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From: PNEWS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [PA] Unemployment & racism
Date: Fri, 5 Aug 1994 00:31:28 -0400 (EDT)
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[*******PNEWS CONFERENCES*********]
From: Scott Marshall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
**Racism and Unemployment**
(Reprinted from the July issue of Political Affairs, monthly
journal of the Communist Party, USA. For subscription information
see below - all rights reserved.)
by Vic Perlo
By the 1970s, the ruling class of the United States had lost its
unchallenged supremacy in the capitalist world. The country was
afflicted by a long-lasting, complex structural crisis, which
successively featured the shattering of the basic industrial core
of the Midwest and its conversion into a "rust bowl," financial
crises, most dramatically expressed in the $500 billion S&L
debacle, and currently the major "downsizing" of almost all major
U.S. corporations, involving the permanent layoff of millions of
workers.
This structural, systemic crisis has continued through several of
the cyclical crises and recoveries that are "normal" features of
the capitalist economic system, each devastating the lives of
many workers, farmers and small business people.
Given the political balance of forces in the country, the
capitalist class has put the entire burden of the structural
crisis on the working class, while continuing to pile up profits
and wealth. A major aspect of this burden is unemployment.
In many ways unemployment is far worse than revealed by the
official statistics. So long as the U.S. economy was on a
long-term uptrend, there was some opportunity for many unemployed
workers to get their jobs back after a certain period, depending,
among other factors, on the stage of the business cycle. It is
true, however, that even at the best of times millions of lives
were disrupted or devastated by unemployment and the resultant
woes: going hungry, getting into debt, losing homes, etc.
However, in general most unemployed workers would get back their
old jobs or another in roughly the same line of work. Now that is
no longer true.
One reason is that even in the best situation, unemployment lasts
longer than in earlier decades. The Economic Report of the
President's Council of Economic Advisors (Bush's swan song)
issued in January 1983, explained this in the following way:
I the effect of the 1990-91 recession and subsequent slow growth
period on labor markets was more severe than the absolute change
in employment or the unemployment rate indicated. The
unemployment rate peaked at 7.7 percent I 15 months after the end
of the recession. Typically, the unemployment rate hits its peak
an average of only 3 months after the end of a recession. I In
addition, the percentage of unemployed who lost their job
permanently rather than being temporarily laid off,reached its
highest point on record, eroding workers' long-term job security
and limiting prospects for the quick rebound in employment that
usually occurs during a recovery.1
This crisis of the system has involved a long-term increase in
the level and the rate of unemployment. There was an increase
from 2.9 million in the 1950s and 3.5 million in the l960s, to
8.3 million in the 1980s.
The official measure of unemployment is always understated. Under
pressure from labor, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
regularly publishes a somewhat more realistic figure, taking into
account underemployment and those whom the Bureau calls
"discouraged workers." That total came to 13.7 million in 1992
instead of the 9.4 million "official" figure. Beginning this year
the BLS is making a trivial correction in its methods, adding a
few hundred thousand to its count of the unemployed. Progressive
researchers have long shown that actual unemployment is double or
more the official published figure.
During the great crisis of the 1930s, the struggle of millions
against unemployment - organized and led by Communists - raised
the understanding of people that unemployment is a byproduct of
capitalism. World War II greatly reduced the level of
unemployment to exceptionally low levels and industrial unions,
established after bitter battles in the basic industries, were
determined to prevent a return to high unemployment rates.
Moreover, the victory of the Soviet Union and the spread of
socialism - with the attendant full employment - terrified
capitalists with the fear that mass unemployment would inspire
U.S. workers to turn toward socialism.
Philip Murray, then president of the CIO, said in 1950: "Five
million [unemployed] is menacing. Seven million is depression.
Eleven million is riots and bloodshed."2
Saving capitalism - Murray, whose opportunist policies and
collaboration with anti- Communist witch hunts contributed much
to weakening the trade union movement, was speaking as a loyal
supporter of capitalism. His reference to "riots and bloodshed"
expressed his opposition to militant working-class actions
against unemployment. But the fear was real. Reflecting this
perceived threat, President Harry Truman asserted:
In 1932, the private enterprise system was close to collapse.
There was real danger that the American people might turn to some
other system. If we are to win the struggle between freedom and
communism, we must be sure that we never let such a depression
happen again.3
Within weeks, Truman averted the "danger" by launching the war
against Korea, which reduced unemployment to low levels for the
remainder of his term.
British millionaire economist John Maynard Keynes, whose
influence remains to this day, led that school of establishment
theoreticians who considered government intervention to alleviate
the evils of capitalism necessary to save it. He recognized, "The
outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are
its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and
inequitable distribution of wealth and income."4
However, his position was contradictory. He also warned that
reforms were desirable only to the extent that they did not
disturb the capitalists' "incentive" to invest and produce, with
due regard for the "nerves and hysteria and even the digestion"
of the capitalist class.
