nevertheless，the report is largely celebratory in tone，and it has been received in that fashion by much of the news media．Before we break out the champagne，however，it may be wise to pause and reflect for a moment on who was excluded from the analysis． Our nation’s prison population has more than quintupled(soaring from 300，000 in the mid．1970s to more than 2 million today)，due to a“get tough”movement and a war on drugs that has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color． Studies have consistently shown that people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites，but a fierce drug war has been waged nonetheless，and harsh mandatory minimum sentences passed，leading to a prison—building boom unprecedented in world history．Despite this sea change，prisoners continue to be treated as nonentities in much sociological and economic analysis． In the Manhattan Institute study，prisoners are not even mentioned，despite the fact that millions of poor people--——0verwhelmingly people of color —are removed from their communities and held in prisons，often hundreds of miles from home．Most new prison construction has occurred in predominately white，rural communities，and thus a new form. of segregation has emerged in recent years．Bars and walls keep hundreds of thousands away from mainstream society—a forE of apartheid unlike the world has even seen．If all of them suddenly returned，they would not be evenly throughout the nation’s population．Instead they would return to a relatively small number of communities defined by race and class，greatly intensifying the levels of segregation we see today． Those who imagine that the failure to account for prisoners can’t possibly affect the analysis would be wise to consider the distortion of unemployment figures in recent years． According to Harvard professor Bruce Western， standard unemployment figures underestimate the true jobless rate by as much as 24 percentage points for less educated black men．In fact．during the l990s——the economic—boom years——noncollege black men were the only group that experienced a sharp increase in unemployment，a development directly traceable to the sudden explosion of the prison population． At the same time that unemployment rates were sinking to record low levels for the general population，the true jobless rate among noncollege black men soared to a staggering 42％ Prisoners do matter when analyzing the severity of racial inequality in the U．S．Yet because they are out of sight and out of mind，it is easy to imagine that we are making far more racial progress than we actually are．For now，let’s keep the cork in the bottle and pray that we will eventually awaken from our color—blind slumber to the persistent realities of race in America． The news media’s response toward the research results announced by the Manhattan Institute is______．