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Black unemployment: Highest in 27 years

American

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The August jobs report was dismal for plenty of reasons, but perhaps most striking was the picture it painted of racial inequality in the job market.
Black unemployment surged to 16.7% in August, its highest level since 1984, while the unemployment rate for whites fell slightly to 8%, the Labor Department reported.
"This month's numbers continue to bear out that longstanding pattern that minorities have a much more challenging time getting jobs," said Bill Rodgers, chief economist with the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.
Black unemployment has been roughly double that of whites since the government started tracking the figures in 1972.
Economists blame a variety of factors. The black workforce is younger than the white workforce, lower numbers of blacks get a college degree and many live in areas of the country that were harder hit by the recession -- all things that could lead to a higher unemployment rate.

"Even when you compare black and white workers, same age range, same education, you still see pretty significant gaps in unemployment rates," said Algernon Austin, director of the Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy program at the Economic Policy Institute. "So I do think the fact of racial discrimination in the labor market continues to play a role."

Hope and change, baby, hope and change. :thumbs:
 
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Hope and change, baby, hope and change. :thumbs:

What's wrong with all those black people, clearly they don't have the guts to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and help themselves!

Oh wait, no, it's all Obama's fault they can't help themselves!

black people's fault? Obama's fault? Wait, i'm confused now...
 
What's wrong with all those black people, clearly they don't have the guts to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and help themselves!

Oh wait, no, it's all Obama's fault they can't help themselves!

black people's fault? Obama's fault? Wait, i'm confused now...

Its actually the fault of decades of bad policy that everyone thinks is to help minorities that was actually designed originally to hold them down. When you cram a recession on top the situation gets worse for them faster than anyone else. Its just the way it is.
 
What's wrong with all those black people, clearly they don't have the guts to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and help themselves!

Oh wait, no, it's all Obama's fault they can't help themselves!

black people's fault? Obama's fault? Wait, i'm confused now...
Being a liberal, I think you ought be ashamed to admit you're confused. Supposedly you people have been looking out for blacks since at least the 1960's. So what the hell are you doing?
 
There are many reasons for this including the Welfare system, lack of education, poor role models, and some bad parenting.

The Welfare system was set up to replace blatant racism and to hold minorities back, the lack of education is excused, by telling those who fail that it's someone Else's fault, rather telling them all they have to do to succeed is work at it.
 
Being a liberal, I think you ought be ashamed to admit you're confused. Supposedly you people have been looking out for blacks since at least the 1960's. So what the hell are you doing?

Your-Head...My-Point.jpg
 
this speaks more to the point of not having proper skill sets than any perceived racial discrimination.

in this economy, ya got to have the skillz' or you get to sit home and wonder why you're poor and unemployed/unemployable
 
this speaks more to the point of not having proper skill sets than any perceived racial discrimination.

in this economy, ya got to have the skillz' or you get to sit home and wonder why you're poor and unemployed/unemployable

read the very last line that American quoted again.
 
I understood it the first time i read it.

age and education =/= skill sets.

What evidence do you have that it's a skills mismatch problem when it comes to that huge disparity?

And I would add that even if it's not employers themselves that are engaging in racist behavior (either consciously or subconsciously), this is still evidence of institutionalized racism.
 
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What evidence do you have that it's a skills mismatch problem when it comes to that huge disparity?

ooohhh, various articles on the internet regarding employable skills

I don't have a super cool internet study that i can refer you to, if that's what you are asking for.

also, i tend to have a bit more common sense approach to issues ... instead of having the knee jerk reactions of saying " well, obviously employers are racists and look for white people to hire instead of black people" I tend to believe that employers are looking for the best skill set they can find that can help their business in the most efficient manner possible.
 
ooohhh, various articles on the internet regarding employable skills

I don't have a super cool internet study that i can refer you to, if that's what you are asking for.

also, i tend to have a bit more common sense approach to issues ... instead of having the knee jerk reactions of saying " well, obviously employers are racists and look for white people to hire instead of black people" I tend to believe that employers are looking for the best skill set they can find that can help their business in the most efficient manner possible.

Reread, absorb, try again...

And I would add that even if it's not employers themselves that are engaging in racist behavior (either consciously or subconsciously), this is still evidence of institutionalized racism.
 
ooohhh, various articles on the internet regarding employable skills

I don't have a super cool internet study that i can refer you to, if that's what you are asking for.

also, i tend to have a bit more common sense approach to issues ... instead of having the knee jerk reactions of saying " well, obviously employers are racists and look for white people to hire instead of black people" I tend to believe that employers are looking for the best skill set they can find that can help their business in the most efficient manner possible.