Thirty years later, rightist opposition to Keynesianism was
formulated by Milton Friedman, the American professor and
presidential advisor, who wrote: "What kind of society isn't
structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to
set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm."5
But in a period of working-class militancy, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt approved measures of a Keynesian variety, broadly
speaking, including Social Security, minimum wages, and the right
to organize. After World War II, he promised the American people
a better life, and in his 1944 "Economic Bill of Rights," his
first declaration was that every person who is able and willing
to work has the right to a job at decent wages, regardless of
race, color or religion. However, after his death Congress failed
to implement Roosevelt's pledge. In deference to public opinion,
however, it enacted a vague "Employment Act" which had no
operative substance and was soon forgotten.
Throughout the history of capitalism in the U.S. racism has given
an especially sharp edge to unemployment. In Roosevelt's time, 75
percent of the African American population lived in the Jim Crow
South, largely as rightless sharecroppers and farm laborers.
During this period until the close of the Second World War,
important demographic changes were occurring in the African
American population as hundreds of thousands moved north in
search of jobs and a better life. The industrial working-class
character of the African America people began to assume
increasing importance. The Latino population in the United
States, though growing, was still small.
Communists made a unique contribution in the struggle for
progressive labor policies raising the issue of the divisive role
of racism and fighting for Black/white working- class unity. The
unemployed council movement during this era was of particular
importance.
By the 1970s, after the decisive activities of African Americans
and their allies in the two previous decades, the pervasive evil
of unemployment's unique racist edge could no longer be ignored
or treated as a minor issue. And with the expansion of the Latino
population, subject to many of the ills of the African Americans,
everyone involved - politicians, trade union officials,
capitalists - have had to acknowledge that the super-unemployment
of oppressed peoples is a major, cruel feature of U.S.
capitalism. In this regard, this writer wrote in 1975:
Today we have to say that economic discrimination against Blacks
is the nation's number one economic problem. No economic problem
affecting the majority of the population can be solved or
significantly eased unless the solution includes a vast
improvement in the economic situation of Black people and
substantial reduction of the discrimination against them.6
Measures required to combat racism must be combined with
struggles for effective programs that will better conditions for
all American workers, including actions to reduce unemployment of
white workers. It's important to stress the fact that intensified
racial discrimination has seriously harmed the situation of white
workers and counter all claims that white workers gain from
discrimination against Blacks, Latinos, Native American Indians
and Asians.
Racist patterns - Black workers have always been victims of the
"last to be hired; first to be fired" practice. Employers,
permeated with racist ideology, are reluctant to hire African
Americans, especially Black men. To survive, Black men are
forced, many times, to take jobs at lower wages, doing dangerous
or unhealthy work, and employers reap vast superprofits.
The unemployment rate among Black workers until the 1980s has
typically been double that of white workers. In recent years, it
has more often been 2.5 times that of white workers.
The same racist pattern imposes especially high rates of
unemployment on Hispanics, Native Americans, and some sections of
Asian Americans.
Between the 1970s and the 1980s, the unemployment rate of white
workers rose a little less than 1 percentage point - serious
enough - but it went up 4.5 percentage points (about 40 percent)
for Black workers, reaching depression proportions with an
average of 15.3 percent. There was a dramatic widening of the
unemployment gap affecting African Americans during the 1980s,
when the Reagan-Bush administrations added an overt racist
offensive to their all-out offensive against the entire working
class.
The ratio of Black to white unemployment rates for five-year
intervals increased as follows:
1971-1975 2.12
1976-1980 2.30
1981-1985 2.32
1986-1990 2.46
U.S. government statistics wrongly included Hispanics in
unemployment rates for whites, tending to raise the actual rates
of unemployment for white workers above their real figures. Thus,
the rate for non-Hispanic white workers is roughly one-half of a
percentage point less than published figures which include
Hispanics with other whites. This effect has been increasing with
the rise in the Hispanic population. As a result, the ratio of
Black to non-Hispanic white unemployment was approximately 2.64
times, rather than the 2.46 times shown in the above table.
Racially and nationally oppressed peoples are an increasing
proportion of the working class. They accounted for one-sixth of
the total in the early 1970s but grew to one-fourth in 1993. The
following table shows the increase in employment of "minorities"
since 1972, the earliest year for which detailed data are
available.
Employment
(Millions)
Race 1972 1993 Percent
Blacks 7.8 12.1 55
Hispanics 3.7 9.3 151
Asians & Native
Americans 1.1 4.4 300
All Minorities 12.6 25.8 105
Thus the total number more than doubled and increased from 15.2
percent of the total number of workers employed in 1972 to 21.6
percent in 1993. However, these figures include self-employed and
capitalists as well as workers. The proportion of capitalists is
much smaller among Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans than
among whites. So the oppressed peoples account for at least 25
percent of employed wage and salary earners. It is clear from the
table that Latino people and Asian Americans, and to a lesser
extent Native Americans are growing rapidly, increasing the
multi-racial, multi- national character of the working class.
GRowth of multi-racial working class - The Black share in total
jobs has grown slowly from 9.5 percent in 1972 to 10.1 percent in
1993. The very rapid rise in the Hispanic and Asian American
working population increases the potential strength of multi-
national, multi-racial unity within a working-class united front.
