Blacks in Retreat

[Beacool]

By BOB HERBERT
Published: January 18, 2010

It has been easy for people to forget in the decades since we lost the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that he was a passionate fighter for economic justice as well as civil rights. The two goals were as closely linked as the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water.

The historic gathering in 1963 at which Dr. King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech was officially called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

And when Dr. King was murdered in Memphis in 1968, he had gone there to support sanitation workers who were striking for higher wages and better working conditions.

Jobs and freedom. In America, you can’t have one without the other. Democrats are in deep trouble right now — just a year after their giddy celebration of Barack Obama’s ascendance to the presidency — because so many millions of Americans are out of work, unable to find the gainful employment that would unlock the door to a stable future for themselves and their families.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/opinion/19herbert.html?ref=opinion

I may not be the most appropriate person to start this thread since I'm not AA, but I found the article to be thought provoking and worrisome. The unemployment rate among AA, which is already very high, could rise even more:

"For example, without a dramatic new intervention by the federal government, the poverty rate for African-American children could eventually approach a heart-stopping 50 percent, according to analysts at the Economic Policy Institute. Already more than a third of black children are living in poverty.

Present trends are not good. Communities of color are being crushed economically and the national news media have not fully focused on the carnage. The official unemployment rate for blacks is 16.2 percent and could well pass 17 percent before the year is out. The real jobless rate is far more ghastly. The Boston-based group United for a Fair Economy noted that even “college-educated black men are nearly twice as likely to be unemployed as their white, college-educated counterparts.”

I think that this unease about jobs, not just in the AA community but in the population at large, is what's fueling the unrest that may cause us the senate seat in MA. The candidate may not have been the best one, but come on, this is MA for crying out loud!! Here in NJ we inaugurated a Republican governor today, not a good trend.

:(

[Bullet1987]

1. There has been an employment problem within minority communities

for years. People like to joke about it, but it's not a laughing matter. Minority communities are the ones that have been hurt the most because of outsourcing. No offense, but it's just now become an issue within the White community and now everyone wants to talk about it...when urban areas have been struggling for much longer than that.

[NatBurner]

3. basically

[Hello_Kitty]

9. Yep. Clueless affluent Anglos have no clue what is really going on. eom

[butterfly77]

10. The same people who say pull yourself up..

by your bootstraps are the very people who ship jobs overseas,or bring in people to do jobs AA could do. I don't believe they want AA to have jobs unless they are in their Prison industrial complex free labor for these companies..

They complain about crime and other statistics that they say only relate to AA but,they don't seem to want crime to fill their pockets. This is how crime pays for them. Now we have others who now have lost jobs and who now see what a lot of AA have been talking about for years but they are blaming the wrong President..

[Beacool]

12. No offense taken.

I'm well aware of the disparity between white and minority employment, so it's not surprising that minority communities should have been more affected by the recession. Nonetheless, it is still disturbing to read that things may get even worse and more than half of the children could be living in poverty. In such a wealthy country there's no excuse for anyone to go hungry, let alone children.

:(

[Cali_Democrat]

2. K&R. n/t

[NOLALady]

4. There has always been unease about jobs in

communities of color. I would like to believe the average AA has the sense enough to know that Republicans are not the answer to the poverty problem.

But, if any community will choose a Republican because of the high unemployment rate, then they deserve the consequences.

Unemployment is high with Democrats in power. Solution...Vote Republican and 'You aint seen nothing yet!'

[jesus_of_suburbia]

5. I really think this administration needs to focus foremost on the economy after HCR.

People are hurting.... more often in minority communities.



Nothing else is really important if you can't put food on the table for your family.

[Beacool]

16. Yes, there are people suffering.

Don't you just love the euphemism of the report on poverty? One out of 10 Americans have "food insufficiency". Only a bureaucrat or a politician could phrase it in such antiseptic terms. Why can't they just spell it out??? One out of 10 Americans are going HUNGRY. Food insufficiency my rear end!!!

x(




:hi:

[uponit7771]

6. There's no damn way black folk blame a black man for what the epitome of white privilege has done

...you can take that to the bank.

The black folk I know have enough common sense to know Obama had nothing to do with this current situation and look at the America as a whole as some really short memory folk who don't know how to wait.

[Beacool]

13. I don't think that it was the writer's intention to blame Obama.

But, other than the stimulus package which seemed to have shored up Wall Street but not much more, there hasn't been enough done in the job creation front. People are in real need and scared. There are many who have never been unemployed before or been unemployed for this length of time. I know professionals with long job histories who haven't worked in over a year. These folks can't keep waiting much longer. The main focus of the administration has to be jobs, jobs and more jobs or there'll be a Democratic bloodbath at the polls in November.

