Yesterday I was reading Kwik’s “Black Male Teen Unemployment Astronomical; Indicator Of How Society Stigmatizes, Rejects Them” which opened with:
My son is 19 and has been trying to get a job for three years…but nobody will hire him. I don’t want to believe it’s because he’s black, but…
When my son hit 16 in March of 2011, I told him: “Welcome to the work force!” I took him around to various fast food joints and grocery stores where he put in applications for basically any and every entry level job you can name from dishwasher to bus boy to bagger to stocker to janitor. We both thought it would be a matter of time before he got an interview and then a job. However, here it is over three years later and in spite of our continued efforts to find a job for him, he still hasn’t been hired.My son is a great young man. He graduated from high school last year, made good grades and never got into trouble. Right now, he’s attending the local community college, where he continues to do well. To put it bluntly, he’s a model citizen.
One thing that really exasperates me is that one of his best friends of the Caucasion persuasion who I know well because he lives down the street from us and is roughly the same age, has already been hired at three different nearby places. All of which are places where my son also applied, including the place with the golden arches, which generally hires almost anyone white that walks in without a prison record. That young man from down the street is not nearly as intelligent, responsible, well-mannered, well-groomed or well-spoken as my son. Not even close. Yet, he gets hired repeatedly? And by the way, the reason he’s had at least three jobs is because he keeps getting fired.
We all are aware of the school-to-prison-pipeline, for profit-prisons, the targeting of young males of color in police programs like Stop and Frisk…and the death statistics for far too many of our youth cut down by gun violence and police. We also know that this nation has a long history of stereotyping black males into the roles of animals, and ‘wilding’ rapists, and thugs.
Wherever there is a narrative, there are also efforts to build counter narratives. These young brothers have a video they would like you to see.
Counter-Narrative on Black Male Students: At Central High School’s Black History Month Celebration, the Central and Centennial High School African-American Clubs released a joint video countering the negative images of young African-American males in the media. The students affirmed the following in a video highlighting the successes of young black males within the District:
• We are not gangsters and thugs.
• We are employees and volunteers.
• We are scholars.
• We are athletes.
“The negative stories told daily in the media and in our culture about our young African-American men tend to ignore their successes and don’t tell the full story about how young Black men are becoming leaders within our community schools,” said Central School Social Worker and African-American Club Sponsors Tiffany Gholson and Barbara Cook, who worked with the students on this effort. “In this video, our students reclaim the narrative of who they are and inspire other students to follow in their footsteps.” In our assembly, we addressed the State of the Youth and highlighted what Black students have overcome from a historical perspective. The assembly also highlighted how overcoming those obstacles has helped make America stronger and urged students of all backgrounds to carry the torch for future generations
Clearly, no videos can change the systemic racial inequity and economic inequality faced by today’s black youth. The data is grim.
Youth unemployment is even worse than the unemployment rate suggests
The high unemployment rate for young Americans is a bad sign, but it doesn’t even begin to tell the whole story of just how grim employment prospects are for today’s young adults. Looking just at the overall unemployment rate obscures the extremely high rates of unemployment among communities of color, ignores workers who have given up on finding a job, and fails to take into account the many workers who are underemployed relative to their skills and education levels.
Unemployment is a major problem for young Americans in general, but it’s an even bigger problem for young people of color. While the overall unemployment rate for teenagers is 25.1 percent, the unemployment rate for black teens is 43.1 percent. And fully half of black males ages 16-19 are looking for work but unable to find a job.
These data don’t show gender, but recent reports, like Trends in Teen Employment in Chicago,. Illinois, and the United States., from the Chicago Urban League do.
In Chicago 92% of black male teens are unemployed. That is not a typo.
There are multiple factors that contribute to this staggering percentage.
There are solutions too. All of which are going to require cash and programs. From my perspective we need a Marshall Plan for right here at home, which is something civil rights groups across the nation have called for for decades.
With Republicans controlling the House, there is zero chance of passing legislation like the Pathways Back to Work Act “a federal measure that would create a $5 billion fund to help pay for summer and year-round job opportunities for low-income youth, work-based training for both adults and young people and subsidized employment programs for jobless and low-income adults.”
Though President Obama has issued a memorandum “Creating and Expanding Ladders of Opportunity for Boys and Young Men of Color” and the My Brother’s Keeper Task Force (which of course was immediately decried by wing-nuts, who have already labelled efforts to raise the minimum wage as “The “Black Teenage Unemployment Act”), the only long term solution will have to be legislative.
Yes, we have community organizations across the nation who are trying to address these problems at the local level, and they merit our support.
Groups like the Black Youth Project.
But as long as we have a right wing determined to roll back the gains we’ve made in the past, from the Roberts Court, to the Congress, to state legislatures, we are only able to apply band-aids.
Band-aids ain’t gonna stop the bleeding.
Cross-posted from Black Kos
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