It also increases the potential - and actuality - of capitalist
class attempts to arouse rivalry and competition for jobs among
the different races and ethnic groups of oppressed peoples. Data
for 1993 are presented in Table 1.
Unemployed
Race Number % of labor force
(thousands)
Total 8,734 6.8
White 6,547 6.0
Non Hispanic white 5,498 5.5
Black 1,796 12.9
Hispanics 1,104 10.8
Asian & Native
American 381 8.0
Data for non-Hispanic whites are the author's estimates, but are
consistent with published economic data. Separate figures for
unemployment of Asian Americans and Native Americans are not
available for 1993. However, other sources indicate that the
unemployment rate for Asian Americans is only a little higher
than for whites, while the unemployment rate for Native Americans
is close to that of Blacks.
Hispanic workers suffer from severe discrimination. Typically,
over the period considered, unemployment rates have been somewhat
lower than for African Americans, but higher than for whites.
However, the loose use of the term "Hispanic" to categorize these
workers is itself problematic and tends to obscure the situation
confronting workers from different countries and racial and
national backgrounds. For example, among Latinos the Mexican
American unemployment rate is close to 11 percent. The Puerto
Rican rate is 12.8 percent. Unemployment for Cubans is 7.8
percent.
In addition these statistics can be misleading and have to be
weighed carefully. For example, in 1992, a higher percentage of
Hispanic men were counted in the labor force than the
corresponding percentage of white men. And even with the higher
unemployment rates among Latino males, the percentage who
actually had jobs was the same as that for white males, 71
percent, as compared with only 59 percent among Black men.7
However, these figures reveal only one side of the picture. The
percentage of Latino women who have jobs is lower than that of
either Black or white women, and an especially high proportion of
Hispanic men and women are employed in very low- wage industries.
Low wages and slave-like conditions for immigrant workers are
especially sharp. So poverty is nearly as acute among Latinos as
among African Americans.
A new system of measurement introduced by the Labor Department in
1994 sharply increased the levels and rates of Black and Hispanic
unemployment, as well as the differential rate of unemployment as
compared with the unemployment of white workers.
race, Gender & unemployment - Historically, because of the low
wages paid Black men, relatively more Black women than white
women worked for wages. During the post-World War II period,
there has been a rapid rise in the proportion of women who work,
from one-third to one-half of all women. (That figure includes
elderly women and teenagers still in school). By 1992,
three-fourths of all women in the 25-54 age range were in the
labor force.8
Women who were forced to stay home while their husbands worked
and supported the family have become a distinct minority. This
development has occurred because of women's campaigns for equal
rights and the crisis of everyday living facing working- class
families.
A major factor in these changes has been employers' substitution
of women for men at lower wages. Thus, while the proportion of
women working went up from 33 percent to 50 percent, the
proportion of men working fell from 82 percent to 71 percent. The
increase of women overbalanced the decrease of men, so that
overall there was a modest rise in the proportion of all adults
working.
But that was not true of the African American population. Because
of racism, Black women were not able to break into the labor
force as readily as white women, so the increase in the
percentage of Black women working was moderate. As a result,
while the proportion of Black women working exceeded the
proportion of white women by a wide margin in the 1950s and
1960s, by the 1990s the proportion of white women with jobs was
higher.
Over the same period, the percentage of Black men with jobs
plummeted, dropping much faster than the percentage among white
men. By the 1980s, only 60 percent of all Black men had jobs,
compared with 72 percent of white men.
There are some specific reasons for this decline not wholly
connected with racism: the decline of industrial employment in
the North where many African American men had found jobs, the
decline in the traditional forms of southern agriculture, another
area of employment - although under terrible conditions - of
Black men. But the principal causes have involved racial
discrimination. Among the most important of these causes are the
intensification of outright racism, which reversed the meagre job
gains resulting from the Civil Rights struggles and legislation
and the mass arrest and imprisonment of young Black men, which
kept many in prison and left many more with records that
employers used against hiring them. Media propaganda, especially
TV and Hollywood has played a major role in promoting racism. It
has been used to instill a fear of Black males among the white
population, a strategy used with terrible impact in the election
campaigns of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, and in New York
City's mayoralty election by overt racist and reactionary
right-winger, Rudolph Guiliani, whose racist crime-scare tactics
and personal slanders against Mayor Dinkins led to victory.
The upshot has been a decline over the decades in the overall
proportion of African Americans employed, from 58 percent to 56
percent, while the proportion of whites rose from 56 percent to
61 percent.
The corresponding increase in joblessness among African Americans
- going far beyond the rise in official data - has given rise to
deepening impoverishment of large sections of the African
American population. Another important result was that by the
late 1980s and early 1990s, the number of Black women employed
exceeded the number of Black men holding jobs. And considering
the low wages received by so many Black workers, this seriously
weakened "normal" family structures among the Black population.
There was corresponding demoralization among whites, but the
extent of single parent families was much higher among African
Americans, making them a target of racist propaganda.
