TheLoop21.com

By: Earl Ofari Hutchinson, New America Media (Add to your loop)
Mon, 12/14/2009 - 09:16

One out of three young African Americans are out of work.

As President Barack Obama prepares to address the nation about how he plans to combat double-digit unemployment, the jobless gap between African Americans and all others has risen. African Americans have been hit the hardest in the economic downturn, but Obama will have to remember that for young Blacks, the crisis did not start with this meltdown.

The bad news is that more than one out of three young Blacks who are unemployed matches the figure for joblessness at the peak of the Great Depression. The worse news is that the jobless figure for young Blacks, especially males, doesn't vary much from the number before the economic meltdown. During the Clinton era economic boom, the unemployment rate for young Black males was double, sometimes triple that of white males.

Two years ago, a stunned Congressional Black Caucus and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi blamed President George Bush. They claimed that his fiscal and economic policies have resulted in the loss of millions of jobs, demanded that he radically increase funding for job training programs and provide more tax incentives for the working poor. Bush did none of these things. Neither did Pelosi and the Congressional Black Caucus. They did not vigorously push for a crisis job training and creation program for young Black males. The crisis continued to mount. Bush is not in office. Pelosi and the Democrats have a tight lock on Congress, and Obama is in the White House.

The bitter new reality is that the job crisis isn't Bush’s. It’s Obama’s. This requires a candid look at why so many young Blacks continue to be unemployed even when the economy was relatively good. 
State and federal cutbacks in job training and skills programs, the brutal competition for low- and semi-skilled service and retail jobs from immigrants, and the refusal of many employers to hire those with criminal records have been prime culprits in driving the numbers higher and higher.
 
Inadequate public schools also fuel the unemployment crisis because students are desperately unequipped to handle the rapidly evolving business environment of the 21st Century. 


There’s an even bigger reason for the stubbornly high numbers that defy reason in the good times, a reason that conservatives routinely deride, and liberals downplay out of political fear. That's the persistent and deep racial discrimination in the workplace. The mountain of federal and state anti-discrimination laws, affirmative action programs and successful employment discrimination lawsuits give the public the impression that job discrimination is a relic of a shameful, racist past.

Yet recent studies have found that Black men without a criminal record are less likely to find a job than white men with criminal records. The Urban League's annual State of Black America reports, a 2005 Human Rights Watch report and the numerous discrimination complaints reviewed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over the past decade reveal that employers have devised endless dodges to evade anti-discrimination laws. That includes rejecting applicants based on their names or areas of the city they live in. Black applicants may be incorrectly told that jobs advertised were filled already. One study even documented that employers name-code Blacks to exclude them from hiring. Those with Islamic or Afrocentric sounding names are red penciled from their interview list.

A decade ago, in a seven-month comprehensive university study of the hiring practices of hundreds of Chicago area employers, many routinely described Blacks as being "unskilled," "uneducated," "illiterate," "dishonest," "lacking initiative," "involved with gangs and drugs" or "unstable," of having "no family values" and being "poor role models."

The consensus among these employers was that Blacks brought their alleged pathologies to the work place, and were to be avoided at all costs. Researchers found that Black business owners shared many of the same negative attitudes. Other surveys show a substantial number of non-white business owners also refuse to hire blacks.

The government took bold and aggressive steps to improve unemployment during the Great Depression. Obama and the Democrats should take the same bold and aggressive steps for young Blacks.

This story was originally published at NewAmericaMedia.org.

Is Obama compromising too much in the health care bill?

Yes, we need public option

No, he's keeping the peace

Republicans will block it anyway

Let's wait until the health care summit

I don't know