[ampad]

7. I agree that there is unrest

due to the economy. People are suffering, we want the problem solved asap. However, I noticed during the Bush years, that although Bush was putting the fix on the people as soon as he was sworn in to office. That the decline was not noticeable until his last few years in office. With that said it is going to take longer than a year to get things going again. I think most people know and understand that but when you are worried about making the mortgage none of that matters. Also, as someone upthread pointed out I find it hard to believe that black people, in mass, are going to blame Obama for years of white privilege and racism. When the country has a cold, minorities have the flu. That is how it is. White men have always been in control of this country. Obama is not going to be able to erase years of racism by being the president for one year. I'm willing to bet that whenever he leaves office that minorities (blacks) will still have the highest unemployment numbers. Along with the highest incarceration numbers and so on. This country was built on imperialism and racism. It will take years to turn that around.

[dionysus]

8. i got something for you Bea...

banky!!

:hi:

[Beacool]

15. Thank you!!

You're always such a dear!!

:hug:

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

11. I hope that we don't resort to blaming minorities for Democratic Party losses

Minorities in general, and black Americans in particular, are the most loyal of all Democratic Party constituencies.

And no, I don't know any black American, myself included, who blames President Obama. Black people are far more politically sophisticated and savvy that many people give us credit for. It's the American people who seem to suffer from collective amnesia because they act as if the last eight years never happened. Those who buy into Republican rhetoric and vote accordingly should be held accountable. For people to even consider voting for a Republican--ANY REPUBLICAN--is absolutely astonishing...and disgusting considering the mess they left!

Even a former conservative Republican (white male) told me that he could not fathom voting for another Republican for the rest of his life. As he looks back on things, Republicans always leave a mess for Democrats to clean up. They do it on purpose, a la Naomi Klein ("The Shock Doctrine"), to destroy government from within. Once they've destroyed government, they can then turn and point the finger towards Democrats as evidence that government fails. And yet, they can't wait to get back into power. Why? To use and abuse government for their own ends and to award their corporate cronies. Corporate Democrats are in on the scheme, too! So once government is destroyed and a Democrat has to come in and fixed things up, he (and one day, SHE) ends up having to raise taxes or spend to get the country out this mess, only to be called a "tax and spend liberal". The slogan sells so well that voters--many of them unsophisticated and disengaged--repeat the cycle: vote Republican. The Republicans mess things up. The Democrat has to come in and clean it up; the tools used to clean things up are unpopular. The Democrat either loses control over Congress or is a one-term president (LBJ, Carter, perhaps Obama). The Republicans, who have done nothing and offer to alternative plan, are able to fool Americans through the use of catchy political phrases, bumper-sticker slogans, and highly sensitive wedge issues (abortion, gay marriage, Dems threaten to confiscate your guns, etc.). They use fear to push people into action and get them to the polls. And it works. The Republicans are much better at controlling the narrative and repeating over and over again this narrative until it becomes deeply engrained into the American psyche. And Americans continue to fall for it time and time again.

The Republican strategist who was on Tweety's show last week. (I can't remember his name right now.) Randi Rhodes played the clip of Tweety asking the Republican to name ONE THING that the Republican Party has accomplished in the last 20 years. ONE THING! The guy couldn't answer the question. I wish that I could find the video for that. It was priceless. The guy could not name ONE THING! Not ONE!!

On edit: I found the video...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/06/todd-harris-gop-strategist-decimated-chris-matthews_n_414205.html

[Beacool]

14. I agree with your assessment, I don't see AAs leaving the party.

I never understood why any woman or minority would vote Republican. It is the Independents who decide any race, and they are not a very patient bunch, as today's MA election proves it. I'm hearing on CNN right now that it appears that Brown may be the winner.

I think the point of the article is that, even though there may be an AA in the WH, AAs should still hold the president's feet to the fire:

"Speaking about one of his many antipoverty initiatives, Dr. King told Look magazine in 1968: “We called our demonstration a campaign for jobs and income because we felt that the economic question was the most crucial that black people, and poor people generally, were confronting.”

That was then. The loudest voices against poverty and economic injustice of all kinds have long since faded. The government, reclining comfortably on a vast cushion of campaign contributions, has allied itself with big business and the big banks against the interests of ordinary Americans. Millions upon millions of families are suffering, but mostly in silence."

P.S. Great video. LOL!!!