Indeed, a special feature of U.S. racism in the employment arena
is that more Black women are employed than Black men. This is due
to many factors including the generally lower wages paid women,
the effects of the industrial crisis where more Black men were
employed and the special racist criminalization of young Black
men. Many Black women are now employed, in the service industry
in clerical jobs as bank tellers, at checkout counters, etc.,
which are generally low-paid and with little benefits.
Youth Employment - A particularly tragic feature of modern
American life is the joblessness and overall economic insecurity
afflicting youth. The impact on African American and Latino youth
is greatest by a wide margin, destroying lives and preventing
millions from ever realizing their potential.
The chart below shows youth unemployment by percentage,
understated because BLS estimates are lower than the actual
number of jobless youth who want and need jobs.
Among teenage youth, white males had an unemployment rate of
about 19 percent, African American men 42 percent, and Hispanic
men 27 percent. Rates for teenage women were slightly lower.
Among men in their early 20s, the white unemployment rate was a
bit over 10 percent, the Black rate 25 percent, and the Latino
rate, 14 percent. Again, rates for women were a bit less.
Looking at it another way, 46 percent of white male teenagers had
jobs, but only 24 percent of Black teenagers; relatively half as
many. Among youth in their early 20s (20-24), 77 percent of the
white as compared with 57 percent of the African American had
jobs, that is, 43 percent of young Black men in their early 20s
were not employed, whether counted as jobless or not.
Today the importance of education for employment, and a college
education for a decent job, is a fact of life. Of white youth
16-24, 21.8 percent were enrolled in college in 1992, compared
with 16.4 percent of Black youth, a significant gap but not as
great as it was some decades ago. But when it comes to getting a
degree, the difference becomes great. Nine percent of the white
youth compared with only 3 percent of Black youth actually
graduated from college, and a college degree has proven essential
for obtaining a good job with adequate salary and potential for
advancement.9
Among youth who dropped out of college without getting a degree,
the disparity is also vast. For white youth the unemployment rate
was 7.4 percent, not much lower than that for white college
graduates, although the jobs were not as good. But for Black
youth who did not complete college, the unemployment rate jumped
to 20.4 percent.10
Most students who come from working-class and middle-income
families cannot afford all of the costs of a college education
without taking part-time jobs. In fact, 60 percent of white
college students were counted as being in the labor force, and of
them, 7.5 percent were among the unemployed. But among Black
college students, who certainly needed the income more, only 44
percent were included in the labor force and of them, 19 percent
were without jobs.
These data confirm the urgent need for affirmative action
measures that guarantee access to full scholarship funds for
Black college students, along with a vast increase in the
availability of such funds for all students, regardless of race
or sex. And included in affirmative action programs for Black
workers, special consideration is required to guarantee access to
jobs for Black youth who are just entering the job market, along
with provision for protection against arbitrary firing by bosses
after brief periods of token employment.
The most complete measure of joblessness is the count of those
of working age who do not have jobs. Among men, relatively few do
not want to work, or prefer to be idle. Today even a substantial
majority of college students either work or seek jobs in order to
pay tuition and living costs, and disabled men are struggling for
the facilities necessary to make employment possible and for
affirmative action to aid them in getting jobs.
Detailed analysis reveals the enormous gap between Black and
white joblessness. According to the minimal, official account of
unemployment in 1992, 7 percent of white men and 15 percent of
Black men (16 years and over), were unemployed - a gap of 8
percentage points.
But if a full count of joblessness were made - considering as
unemployed all jobless males 16 and over - it turns out that 29
percent of white men and 41 percent of Black men were jobless.
The gap has widened to 12 percentage points.
However, there is a distortion here: retirees constitute the
major group of men no longer wanting or needing jobs. Hence it is
more realistic to consider unemployment among males aged 16-64.
Exclusion of older men from the population base affects whites
much more than Blacks, simply because the overall impact of
racism so seriously shortens the lives of African Americans and
especially Black men. So it turns out that the proportion of
jobless white men aged 16-64 is 19 percent, against 35 percent of
Black men. By now the gap is 16 percentage points, double that
reported in the official BLS count of unemployment.
Nor does this tell the whole story. Government employment
statistics are based on the civilian non-institutional
population. But with the jail and prison populations having
doubled over the past decade, this factor has become a
significant omission, especially with respect to Black men who
constitute close to one-half of all male prisoners. (Female
prisoners are relatively few.) Prisoners, of course, are jobless
in the most basic sense, even though many work at virtually
unpaid forced labor. The large number of imprisoned Black men
contribute significantly to the poverty of the African American
community. If prisoners are included in the 16-64 year
population, it turns out that 20 percent of white men are
jobless, compared with virtually twice that proportion - 39
percent of Black men. Now the gap is a horrendous 19 percentage
points, or 95 percent.
recent trends - The BLS count of unemployment is based on the
number of workers who are jobless in a given survey week each
month. It doesn't include those who have a job that particular
week, but not the rest of the month. The unemployment figure
reported for the year 1992, 9.4 million, is the average of those
who had no jobs in the twelve survey weeks of that year. But the
same 9.4 million were not jobless each month, many workers were
unemployed some months and not others, while some were unemployed
all year.
