THE BLACK FACE OF UNEMPLOYMENT

Urgent chronic mass unemployment and underemployment in the Black community is deteriorating the condition of the unemployed, actually exposing some our people to recurring or permanent Absolute Black Impoverishment. Absolute Black Impoverishment is when the living standards, education, and thought processes are lowered dramatically. I think that the majority of Black folk’s standard of living is determined by their living and working conditions. It takes in everything from how long it takes to get to and from work, to the cleanliness of your home, to childcare, etc.
Our living standards are determined by how much money we make and the relation to the value of that work, how long we work each day, how hard we work, healthcare, bills, wars, police, and the threat of lay-offs or shorter hours. Along with the cut-backs and elimination of some social programs, unemployment in the Black community has become an integral part of the absolute impoverishment in the Black community. When a Black man is denied a job, he feels stripped of his manhood and his most valued need…the need to work usefully in life. Most Black men live off of their one and only commodity, which is labor power. When a Black man in the community is prevented from doing this, he is condemned to deprivation, indignities, homelessness, and sometimes starvation.

The struggle for employment is having a drastic effect in our community. It is perpetuating the breakdown of the Black family, the whole structure! A lot of brothers who are unable to find work, now have to leave home so that their wives or significant others can qualify for assistance (welfare). Our children that grow up in these welfare situations now leave school because they have no incentive or because they don’t have enough to eat or good clothes to wear. So, they go out looking for jobs with no formal education, only to find a more negative situation than their fathers faced. So, they turn to petty crime, selling a lil weed, lil crack, prostitution, and the cycle continues.

This high unemployment has meant destitution for thousands and thousands of Black families. There are clearly elements of racism in this culture of unemployment, notably, education and immigration.

For skilled workers, Blacks are less educated and less skilled than whites and Asians; and for unskilled positions, illegal immigrants are having a gigantic effect on Black unemployment. You will find this in construction and in the food service industries. And, of course, in agriculture, Hispanics are it! In unskilled labor, there is a language barrier, but also a stereotype that Hispanics are better workers than Blacks. Now that our joblessness has remained so critically elevated, it is time we start challenging longstanding ideas about what it takes to find work in the modern-day economy.