The unemployment rate among black men 20 years and older is 17.8 percent. Forty-two percent of black teenagers are jobless.
Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Barbara Lee said in a statement:
The unemployment rate for African American workers remains unacceptably high at 15.8 percent, up 6.8 percentage points from the start of the recession in December 2007.
For many months the Congressional Black Caucus has worked to address the concurrent issues of chronic unemployment, poverty and the need to create jobs and strengthen the economy.
To further that agenda, the CBC is engaging in an ongoing campaign to seek policy solutions by engaging President Obama, leadership and members of Congress, and coalition partners in a strategy to put America back to work.
For the past week, some black leaders and leading blacks have feuded on the airwaves about whether Obama should “ballyhoo” a black agenda.
While black folks engage in shouting matches, other folks are mobilizing and demanding that Obama focus on their agenda.
Later this month, Latinos plan to march on Washington to demand comprehensive immigration reform amnesty for “12 million people who work, pay taxes, and are part of our communities, but are excluded from the full American family.”
And get this:
Immigration policy that keeps families together is good for the country: families help their relatives get jobs, get housing, and get started. Anti-family policies have put more than 5 million Americans who have applied to bring family members here into a never-ending bureaucratic line. Thousands of American families have been thrown into poverty because the breadwinners have been deported. We’ve created a new group of high tech indentured servants, captives of corporate sponsors and living without their families. All workers deserve to be with their families.
Fine, go home. But I digress.
Black leaders and leading blacks need to show the same audacity and demand that black joblessness be addressed because the economic recovery ain’t trickling down.