BLS also conducted a survey asking people about their work
experience for the whole year. They found that 21.4 million
workers were unemployed at some time during 1992, more than twice
the average 9.4 million. That 21.4 million came to 15.8 percent
of the number with jobs or who were looking for work, that is,
those who were in the labor force part or all of the year. And
15.8 percent is more than twice the official "average"
unemployment rate of 7.4 percent. Moreover, more than half of the
21.4 million workers, 11.6 million, were unemployed for a long
time, from 15 weeks up to the entire year.
Even a few weeks without a job is enough to put a worker behind
on monthly payments on a car, rent, or mortgage. Millions of
families have lost their cars which are so necessary in hunting
for a job, and getting to work if one is found. Many have been
evicted or forced to move, to "double up" or join the ranks of
the homeless.
These more inclusive BLS data show that unemployment hit more men
than women, and, as expected, Black and Hispanic workers more
than white workers. In 1992, 18 percent of men and 14 percent of
women workers were unemployed to some extent during the year:
white males 17 percent, African American and Latino men 25
percent. Also, the average length of unemployment was longer for
Black and Hispanic job seekers - more than one-fifth of the Black
job seekers were unemployed throughout the year compared with
one-tenth of white workers.11
Two observations are prompted by these data. First, they should
dispel any illusions that white workers gain from or are
protected by the super-unemployment inflicted on African
Americans and Latinos. When 10.5 million, or 17 percent of all
white males sustain unemployment during a single year, this has
to be recognized as an outrage inflicted on the entire
population, not only on minorities.
Second, the jobless rate of African American workers, by the same
measurement, was l.5 times that of white workers. However, Black
workers were unemployed for longer periods so that the number of
weeks Blacks were without jobs was twice that of whites. That is
similar to the ratio of the official unemployment rates. But an
important factor is that Black and Hispanic workers and their
families, for the most part, have far less financial reserves, if
any, to fall back on through periods of unemployment.
Another BLS study was a "longitudinal survey," which followed the
careers of young men for 12 years, from their 19th to their 30th
birthdays. The results highlight the instability, the insecurity
of economic life for the U.S. working class: the average worker
held seven different jobs during this 12-year period, about the
same for men and women, for whites and Blacks.
But there were big differences in the extent of unemployment
during these 12 years. Among white men, 8 percent had jobs for
six years or less of the 12-year span, but one-third of the
Blacks had this very low job record. And 55 percent of the white
males, but only 24 percent of the Black men had jobs for 11-12
years, that is for all or most of the period. Latino workers also
experienced significant unemployment.12
Industrial crisis - Specific examples show more graphically than
statistics the effects of racist employment policies in all
economic environments.
Job opportunities for African American men have dwindled in the
past decade, especially in the Midwestern "rust belt" and other
areas of deindustrialization, despite some rise in economic
activity as a result of growth in a variety of non-manufacturing
and some selected manufacturing establishments. In some
Midwestern areas that were among the most depressed in the early
1980s were better-off a decade later. In these areas previously
laid-off whites were able to get new jobs. Also, white youth
entering the labor force were able to get jobs, but not Black
men, not even as "last to be hired." Too many are doomed, never
to be hired.
In fact, many African Americans have been forced to migrate to
other parts of the country, notably to the South. Although social
and economic discrimination is extreme there, too, Blacks may
find some employment, even though in the worst jobs.
Milwaukee is a case in point. A city one-third Black, it is
"hypersegregated" according to a University of Chicago study. In
1980, a year marking the beginning of a cyclical downturn, the
white employment rate was 5.3 percent, the Black rate, 17.0
percent. In 1989, the peak of the Reagan boomlet, white
unemployment in Milwaukee was 3.8 percent, as close to full
employment as capitalism ever gets, except in all-out wartime.
But the Black unemployment rate was up to 20.1 percent. While the
Black population was half that of whites, there were three times
as many African Americans as whites who were jobless.
Part of the reason was the shift in economic structure. According
to a New York Times report, Milwaukee was "flourishing" during
the 1960s and 1970s and Blacks got jobs in the expanding
manufacturing base, helped by Civil Rights legislation and strong
unions, which reduced discrimination.
Since 1979, although the city lost 47,000 manufacturing jobs, it
gained 130,000 non- manufacturing jobs. But Black workers, just
as able as white to adapt to and be trained for the new types of
jobs, were never given a chance. An ex-Army sergeant, 28 year old
Anthony Hoskins, is an example: "He has applied at businesses
around the cityI K Mart, Mc Donalds, Wisconsin Bell, Harley
Davison. Usually he never hears from them. And if he does, he is
told that he does not have the skills they are looking for."13
These companies were hiring, but only white workers. Said
Hoskins: "I'm in an endless cycle. How am I going to get
qualifications if I never get a chance? You got 16, 17 year old
white kids working and here I am, a grown man, an Army veteran,
and I can't get a damn job."
