I'm sick and tired of seeing statistics like these:
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. (Source)
Unsurprisingly, Blacks are not only unemployed at higher rates, but they are jobless for longer periods.
The typical period of unemployment, while always higher for African-Americans, is now at nearly 24 weeks, compared to just 18.4 weeks for white workers. And the report found that nearly 45 percent of unemployed African-Americans have been so for more than 27 weeks.
In the face of these staggering statistics, President Obama remains committed to middle-of-the-road stance on, well, basically every racial matter to date. In 2009, he had this to say about the current economic situation.
We know that the African-American unemployment rate, the Latino unemployment rate are consistently higher than the national average. And so, if the economy as a whole is doing poorly, the African-American community is going to be doing poorly, and they’re going to be hit harder. The best thing that I can do for the African-American community, the Latino community, the Asian community, whatever community is to get the economy as a whole moving.
Sure. Because that's worked so well before...
More and more I'm starting to believe that Obama is one of those "cowards" to which Attorney General Holder referred.
For those overly concerned with the implications of explicitly racial policy (as if the American economic system were itself decracialized), seemingly race neutral solutions have been proposed like this one from Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research.
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.”
Well that makes perfect sense doesn't it?
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