Nationwide - Joblessness Rate for Black Males is 50%

Originally published in the Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wisconsin) December 15, 2004 

Copyright 2004 Madison Newspapers, Inc.

BLACKS SUFFER FROM STEALTH DEPRESSION'

By: Barbara Miner


Black America is suffering from "stealth depression." But few in the broader community seem to be paying attention.

November's sluggish unemployment figure of 5.4 percent masks the ongoing crisis in overall joblessness for black men. In major cities across the country, their jobless rate hovers around 50 percent.

Take the case of Milwaukee, immortalized in popular culture as an icon of 1950s prosperity and the home of beer, bratwurst and Laverne and Shirley. In the last 30 years, however, the breweries and factories have abandoned the city.

Today, Milwaukee's 59 percent jobless rate among working-age black men is the highest of any major city, according to 2002 federal figures based on both the officially unemployed and those who have dropped out of the labor force.

Milwaukee does not stand alone. In Detroit, the figure was 52 percent; Chicago, 51 percent; Philadelphia, 50 percent; Los Angeles, 41 percent; New York City, almost 50 percent.

Our urban areas -- the country's financial, cultural, medical and educational lifeblood -- are dying from within. Lives and communities are being destroyed. The working class in general is facing a jobs crisis, but blacks in particular are suffering.

Too often, pundits unnecessarily complicate the solutions to unemployment, as if there's some elusive magic formula that has yet to be discovered, the Rev. Jesse Jackson argues.

"It's not magic," he notes. "You invest in America. That's how we came out of the Depression in the 1930s. We had widespread unemployment and we invested in jobs. We put America back to work."

But when blacks are jobless at astronomical rates, somehow they do not get the attention of the government.

"Our tolerance of black pain is a legacy of racism," notes Jackson. "There's a sense that you can put a wall around that pain. But at some point, pain spills over."

We need to take down that wall and face the pain of black unemployment head-on.