Capitalist society regards veteran status as a legitimate basis
for priority in hiring, reduction of real estate taxes, and other
forms of affirmative action, the much maligned "quotas." But not
for African Americans. The reporter, Isabel Wilkerson, writes
that white manufacturing workers who were laid off can usually
get other jobs in the white part of the city, where new
businesses spring up:
Such jobs have generally not appeared in Black sections. I Black
men stand idle on street corners, blocks from the breweries and
factories that used to employ them, while well-dressed
white-collar workers sell insurance or computers out of some of
those same factories, now converted into office parks.14
But Black men are not hired for the salesmen's jobs, or as stock
handlers, store managers and other retail jobs generally set
aside for men.
Most of the jobs that were filled during the Milwaukee upsurge
required no more than a high school education. And most of the
African American men who could not get jobs, the story indicated,
did have a high school diploma. It is clear that the overwhelming
reason for the appalling Milwaukee situation was, is and remains
crude employer racism.
Further, since most of the unemployed Black men live in the
hypersegregated ghettos of the city, their lack of a job deprives
those areas of their purchasing power in the shops and ends their
ability to pay rent or to pay the taxes needed to fund schools.
Thus the cumulative deterioration of the housing, education and
health conditions of African Americans is directly connected with
their racist exclusion from employment.
Part of the reason for the critical unemployment situation is the
decline in unionization, and part is the racism that has kept
unions from effective affirmative action programs, and for
refusing to modify seniority systems to guarantee against
disproportionate layoffs of Black workers.
Race and Hiring Practices - An important study of employer racism
in Chicago was made in 1988-89 by Joleen Kirschenman and Kathryn
M. Neckerman. The authors state:
Despite blacks' disproportionate representation in the urban
underclass, however defined, analysis of inner-city joblessness
seldom consider racism or discrimination as a significant cause.
In The Truly Disadvantaged, for example, William Julius Wilson
explains increased rates of inner-city unemployment as a
consequence of other social or economic developments.15
That is, according to this view, Black unemployment and poverty
are due to a combination of objective developments from which
they just happen to be on the receiving end. Kirscherman and
Neckerman disagree. They consider that race is one of a complex
of motives influencing employers' hiring practices. They
interviewed 185 Chicago and Cook County employers, asking a
standard set of questions and presenting situations designed to
bring out the bosses' attitudes. The employers didn't beat round
the bush - they felt no shame at their racism. "Thus we were
overwhelmed by the degree to which Chicago employers felt
comfortable talking with us - in a situation where the temptation
would be to conceal rather than reveal - in a negative manner
about Blacks."
While generally bad-mouthing the working class as a whole, the
bosses were blunt in their criminalization of Black workers:
Common among the traits listed were that workers were unskilled,
uneducated, illiterate, dishonest, lacking initiative,
unmotivated, involved with drugs and gangs, did not understand
work, had no personal charm, were unstable, lacked a work ethic,
and had no family life or role models.
The authors noted that employers used gross discrimination
against Blacks in employment practices:
Far more widespread were the use of recruiting and screening
techniques to help select 'good' workers. For instance, employers
relied more heavily on referrals from employees, which tend to
reproduce the traits and characteristics of the current work
force I a dramatic increase in the use of referral bonuses in the
past few years, or employers targeted newspaper ads to particular
neighborhoods or ethnic groups. ...16
Discrimination and Monopoly - Another example of gross racist
practices in employment is the American Telephone and Telegraph
Company (AT&T). AT&T before its breakup into regional companies,
was the country's largest employer with more than a million
workers. It was conspicuous for its racist policies. Before World
War II, fewer than one percent of its employees were Black, and
were exclusively in cleanup positions. Even with the huge World
War II labor demand and the post-war activity, Black employment
at AT&T reached only 1.3 percent by 1950, although Civil Rights
struggles forced a certain change so that by 1990 10 percent of
its workers were African American.
A special detailed report by the EEOC in 1972 revealed the
limited, special character of AT&T's employment practices at that
time. Blacks were almost totally excluded from the top craft jobs
of Switchman, Cable Splicer, PBX Installer-Repairman, etc:
The exclusion of Blacks from skilled craft employment is more
complete in the telephone industry than in industry generally. In
the New York area, the percentage of Blacks in telephone company
craft jobs was less than one-third the percentage of Blacks in
craft jobs in all industries. In Jacksonville, Florida, in 1967
there was not a single Black in a telephone company craft job.
I17
But for low-end jobs, the telephone company hired mainly Black
women so that 79 percent of its Black employees were women,
overwhelmingly in operator jobs (as against 53 percent of white
employees). The operator job was "horrendous," and the terrible
conditions were "converting the Traffic Department (where
operators worked), from simply a 'nunnery' into a 'ghetto
nunnery,'" according to the EEOC report. The personnel vice
president of the Bell Companies, Walter Straley, explained:
What a telephone company needs to know about its labor market
[is] who is available for work paying as little as $4,000 to
$5,000 a year. I It is just a plain fact that in today's world,
telephone company wages are more in line with Black expectations,
and the tighter the labor market, the more this is true.18
What Straley left out, of course, is that the "need" for workers
at such low wages reflected the company's successful drive for
ever-higher monopoly superprofits.
