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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFor black men, a permanent recession
by Reniqua Allen
NEW YORK Six years after America sank into the deepest economic downturn since the 1930s, the jobless rate has fallen to 5.9 percent, the lowest since July 2008. But one demographic group African-American men seems to be stuck in a permanent recession.
Eleven percent of black men over 20 are unemployed today. Thats down from 19 percent in 2010, but its still the highest of any ethnic or racial group. By comparison, 9.6 percent of black women are unemployed, while white men have an unemployment rate of 4.4 percent. That racial disparity, alas, is nothing new. Since the government began tracking unemployment in 1940, the jobless rate for black men has consistently been at least twice that of white males.
Social scientists, economists and other experts cite a variety of reasons for the high unemployment rate among black males: lack of training, loss of public-sector jobs, high incarceration rates (at least five times that of white men), unequal access to social networks and outright discrimination. When coupled with the fact that the recession hit all men particularly hard (men lost 2.6 jobs to every 1 by a woman, in large part because of a decline in manufacturing and construction), a clearer picture of the tenuous relationship black men have with todays labor market starts to emerge.
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http://america.aljazeera.com/features/2014/10/for-black-men-a-permanentrecession.html
madokie
(51,076 posts)We have to do better than this, we have to stand up and demand a change in policies that allow this to be. When I say we I mean us white folks. Its bad enough that we brought the African Americans ancestors here as slaves and its wrong that we treat their descendants like we do. We can and must do better. Simple as that.
Response to n2doc (Original post)
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Quayblue
(1,045 posts)uponit7771
(90,339 posts)...this to the nth degree