Loss of manufacturing jobs hits Milwaukee's Black community hard
Thursday, December 9, 2004 at 10:08PM
TheSpook
The loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs in the last couple of
decades has hurt this city harder than nearly any other, causing a
racial rift and a growing gap between rich and poor, a newspaper's
analysis found. A generation ago, Milwaukee offered hope, opportunity
and jobs to people of all races. But since then, the city has turned
from a place of unrivaled opportunity for blacks into a locus of
downward mobility without equal among other big U.S. cities, the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Sunday. The newspaper said
Milwaukee's working-age black men have suffered almost twice the drop
in employment that the nation endured in the Depression, plummeting by
21 percentage points from 1970 to the most recent census in 2000. The
paper said black residents were downsized more than any other
demographic because they relied more on low-skill labor than blacks in
any other American city. Many had come north from a Southern
agricultural society, and many hadn't finished high school. [more]
Article originally appeared on (http://brownwatch.com/).
See website for complete article licensing information.