As a result of the breakup of AT&T into regional companies,
racist hiring practices in that particular branch of
communications has become less acute. But nationwide,
discrimination and racist attitudes remain intense, so that the
differential unemployment rate against Blacks has increased. In
fact, telephone company unemployment is rising rapidly. NYNEX,
operating in the New York metropolitan area, having slashed
employment from near 100,000 in 1988 to 75,000 in 1993, announced
its intention to cut jobs a further 22 percent, to under
60,000.19
Similar cuts were announced by other telephone companies. And, as
in other industries, the African American workers losing these
jobs will have the hardest time finding alternative employment.
Government actions to reduce unemployment, in general, remain
more necessary than ever. However, measures to provide jobs for,
and to end job discrimination against African Americans, Latinos
and other oppressed peoples should have top priority. Unions and
people's organizations that pressure the government and campaign
for jobs, must demand an end to employment discrimination,
especially in relation to Blacks, against whom racism is most
severe. Indeed, the viciousness of racism against African
Americans in hiring practices as in other areas of life, is
unique. No agenda directed towards reducing racism and
approaching equality can avoid the struggle for an effective,
enforced affirmative action program.
Affirmative Action - Experience proves that the doctrine of a
"level playing field" is a means of preserving full
discrimination against African Americans. Employers could and did
claim they were hiring "the most qualified," but it happened that
the most qualified, in their view, were never Black. Civil Rights
laws therefore called for specific measures to overcome the
effects of racism as reflected in grossly inadequate educational
opportunities, inferior location in relation to job
opportunities, lack of work experience, etc.
Thus the "affirmative action" program was evolved to ensure that
Black workers could get jobs regardless of the prejudices of
employers and despite the handicaps faced by minority job
applicants. A similar approach was taken with regard to
integration of housing, allocation of contracts to African
American small businesses, acceptance in schools, etc.
To be meaningful, affirmative action requires a quantitative
content. For example, if Black employment in a given company was
2 percent in a city where African Americans constituted 20
percent of the population, Blacks would have to be favored in
hiring until their share of jobs reached 20 percent. This result
could be achieved by allocating, for example, 50 percent of new
hires to Blacks until there was parity. In fact, such formulas
have been used used, although rarely.
Aside from such specific formulas, large corporations were called
on to submit reports to the Equal Employment Opportunities
Commission (EEOC), showing improvement in the overall racial
composition of their employees. Many large corporations complied,
but generally in ways that fudged the actual minimal gains of
Blacks. Thus employment of women and minorities might be lumped
in a single category.
Of course, better employment of women was and is desirable, but
the trend has been in that direction for some time, since it fits
in with employers' objective to get workers at lower wages. But a
single designation, minorities, which does not differentiate
between various races and ethnic groups, covered up the practice
of employing skilled professionals and technicians from Asia, at
salaries below the norm for those occupations, instead of hiring
African Americans for the jobs.
Attack on Quotas - During the 1980s and early 1990s,
establishment politicians and publicists, with Democrats soon
joining the Republican instigators, launched a campaign against
"quotas," that is, the numerical goals and requirements needed
for effective affirmative action. The critics claimed that quotas
were a form of "reverse discrimination" against whites.
However, quotas simply ensure additional employment of more
Blacks along with employment of whites. Affirmative action does
not call for firing white workers to make room for Black workers.
But modifications would be required in seniority cases where
layoffs take place and affirmative action measures are needed to
prevent the disproportionate firing of Black workers. The
effective implementation of such a program will strengthen the
job situation of all workers.
What the attacks on "quotas" ignore is the fact that quotas, or
equivalent restrictions favoring one group over another, are
common features of American life. Prestigious colleges favor
graduates of private preparatory schools and specific high
schools for admission over other high schools, notably urban
schools with high percentages of Black graduates. And
historically, negative quotas, numeris clausis, placed a ceiling
on admission of Jews to many colleges, and a limit on Blacks to a
mere token.
Long operating in the United States has been the most powerful
quota system, that based on social registers and exclusive
private clubs. Their members are limited to the wealthiest
families, mainly those with inherited fortunes. And most
typically, they are of West European, Protestant extraction, the
background from which almost all U.S. presidents and current
monopoly capitalist CEOs are drawn. Not only do these exclusive
membership assemblages' admittance requirements automatically
disqualify African Americans, Latinos, and Asians but most also
specifically bar Jews.
The most detailed study of just who are members of this "upper
class" - which in a very real sense controls the U.S. economy,
its propaganda apparatus, and its government - is G. William
Domhoff's Who Rules America? At the time of this work, the core
of the ruling class constituted 38,000 families with 108,000
individuals listed in the social registers of 12 major cities.
