Indianapolis blacks feel pinch of recession

[IndianaGreen]

Indianapolis blacks feel pinch of recession

Education, job experience, discrimination cited for higher unemployment rate, lower income

By Jeff Swiatek
Posted: March 12, 2010

For Lee Marble, tough economic times are like a bully who shoulders his way inside his soul food restaurant and scares off paying customers.

The bully is back, and Marble is worried about his largely black customer base on the city's Westside. He can hear the money woes in his customers' voices when they place an order at Marble's Southern Cookery.

"People come in who normally would buy dinners and just buy sides -- 'Oh, I'll take three vegetables,' " he said. "It's just on and on the stories you hear: 'Oh, I lost my job' or 'My unemployment's running out.'

"People just don't have the money. To be honest with you, it scares me."

From his restaurant at 2310 Lafayette Road, Marble has a front-row seat in viewing the financial pressures facing black Americans, who year after year suffer unemployment rates double the jobless rate for whites and typically much higher than Hispanics, as well.

In this recession, which hit in late 2007 and the effects of which still linger, the same old story is playing out again, despite long-established government and private-sector efforts to narrow the economic gap between blacks and the rest of the population.

The latest economic data leave no doubt that in these tough economic times, the pain is disproportionately worse for blacks than for whites and Hispanics in the Indianapolis area and across the state.

http://www.indystar.com/article/20100312/LOCAL18/3120352/Indianapolis-blacks-feel-pinch-of-recession