When we look closer at these figures we see something else. African American unemployment is 13.4%. Close to twice the level of the national average and close to twice the level of the average for white Americans which is 7.3%. But look at teenage African Americans. It is a catastrophe. Unemployment for African American teenagers is 38.8% but more likely closer to 44%when account is taken for teenagers who have given up looking for work. This also shows that US capitalism has forfeited the right to rule. This is a system that is rotten to its core.
We need to use our imagination. Imagine the entire population, imagine our community whichever one we live in, living at such levels of poverty and unemployment. If we are not African American imagine living with such unemployment levels. What this would do to our family and personal pressures? They talk about the crisis of the African American family and the African American male. There is no crisis of the African American family or the African American male. There is a crisis of capitalism which cannot provide a decent job and living wage for all its citizens and in particularly the African American population.
This high unemployment is not an accident. Capitalism cannot exist without a significant portion of its workforce unemployed. If all workers were employed we would be able to push much more successfully for higher wages and benefits. The Federal Reserve Bank manipulates interest rates monthly to keep them high enough to ensure enough people are unemployed. They actually report to Congress that they have enough out of work to keep wage pressure low. All these people who are unemployed over the years are the result of the deliberate policy of capitalism and their agent the Federal Reserve. The more recent surge in employment is the result of the overall crisis of capitalism which includes the temporary reduction in interest rate levels over the recent years and this is now coming back to haunt the system in the form of over production and also the criminal policies of the financial system which they have been propping up and encouraging and which is now collapsing.
This general crisis of the system hits African American and other racial minorities such as native Americans and Hispanic people hardest for two reasons. One is the ruling classes policy of divide and rule. The ruling class in the US are a minority. They cannot rule if the huge working class majority unite against them. Their policy is to keep unemployment and poverty amongst the racial minorities higher as this will then give them a better chance of convincing the majority of the working class who are white that the problem is that African American and other minorities are lazy etc and the white worker is different and specifically they do not have to have anything to do with workers from the minorities, especially that they they do not have to work and organize together with them in struggle for jobs and good wages for all.
The other reason that unemployment and poverty hits minorities hardest is because of what they have endured over the course of US history. I will deal here only with African Americans.
For hundreds of years African Americans were forced to work as slaves. They got no wages. They were able to accumulate nothing. So when slavery ended they had nothing, they were at the bottom of the economic ladder. While the upper layers of the white population who now rule the country, had accumulated large amounts of capital and control over the state and politics the African American population had none of these.
Many African American workers had developed important skills while working for the slave owners.. However these threatened the existing skilled artisan class amongst the whites, people such as those who had their own shops, forges, etc. The skilled black worker who tried to set up such outlets which were in competition with these were a particular target of the Klu Klux Klan and their businesses were burnt and they were lynched and their bodies burnt. Then when the unions developed which from the beginning should have given a way forward for African American workers many of these, especially the craft unions refused to let African American workers join and so forced them to stay in the low paid jobs.
This result of these experiences have led to unemployment being greater in the African American community. And of course the racism that exists pervades society in general and results in African Americans finding it more difficult to get a decent job than white people.
US capitalism is rotten. For all workers it has to be ended. In the present crisis workers from all backgrounds are being faced with experiences which are closer to that of the workers from the minorities over the centuries. The task is to unite workers of all backgrounds and struggle together to end the system which to one degree or another exploits us - to end capitalism and replace it with a democratic socialist system.
1 comment:
I agree with your analysis except to add that in the last period Black people were the most militant section of the workign class during the 1960's. They were willing to combat the system at the workplace and the community and influenced countries around the world to attempt to overthrow the social system. Our poverty and continued attacks by the government and unemployment is not only because of slavery but an attempt to suppress a militant class of workers.
Out right in the 1970's the government developed COINTELPRO and helped bring drugs into Black communities to stop the organization of Black groups. They murdered us on the street, framed people and cut programs ( and paid cops to instigate gang wars) to distract adn stop that militantcy.
Today things are less obvious, even though Black people make up a huge percentage of the prison population and I think 1 in 10 Black men will go through the criminal justice system.
Black people have been kept unemployed in part because we are not willing to play along and because we are known for "talking back" to the boss. That militantcy and refusal to bow to the boss is a hold over from a fight against injustice and a challenge to capitalism.
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