Jobless numbers show no evidence of a post-racial America

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From Megan Carpentier, The Washington Independent:

In the giddy, post-electoral haze in 2008, many people hoped and believed that the election of President Obama would herald a new, “post-racial” America. But a look at some recent economic statistics tells a different story.

While overall employment in March stood at 9.7 percent, some 16.5 percent of African-Americans were unemployed. A staggering 41.1 percent of African-Americans between 16 and 19 years of age are unemployed, based on the March numbers, while 19 percent of adult African-American men and 12.4 percent of adult African-American women are facing unemployment. With the exception of the unemployment rate for teenagers, those seasonally adjusted numbers were up over February statistics, even as white unemployment stayed the same.

[…]

But the Obama Administration has done little, so far, to target higher rates of unemployment in communities of color as a result of the recession – let alone the existing conditions that lead to ongoing disproportionately high unemployment rates, specifically within African-American communities.

The jobs bill passed by the Senate doesn’t contain even the money for youth employment programs – like the ones mentioned approvingly by the president in 2009 – passed by the House, and it doesn’t contain provisions pushed by African-American lawmakers to make sure that at least 10 percent of the budget for each section of the bill goes to communities where 20 percent of the population is low-income. It has been criticized by African-American lawmakers like Rep. Elijiah Cummings (D-Md.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, for not focusing on the unique problems facing the African-American community and, in particular, hard-hit urban communities facing chronic unemployment. Cummings spokesman Paul Kincaid said, “The congressman and the CBC are really focused on the need for expanding job training as a way to combat these issues.”

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy and Research, agrees with Cummings that the president hasn’t gone far enough, saying ”[The administration has] been way too meek on it. One thing in particular they could have pushed employment programs targeted to areas of high unemployment. They could focus on areas where unemployment rates are above 20 percent or something, and get money for job creation to areas like Detroit, which employment is just falling through the floor.” If the administration focused on communities disproportionately affected by unemployment, even if it didn’t specifically target African-American communities, its efforts would have a disproportional impact on those communities suffering most from unemployment, including African-Americans, he said.

[…]

The National Urban League, in a report issued March 24, suggested a similar program: $150 million in grants to cities, states, non-profits and universities based on local unemployment rates to create three million jobs in the hardest-hit communities. Urban League president and CEO Marc Morial said, “The first thing that needs to be done is direct job creation to put people to work, because fixing structural problems can’t happen while so many people are out of work. What we did in the 30s, what we did in the 70s, with the government hiring people directly, is a good place to start. Congressman Miller’s bill, which would give money to cities to hire people, with 25 percent allocated to community-based organizations to help put people to work.” He also suggested that one way for the president to resolve the criticisms that funding infrastructure projects disproportionately puts white people back to work is to invest heavily in construction training programs in urban areas, where those skills are often in short supply and unemployment is highest.

Economics professor and author Boyce Watkins of Syracuse University thinks a jobs program needs to go much further than that: “Put in place $80-100 billion to a direct effort to create jobs in urban centers around the country, with a disproportionate amount of resources targeted at cities with the highest unemployment. Then you can have a dramatic impact on unemployment very quickly. It would be more effective than giving tax credits to small businesses to hire people,” Watkins said in an interview. The president, he added, “doesn’t have to have a black agenda, he can simply have a strong urban agenda,” but he’s concerned that, with Larry Summers and Tim Geithner at the helm of economic policy, the president won’t hear much about an economic agenda that addresses poverty issues, let alone economic issues of concern to African-Americans or other people of color, because, he says, neither man has any background or apparent intellectual interest in those areas. “If people’s hearts aren’t in the right place, then their intellects won’t be,” he said.

Like the Joint Education Committee report [released in March], Morial and Watkins also highlighted the need for significant investments in job training and adult education over the coming years to address the larger structural problems in the African-American community and resolve the apparent mismatch between skills and available jobs.

Continue to the full article at The Washington Independent website.