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. [more]
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