Fyi...

The song that lies silent in the heart of a mother sings upon the lips of her child..
Kahlil Gibran




Rodney D. Coates
Professor



African Americans and the Economic Crisis

By Carl Bloice
BlackCommentator Editorial Board
The Black Commentator
April 16, 200

http://blackcommentator.com/320/320_lm_african_americans_economic_crisis_bold_action.html

Biden was quite out front about it. On the same day the
newspapers were trumpeting the news that President Obama
had felt a "glimmer of hope" in the economic situation,
the Vice-President was telling CNN that we can expect
unemployment to increase each month for the rest of the
year. Joblessness stands at 8.5% at the moment; if it
continues to climb at anything like its current rate it
could be over 10% by Christmas. That's bad news for
working people; very bad news for African Americans and
catastrophic news for African American men. At present a
little less than one out of every six black men is
without a job.

That statistic, as horrendous as it is only underscore a
larger disaster, one too often downplayed or ignored:
the disproportionate negative consequences of the
current economic crisis on African Americans and other
people of color.

"As bad as today's unemployment news is for the nation,
for the African-American community it's much worse,"
Isaiah Poole wrote the other day on the Campaign for
America's Future website. "African Americans as a group
continue to bear a disproportionate share of the damage
done to the economy by misguided conservative policies.
It consequently needs a much greater focus from the
Obama administration, Congress-and us."

Unemployment now stands at 13.3 percent among African
American - 15.4% for black men. There were 124,000 fewer
black people at work in March than in February.

Hispanic workers' unemployment was 11.4 percent last
month, up from 7.0% a year ago. The rate for white job
seekers stood at 7.9% in March, up from 4.5% a year ago.

(Mandatory caveat here: the government figures are
understatements; they don't count the people who have
given up looking for work or are too young to have ever
had a job or who are working part time because that's
all the work they can find.)

These are national figures, however. Seven states now
have jobless rates of over 10 percent and many are
states with large African American population centers.

Appearing recently on Democracy Now!, Dedrick Muhammad,
senior organizer and research associate at the Institute
for Policy Studies, said there are suggestions that
African American unemployment could eventually reach 20%
or more. He cited a projection by William M. Rodgers, a
professor in the School of Management and Labor
Relations at Rutgers University that black male
joblessness will reach 18% by 2012 after figuring in the
effects of the Obama Administration's economic stimulus
program; without it the rate could rise to 23 percent

"When you look back a year ago, every estimate of how
bad things are going to be underestimated how bad things
currently are," said Muhammad. "And I think that's still
going to be true. So-and if you look-I mean, the current
unemployment rate of about 13 percent is a higher
unemployment rate that-white Americans haven't had such
a high unemployment rate since about the time of the
Depression. So we're truly in a crisis."

Muhammad is co-author of the new report "State of the
Dream 2009: The Silent Depression."

"The disgrace of the Reagan-Bush era is that despite the
emergence of a highly visible black middle class and the
shattering of some racial barriers, African Americans as
a group were casualties of conservative economic
policies and the misguided notion that race is no longer
a significant determinant of economic well-being," said
the researcher.

Unemployment is not the only area where capitalism's
current crisis is battering African American individuals
and families. Taken as a whole black people are getting
poorer as a result of developments over which they have
no control. The mortgage crisis has hit especially hard
with housing foreclosures reducing economic assets that
people had worked hard to acquire and was key to their
plans for the future. African American median family
income has actually declined over the past decade.

Meanwhile, the country awaits word of the next shoe top
fall in the auto industry with the expectation that
General Motors will file for bankruptcy, be forced to
pare down its operations, close additional plants and
thus further contribute to unemployment in the regions
where the company operates. Unemployment in Michigan
reached 12 percent in February having reached the
highest level as any state the previous month.

The Detroit-Warren-Dearborn area of Michigan has the
highest jobless rate - 14.6% - for a metropolitan area
of more than one million in the nation.

Michigan's labor force has declined every month since
January 2007 with 88,000 people joining the jobless
rolls the first two months of the year. Mass layoffs,
restricted credit availability and shrinking pay
envelopes are acknowledged to be the reason housing
foreclosures are on the rise. A similar situation exists
in other parts of the country.

Relating the situation to the steps being taken in
Washington to arrest the economic decline, Poole of the
Campaign for America's Future wrote, "In education,
labor, social services, energy, transportation and urban
development, Congress and the Obama administration will
have opportunities to put in place programs specifically
designed to close the employment race gap between
African Americans, especially men, and the rest of
society.

"Obama can lead in this area by explicitly addressing
the plight of black men and challenging the nation-not
just elected officials in Washington but grassroots
organizations, think tanks and educational
institutions-to make a central goal of economic recovery
ending the decades-long pattern of black men being
almost twice as likely to be unemployed as white men.
That gap should be reduced to zero well before 2016.

"That would tell the rest of the world that we have
entered a new racial era."

The situation facing African Americans and other people
of color in the U.S. has a global corollary. The
policies carried out by the major industrialized
countries amid the expanded process of globalization
have for decades increased the inequities both between
and within many countries. Now, amid a staggering world
economic upheaval, those policies stand in disrepute.
Insecurity and deprivation are being experienced nearly
everywhere. But the greatest burden is falling on the
most vulnerable countries and people. In Asia, Africa
and Latin America leaders and social movements are
exploring new way of responding and are insisting upon
bold initiatives to fashion and regulate economic
relations on a more equitable basis. The current crisis
in employment and shelter must compel us to do the same
at home.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice
is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National
Coordinating Committee of the Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly
worked for a healthcare union.

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