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What is the unemployment rate for African-Americans so high?

Why does unemployment for African-Americans remains so high?


  • Total voters
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Refusal to relocate also factors in it would seem. However, that may be human nature in general. If no/low skilled, unemployed and in Detroit, is there any reason so stay there? Other than social/family connections and - I suppose - that is where social benefits checks come to?
 
Refusal to relocate also factors in it would seem. However, that may be human nature in general. If no/low skilled, unemployed and in Detroit, is there any reason so stay there? Other than social/family connections and - I suppose - that is where social benefits checks come to?

Relocating is expensive for anyone, and most employers don't pay those expenses anymore. It's hard to blame someone for not relocating if they don't have the resources to do it.
 
Multiple choice, public poll

The unemployment rate of African Americans remains at least double that of whites and is the highest unemployment demographic. The overall economic gap remains as great.

What is most notable is that there has been NO improvement for 5 decades.
What is also notable is that...

• Most of the charts in the article start in the Civil Rights era, or later.
• Black poverty rates DID drop significantly in the late 60s and 70s, and again in the mid 90s.
• The legal system is still heavily biased against minorities.
• Manufacturing employment, once a mainstay of black employment and a good path to a middle-class life without advanced education, has deteriorated significantly since the 1950s.
• The laws in question faced significant resistance, especially in regards to segregation.

The latter is particularly important. It would be ridiculous to assert that the instant the various civli rights acts were passed, there was 100% compliance and all the racists shrugged their shoulders and stopped hating blacks. People spent decades resisting those laws, discriminating against minorities and women, redlining home purchases. Law enforcement has also spent decades targeting not just black communities, but also black leaders -- including harassing Martin Luther King Jr, criminalizing radical black leaders, and killing a few for good measure (Fred Hampton). Others, as we know, were assassinated by racist whites. And even today, people still fight against school integration.

The effects of racism also affect African immigrants. On the whole, Africans who legally immigrate to the US have strong English skills, are better educated than most other immigrant groups, are highly motivated, almost all immigrate legally, and have a culture that is quite distinct from African-American culture. Yet they still wind up with lower wages for the same work, and a lower labor force participation rate than other immigrant groups. What could possibly cause that? Hmmmm.


Every increasing social, benefits and welfare programs
What benefits have significantly increased since the mid-1960s, when all those charts start? Welfare benefits have barely increased, and the Clinton-era reforms pretty much ended "lifetime welfare."

Or perhaps you think that receiving $100 a month in food stamps is going to wipe away all the negative effects of racism, or single-handedly double the employment of blacks in the US?

We should also note that few programs actually target minority communities. For example, roughly 42% of those living in poverty are white; but when we consider Social Security and Medicare and other programs, whites receive almost 70% of government benefits. I.e. suggesting that government largesse should have a greater impact on blacks (or using the term "welfare" as a proxy for blacks...) doesn't actually make any sense.

A lot of the secondary issues that people recognize, such as low marriage rates or higher numbers of single mothers, are not in fact targeted by any social reforms -- and are largely a result of the various socioeconomic pressures induced by racism and discrimination. E.g. you can't take a concept like "blacks have higher rates of single motherhood" out of the context of the experience and treatment of blacks in the US, and use it to blame blacks for "causing their own problems." That's like someone shooting you in the foot, and then blaming you for running slow.


So... what is the reason(s) unemployment remains so high for African-Americans?
A portion of it is also because as the descendants of slaves, African-Americans lost all their family ties, culture, material wealth and freedom before they came here. However, recent African immigrants are here by choice (or at least, on the same terms as other immigrants), they're educated, they're motivated, yet they still get the shaft.

Thus, I'm gonna go with... racism and discrimination, followed by the deterioration of manufacturing employment.
 
Those communities don't have any leadership to speak of. If you're looking for someone to blame, you should wonder why the successful African-Americans and the NAACP aren't doing more to help the underclass.

Because we have a larger culture of invidualism, which in many cases results in a "Screw you, I got mine" mentality.
 
Some, many or most jobs operate of a political culture. Favoritism, who sucks up the best, who does the boss have a crush on, dare I say who sleeps with the boss, who plays golf with the boss, who has dirt on the company that could land the owner in jail, etc.; very often matter more than job performance. Some places being the wrong race plays a role on who gets hired, promoted and given raises albeit unofficially, of course.

yup. but in a union controlled job, or in the old economy, doing a job meant something.

But today they sell USA teaching jobs to foreigners. $1000 for an interview, and $10k for the job, or
like with Freeport-Mcman, they have Indians buying jobs from them with water.
 
Two things:

1. A welfare state--Why work for a living when you can vote for one?

2. Culture--"You descendents of slave owners owe us descendents of slaves a living," "We like to demonstrate, not work," "The more babies we have, the bigger welfare checks we get, and we make even more people to get on the welfare rolls," "Hey, our numbers are growing. You WASPS are dying off. You better work harder to pay our bills," "Oops, the producers are all gone. Now who's gonna pay for our welfare?"
 
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