Also, and largely overlapping, were graduates of about 20 private
prep schools and a similar number of "very exclusive" gentlemen's
clubs, as well as of the "Ivy League" colleges.20 This select
group has given us presidents, key cabinet and diplomatic
postings, and CIA directors. And its funding buys the members of
Congress. In addition, trusted members and employees of the
ruling elite are given paid leave from their corporations to
"serve" in state and local government posts as mayors,
legislators, etc.
The racism shown by these "WASP-only" enclaves of the elite was
dramatized by the case of an African American businessman who
applied for membership in four New Orleans "social clubs." When
he was turned down by all four, he sued. The case, early in 1984,
was in the hands of Judge Harry Mentz. Mentz is a member of the
largest and most powerful New Orleans club whose 575 members
really run the city. In the last analysis it determines who is to
be hired and who is to be fired - and this in a city with a
majority African American population.
The hypocrisy of the opponents of affirmative action is
highlighted by Bill Clinton in the following case: he continues
the Reagan-Bush practices of effective opposition to affirmative
action quotas for employment of minorities, but is engaged in a
bitter dispute with the French government over the U.S. demand
that France set guaranteed quotas of imports of U.S. high tech
products.
The issue of quotas must be faced head-on and fought for, not
only by advocates of equality for African Americans, but by trade
unions, community organizations, independent and progressive
political parties and groups. Racist employment practices are a
prime, potent weapon of the capitalists in their anti-labor
offensive. Until this problem is solved, no substantial progress
can be made by positive forces, nor can big-business attacks be
countered. But wide recognition of the blatant hypocrisy of the
bigots who condemn affirmative action while cherishing their own
"quota" systems, could be an important tool.
The political mobilization required to win an effective
affirmative action program will inevitably be connected with a
whole set of progressive measures that will generate and
guarantee jobs in all sectors for the working population.
Conclusion - Joblessness is a crime perpetrated by the U.S.
capitalist class against the American working class. And the
trend has been markedly upward since the end of World War II.
The burden on the African American people especially - but also
on Latinos, on Native Americans, and on some sections of the
Asian-origin population - is decisively most severe, reflecting
the inordinate racism of U.S. capitalism.
As a result of the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s,
laws were enacted requiring employers, private and public, to
reduce discrimination in employing Blacks, women, disabled
persons, and other "minorities."
Two relevant agencies were set up, the Equal Employment
Opportunities Commission (EEOC) and the Office of Contract
Compliance Programs (OCCP). The EEOC had jurisdiction over
companies with 100 employees or more (later extended to include
companies with 15 or more workers), but in practice its
activities focused almost exclusively on large companies. The
intent was to encourage employers to implement affirmative action
programs. However, actual government effectiveness was limited
by:
c Constant lawsuits challenging the principal of affirmative
action, with conflicting court decisions varying with the
political winds;
c Trivial appropriation of funds and - in the case of the EEOC -
no enforcement powers, so that influence has been limited to
exhortation;
c Since 1980, the use of racism as a major, and at times
decisive, political weapon of right-wing politicians, with
virtually no white establishment politicians publicly defending
effective affirmative action.
The initiatives of supporters, such as the Congressional Black
Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, and the Progressive Caucus in
Congress and increasingly numerous independent local officials
are valuable. But in the last analysis the solution must be
forced by the mass mobilization of Americans on a scale vastly
greater than that of the powerful Civil Rights movement of the
1950s and 1960s - a united mass mobilization of white, African
American, Latino, Native American, Asian-origin peoples, men and
women, youth and seniors, disabled and abled, employed and
jobless.
Vic Perlo is a member of the National Board CPUSA.
Reference Notes
1. Economic Report of the President, l993, pp. 59-60.
2. Speech to Amalgamated Clothing Workers, May 1950.
3. Speech to Better Business Bureau, 6/6/50.
4. John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest
and Money, New York, 1935, p. 162.
5. Business Week, 9/16/85.
6. Victor Perlo, Economics of Racism, New York, 1975, p. 3. Billy
J. Tidwell, The Price: A Study of the Costs of Racism in America,
Washington, D.C., 1990, p. 72.
7. Employment and Earnings, January 1993 Table 39, p. 218.
8. Employment and Earnings, January 1993, Table 3, p. 174.
9. Employment and Earnings, Table 6, pp. 179-80.
10. Ibid.
11. USDL 93-444.
12. BLS Report 862, December 1993: Work and Family, Turning
Thirty-Job Mobility and Labor Market Attachment.
13. New York Times, 3/19/91.
14. Ibid.
15. "We'd Love to Hire Them, But. The Meaning of Race for
Employers," by Joleen Kirschenman and Kathryn M. Neckerman, in
the Urban Underclass, edited by Christopher Jencks and Paul E.
Peterson, Brookings Institution, 1991.
16. Ibid. pp. 203-32.
17. Perlo, op. cit.
18. Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, "A Unique
Competence: A Study of Employment Opportunities in the Bell
System," from the Congressional Record, 2/17/72, pp. E 1260-1261.
19. New York Times, 1/25/94.
20. G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? Prentice Hall, N.J.,
1967, p. 35.
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