Employers and interviewers have their own prejudices just like everyone else. They also discriminate against the unemployed, and former criminals. In many cases prejudice is simply more convenient than evaluating an individual as an individual. I feel like I've done this too many times, but I'll give you the benefit since you're new. There IS evidence of racial discrimination in the labor market.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_names_and_racism_in_the_hiring_process

I'm not saying the disparity between blacks and everyone else is due purely to racism, but to deny that racism exists in the labor market is ignoring reality. And btw, racism CAN still exist without racists, believe it or not.
 
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What's wrong with all those black people, clearly they don't have the guts to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and help themselves!

Oh wait, no, it's all Obama's fault they can't help themselves!

black people's fault? Obama's fault? Wait, i'm confused now...

They will be kept happy with bread (welfare, extended unemployment benefits, food stamps, "free" healthcare) and circuses (all the entertainment you could wish for, lotteries, etc). Their votes are garnered by the unscrupulous with promises of redistribution of wealth and class warfare.
 
I wish liberals would try to understand that unemployment in blacks was actually lower than whites before minimum wage. Ask yourself this, if people are racist how can that be true? What I'm telling you is there is reasons outside of racism for the problem you are talking about. Please, please, please, look into it.
 
I wish liberals would try to understand that unemployment in blacks was actually lower than whites before minimum wage.

Not to mention the full employment that slavery brought with it.
 
I wish liberals would try to understand that unemployment in blacks was actually lower than whites before minimum wage. Ask yourself this, if people are racist how can that be true? What I'm telling you is there is reasons outside of racism for the problem you are talking about. Please, please, please, look into it.

If you have a link for that, I would like to see it. But regardless, a higher or lower unemployment among blacks does not dismiss the reality of the existence of racism in the earlier 20th century.
 
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Not to mention the full employment that slavery brought with it.

Either that is the dumbest comment I have heard in a week or you are doing that wage slavery nonsense again. Do you know why minimum wage was created? Because blacks were undercutting whites and taking every job available. Sorry, bro.
 
Not to mention the full employment that slavery brought with it.

Ahhhhh....slavery

There are some interesting things about the entire issue of slavery that strikes me as being highly ironic. Slavery did not start out as such--It was originally just an extension of indentured servitude, which many of our (white) ancestors used to come over here. Outright permanent slavery was illegal in the colonies, and it took lawsuits and precedent in order to establish a permanent, life-long condition of bondage in the law.

According to a couple of sources, the original lawsuit that was used to establish a condition of permanent indentured servitude was brought by a black owner, who felt that his less-civilized fellow Africans couldn't adapt to life on their own. Apparently, he felt that he had the obligation to keep them in indentured servitude for life, in order to "help" them. Later on, some records indicate that he lost his new slaves over a matter of debt to a white planter.
 
Employers and interviewers have their own prejudices just like everyone else. They also discriminate against the unemployed, and former criminals. In many cases prejudice is simply more convenient than evaluating an individual as an individual. I feel like I've done this too many times, but I'll give you the benefit since you're new. There IS evidence of racial discrimination in the labor market.

Black names and racism in the hiring process - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm not saying the disparity between blacks and everyone else is due purely to racism, but to deny that racism exists in the labor market is ignoring reality. And btw, racism CAN still exist without racists, believe it or not.

I denied racism exists in the labor market?

I do believe i said i believe that this speaks more to skill sets than racism.
you are free to believe it's speaks more to racism if you want, and i'm sure you'll have plenty of corroboration to be found on the internet for that opinion..
 
I denied racism exists in the labor market?

I do believe i said i believe that this speaks more to skill sets than racism.
you are free to believe it's speaks more to racism if you want, and i'm sure you'll have plenty of corroboration to be found on the internet for that opinion..

My mistake. Can you summarize just which skill sets blacks lack that whites don't that might cause such a discrepancy, or at least provide a source to back up your opinion?
 
Either that is the dumbest comment I have heard in a week or you are doing that wage slavery nonsense again. Do you know why minimum wage was created? Because blacks were undercutting whites and taking every job available. Sorry, bro.



You certainly have a habit of ignoring what is said to you in favor of insults and attacks.

Do you believe this somehow adds credibility to your image when you are impotent to actually respond to what is being discussed?
 
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