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On 5/16/2011 9:59 AM, Mark Lause wrote:
This is a superb piece on what I would see as a very important development.
And here are the material conditions that are driving it:
http://www.theroot.com/buzz/black-unemployment-depression-level-highs-some-cities
Black Unemployment: Depression-Level Highs in Some Cities
By nsenga.burton
Janell Ross is reporting that unemployment rates for blacks have
remained critically elevated since the Great Recession. She gives
the example of Wanda Nolan, an educated, gainfully employed woman
who was essentially living the American dream. Her job was
eliminated in 2008, and she has remained unemployed since then.
Like Nolan, many members of the black community have seen their
lives devolve from a model of middle-class African-American upward
mobility into an example of a disturbing trend: the 15.5 percent
of African Americans out of work and still looking for a job.
The nation's overall unemployment rate sits at 8.8 percent, and
the rate among white Americans is at 7.9 percent. For a variety of
reasons -- ranging from levels of education and continuing
discrimination to the relatively young age of black workers --
black unemployment tends to run at twice the rate for whites. Yet
since the Great Recession, joblessness has remained so critically
elevated among African Americans that it is challenging
long-standing ideas about what it takes to find work in the
modern-day economy.
Ross writes, "Millions of people like Nolan, who have precisely
followed the oft-dictated recipe for economic success -- work
hard, get an education, seek advancement -- are slipping backward.
Even as they apply for jobs and accept the prospect of a future
with less job security and lower pay, they remain stalled in
unemployment."
Trading down has become a painful truth for much of working
America, and the disparity between unemployed college-educated
whites and college-educated blacks has widened.
Tell us something we don't know. It pretty much sucks to follow
the blueprint for achieving the American dream and to have it
snatched away from you. It's even worse when you are qualified but
can't get a shot at another comparable job because there are so
few of them.
Some have argued that the concept of the American dream was
concocted without black folks in mind. Unemployment and its impact
on all parts of our community -- educated and uneducated --
reflects this sentiment
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