The NAACP’s 100th convention is in full swing at the New York Hilton. The nation’s oldest civil rights organization has reason to celebrate. But the black unemployment figures are a sobering reminder that there’s still work to do.
A report by the New York City Comptroller found that the racial gap in employment is widening. The unemployment rate for blacks is 14.7 percent. By contrast, the unemployment rate for whites is 3.7 percent.
The New York Times reports:
Economists said they were not certain why so many more blacks were losing their jobs in New York, especially when a large share of the layoffs in the city have been in fields where they are not well represented, like finance and professional services. But in those sectors, the economists suggested that blacks may have had less seniority when layoffs occurred. And black workers hold an outsize share of the jobs in retailing and other service industries that have been shrinking as consumers curtail their spending.
The Times notes that President Barack Obama twice has been asked about the need for targeted policies to “stop the bloodletting in the black unemployment rate.” Each time Obama offered hope in the form of trickle-down economics:
And so, if the economy as a whole is doing poorly, then you know that the African American community is going to be doing poorly, and they’re going to be hit even harder. And the best thing that I can do for the African American community or the Latino community or the Asian community, whatever community, is to get the economy as a whole moving.
During yesterday’s panel discussion on “Advancing the Civil Rights Agenda,” Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, asked: Haven’t we heard that before?
Arnwine said the Obama administration should have “targeted, specific programs.” She called for the creation of an interagency task force to “focus on the peculiar problems of African Americans, Latinos and people with disabilities.”
Here’s a modest proposal: Adolfo Carrion, director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs and Domestic Policy Council, should forgo the dog-and-pony show “national conversation on urban and metropolitan policy” and take Amtrak to New York Penn Station.
The one-time Bronx Borough president could ask his former constituents for “fresh ideas and successful solutions” for a new urban agenda. Carrion should expect to hear a lot of four-letter words: jobs, jobs and jobs.
